External Firewire Troubles, External Firewire Drive Won't Unmount/Er Options

[banevt]

Hello all
I have an ibook G3 running OSX 10.3.9. My issue is with an external firewire 400 drive I have. The other day I tried to trash something on the drive and it wouldn't go to the trash. I tried restarting but still it wouldn't let me trash anything. I tried to run Disk Utility and repair the disk but it said it couldn't do it because the drive wouldn't unmount and is still in use. I checked to see if any applications were running but nothing else was running. I have to force eject it from the Terminal just to unmount it from my desktop. I backed up all my data and as I was backing it up I found that a lot of the recent files I'd been working with wouldn't copy becuase they could not be read or written. So I tried to erase the drive but I get the same error message about not being able to unmount the drive. I have tried Disk Warrior and it gives me the same message. I've tried logging out and back in. Booting from a startup CD, and booting up in safe mode. I can't figure out what the problem could be. The fact that I can't even erase the firewire drive from the CD boot makes me fear the drive may be dead. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Valente

[lepetitmartien]

Check the site of the enclosure manufacturer, it may need an update of the firmware as it may be not totally 10.3 compatible…

That's the only thing I can think of

I'd be you, i'd try to mount the drive on another computer and back it up (you'll have to for the eventual firmware update to be safe). Format it and go ahead…

[banevt]

Thanks for the tip lepetitmartien I looked up the makers of the enclosure and had to hunt down the drivers I needed. I had heard about the oxford chipset being a problem in panther but my chipset isn't oxford but they had an update for 10.3 and also a disk utility software for OS 9. I installed the driver and no change in OSX. I have a dual boot iBook so I tried the OS 9 software and I thought it was fixed, but the same problem keeps popping up. Initialize or Erase fail because disk is in use. I've tried reformatting from the Terminal I've tried to erase folders from the drive in the Terminal but every time I get this message


rm: /Volumes/Bubo 1/ZuZu Samples/.DS_Store: Invalid argument
rm: /Volumes/Bubo 1/ZuZu Samples/JJP ROOMY KIK: Invalid argument
rm: /Volumes/Bubo 1/ZuZu Samples/JJP- NS10 KIK: Invalid argument
rm: /Volumes/Bubo 1/ZuZu Samples/JJP- REVERB SNARE: Invalid argument
rm: /Volumes/Bubo 1/ZuZu Samples/JJP- SMALL SNARE: Invalid argument
rm: /Volumes/Bubo 1/ZuZu Samples: Invalid argument


I just ran fsck command on my drive and got this message it doesn't seem very good.


** /Volumes/Bubo 1 (NO WRITE)

CANNOT READ: BLK 16
CONTINUE? [yn] y

THE FOLLOWING DISK SECTORS COULD NOT BE READ: 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31,
ioctl (GCINFO): Inappropriate ioctl for device
fsck: /Volumes/Bubo 1: can't read disk label



I wonder if I should try another computer like you said before or maybe even a new enclosure or would that not make a difference? All my important data is backed up so I'm just looking for a fullproof, bulletproof way to eradicate this drive and reformat it. Once again any help is greatly appreciated, and thanks again lepetitmartien for the tips. I was sure you had it solved.

Valente

This post has been edited by banevt: Thu 23 Jun 2005, 07:01

[ourmanflinty]

It's a shame you can't put the drive onto an ATA bus to eliminate one of the controllers..you have a controller in the fw bridge and a controller on the drive itself. A different enclosure would answer this question, I'd suspect the enclosure with this kind of failure, the mechanism more with a crash failure.

Have you got another fw cable to try?

[banevt]

I've tried several firewire cables in this situation and even tried mounting the drive on a different comptuer like lepetitmartien suggested. I do think you are on to something with it being the enclosure more than the drive. I ran fsck from Terminal on the volume and it said the volume needed repairs but I also ran fsck on the disk and it said it was ok. This makes me wonder if it's the enclosure and not the drive. What do you think?


[Valente-Torrezs-Computer:~] valentet% mount
/dev/disk0s10 on / (local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (local)
fdesc on /dev (union)
<volfs> on /.vol
automount -nsl [389] on /Network (automounted)
automount -fstab [392] on /automount/Servers (automounted)
automount -static [392] on /automount/static (automounted)
/dev/disk2s10 on /Volumes/Bubo 1 (local, nodev, nosuid, journaled)
[Valente-Torrezs-Computer:~] valentet% sudo fsck_hfs -f /Volumes/Bubo\ 1
Password:
/Volumes/Bubo 1 is not a character device
CONTINUE? [yn] y

** /Volumes/Bubo 1 (NO WRITE)
ioctl(DKIOCGETBLOCKCOUNT) for fd 4: Inappropriate ioctl for device
** The volume needs to be repaired.
** Volume check failed.
[Valente-Torrezs-Computer:~] valentet% sudo fsck_hfs -f /dev/disk2s10
** /dev/rdisk2s10
** Checking HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
** Checking Catalog hierarchy.
** Checking volume bitmap.
** Checking volume information.
** The volume Bubo appears to be OK.

Thanks for any suggestions on this persistent problem.

Valente

This post has been edited by banevt: Fri 24 Jun 2005, 10:32

[dixiechicken]

Your data is backed up - right?

Try to connect the drive to a PC (yes) and see IF you are allowed to format the drive
as a NTFS filesystem/partition. (sometimes this works)

If success - then you can try to connect fw-drive to your mac and re-format it
to a hfs+.


You can also take the external case apart -
put the harddrive itself into another Mac or PC -
to check that the drive mecchanism itself is OK.

Try to install Mac OS or Windows XP on the suspect drive and see.
If this works then tour trouble lies with the controller on the external fw-drive-case.
( this is a lengty procedure I know - but...)

Cheers: Dixiechicken

[lepetitmartien]

Which enclosure is it? I had old FW enclosures wich were total crap, now I'm all in blazing oxford/iicecubes pleiades and the world is wonderful (Oxford rules btw)

[banevt]

Thanks for the suggestions dixiechicken. Yes my data is all backed up except for a few corrupt apple loop files I can always reinstall. It is a 60 GB Hitachi Travelstar 2.5" 7200RPM drive so to install it in a laptop could be a tricky process. I'm not even sure what kind of enclosure it is. I just typed the model number in a search engine and found a lot of websites I had to translate. The model number is "Y-255C". I was also thinking of trying to connect the drive to a PC but I don't have access to one. I have Virtual PC but I don't know if that would work the same way. And yes the enclosure doesn't have the Oxford 911 chipset. I usually never mess with enclosures that don't use the oxford, but I'd never had any experiences with other chipsets and I began to wonder if stability of the oxford chipset over all others was just dogma. I have had one drive that failed with the oxford cihpset but that was only because the actual disk would get stuck and stop spinning so I guess it was more of a mechanical failure. I'm sure there are other quality chipsets out there I don't know about, but if it is indeed the eclosure and not the drive I probably won't ever stray from oxford like I never stray from the popcorn button on the microwave.

This post has been edited by banevt: Fri 24 Jun 2005, 20:35

[rmchile]

Did you try installing de hdd on the ata bus????
TRy checking the disk with DataRescueX
rmchile