Powermac G5 won't boot - hard drive?

3743 Views 6 Replies 4 Participants Last post by Ace McDuck, Sep 13, 2011

Ace McDuck

Discussion Starter · Sep 9, 2011

I have a G5 dual 2.0 running 10.5.8 that has been running almost continuously for the past 7 years. This weekend I was swapping drives - not the boot drive, the second one. I left the machine powered off overnight and when I tried to boot the next day, I get the white screen with apple logo and the spinner, and after 5-10 minutes the fans go turbo.

I was able to boot from the optical drive and run drive diagnostics and repair (from the original install disk), and here's what I got from the repair step:

Thousands of the same message:
>>
>>Reserved fields in the catalog record have incorrect data
...
>>Repaired successfully

It still won't boot from the drive.

I've done a few other things like removed the battery - it tested at full strength. Booted while holding OF keys, reset nvram.
Pressed the internal reset button (pmu, smu?).
Unplugged it for an hour.

None of this resolved anything, same symptoms. so I reran the disk repair and got this message:

>>Checking extended attributes file
>>Keys out of order
>>Repaired successfully

I did this a few times, same messages.

At this point I think my drive is the problem, so I ran the installer, and it gives me the option to save the old system files and install the OS again. Will this kill my other files on that drive, or should I just get a new drive, install on that one, and attempt to recover my old files and configs?

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keebler27

· #2 · Sep 9, 2011

Ace McDuck said:
I have a G5 dual 2.0 running 10.5.8 that has been running almost continuously for the past 7 years. This weekend I was swapping drives - not the boot drive, the second one. I left the machine powered off overnight and when I tried to boot the next day, I get the white screen with apple logo and the spinner, and after 5-10 minutes the fans go turbo.

I was able to boot from the optical drive and run drive diagnostics and repair (from the original install disk), and here's what I got from the repair step:

Thousands of the same message:
>>
>>Reserved fields in the catalog record have incorrect data
...
>>Repaired successfully

It still won't boot from the drive.

I've done a few other things like removed the battery - it tested at full strength. Booted while holding OF keys, reset nvram.
Pressed the internal reset button (pmu, smu?).
Unplugged it for an hour.

None of this resolved anything, same symptoms. so I reran the disk repair and got this message:

>>Checking extended attributes file
>>Keys out of order
>>Repaired successfully

I did this a few times, same messages.

At this point I think my drive is the problem, so I ran the installer, and it gives me the option to save the old system files and install the OS again. Will this kill my other files on that drive, or should I just get a new drive, install on that one, and attempt to recover my old files and configs?

if you still have the drive you took out, i would put it back in and then reboot.

i know that sounds silly, but i had the same sort of thing happen to my 06 mac pro. it was like the machine wouldn't play nice unless the hard drive buddies were both there. i don't know what the technical issue was, but after i put the removed drive back in, the pro was smiling back at me.

if you have another mac and an external hard drive, if the above doesn't work, i would remove the main drive, put it in the external and see if it's recognized by another mac. just to see if you get the same errors.

hope that helps.
keebler

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Ace McDuck

Discussion Starter · #3 · Sep 9, 2011

I have the secondary drive and was waiting until I got the machine working before I put that one back in - too lazy to keep swapping drives in & out, the secondary must be removed to remove the primary.

I'll give it a try first.

If that doesn't work, on to plan B:

I don't have another machine to test it in, but I am thinking of getting an external drive dock that I can hook up to my son's macbook and check the drive data that way, or just spend the few dollars on a new internal, install the os on that, then migrate the data from the old to the new.

Second question - I have a timeport setup. If I install a new drive, can I restore my timeport backups to the new drive including any system parameters? How do I do that?

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Ace McDuck

Discussion Starter · #4 · Sep 10, 2011

I now have a new 1TB system drive running OSX 10.3.x. I can't install 10.5 because my optical drive won't read the leopard install DVD. So I have another possible option - my original system disk is fine other than it won't work as a startup disk. Is there any way to copy all of the relevant files over to the new disk so that I have a new 10.5.x system disk that has all of my 10.5 parameters, users, applications, etc.?

Btw, Keebler27 - your suggestion didn't work, adding the second drive back in didn't allow me to boot from the old system disk.

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johnb1

· #5 · Sep 12, 2011

Hmmmm......

Mr. McDuck, sounds like you have quite the condunrum, there
for installation, maybe firewire target mode from another mac?
the drive's lens may be dirty (easy fix) or it may be toast, I can't say which (Pioneer makes some dandy drives, so I've heard)

as for transferrring stuff, I don't have much. I don't think migration asssistant works internally. Maybe some kind of cloning thing?

anyways, I'll leave it open so that others can step in and help you out where I haven't been able to

John B

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Paddy

· #6 · Sep 12, 2011

Ace McDuck said:
I have the secondary drive and was waiting until I got the machine working before I put that one back in - too lazy to keep swapping drives in & out, the secondary must be removed to remove the primary. I'll give it a try first.

If that doesn't work, on to plan B:

I don't have another machine to test it in, but I am thinking of getting an external drive dock that I can hook up to my son's macbook and check the drive data that way, or just spend the few dollars on a new internal, install the os on that, then migrate the data from the old to the new.

Second question - I have a timeport setup. If I install a new drive, can I restore my timeport backups to the new drive including any system parameters? How do I do that?

Er...what on earth is a "timeport" backup? Do you mean Time Machine?

As for the conundrum - I think your best bet is to simply replace the optical drive, if cleaning the lens doesn't work. This is the same drive that OWC sells for G5s, and it should arrive very quickly from NewEgg.ca (their Toronto distribution is near the airport).

LG - CD / DVD Burner

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Ace McDuck

Discussion Starter · #7 · Sep 13, 2011

thanks for your advice - on the optical drive, i bought an LG unit at Canada Computers for $24, i keep forgetting that technology gets cheaper all the time. And it worked like a charm, so I have been able to create 2 startup drives. Now I have the issue of trying to restore my machine to it's original state.

Btw, Paddy, yes I meant Time Machine, I've called it time port, time capsule, etc. - some kind of strange mental block.

So here's my current situation. I have two drives set up with Leopard, call them drive A and drive B. Drive A is the original that wouldn't boot, but had no other apparent issues, so all of my original system files seem to be intact, just not part of the current OS install. By that I mean that I had the system files copied into a backup directory. Drive B is a completely clean 10.5 install from the DVD.

To recover my users and applications, do I just copy over the drive B system, library, users, and applications folders? Or is there some other more complicated approach?

TIA

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