Is my hard disk dead?

[danielb]

Hi all,

Following my success with FWB hard disk toolkit and the flash drive, I decided to use it to repartition the hard disk of my Quadra 650.

This resulted in a bricked hard disk

I'm not quite sure what went wrong - everything seemed to be working until I rebooted. Now I get a sad Mac when booting with the hard drive connected, even when attempting to boot from a diskette. If the HD is disconnected, everything else works.

I wouldn't be surprised if the disk hardware has failed, but I don't really know.

Is there anything I can do about this, or is it dead?

 

[olePigeon]

Do you have a 3rd party SCSI card that you can connect it to? Maybe not having it on the main Apple SCSI BUS will enable you to erase it again.

 

[danielb]

No I don't, but that is a good idea.

Thanks,

Daniel

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

HRMMM, if you can get it to allow bootup when set to another ID in another Mac or in the same Mac with another HDD set to 0, or from a DiskWarrior CD in the 650, that may solve your re-initialization problem.

Does your 650 have a CD?

Have you tried booting from a CD?

Try removing the termination SIP resistors if that's what the HDD uses, or pull off the termination jumper if not, and try a CD/terminator on the chain.

I used to use a Centronics 50 A/B switchbox for semi-hot-swapping problematic SCSI devices with termination on the A side and a bare terminator on the B side for troubleshooting. With the proper cable setup, you could use a DB-25 switchbox for the same process.

 

[danielb]

Hi,

Thanks for all the ideas!

I have not tried booting from a CD, but I have tried booting from a diskette, and from my external SCSI flash drive. THe results was the same each time.

I could try booting from a zip drive, but based on experience, it probably wouldn't work.

Why would changing the SCSI ID help? In what way does a Mac treat SCSI ID 0 differently to other IDs? (I've often wondered about this)

Thanks,

Daniel

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

As I understand it:

SCSI ID 0 is, by definition, the boot drive during startup and this is set up in ROM . . .

. . . this can be overridden when the PRAM is read during the boot process . . . OOPSIE . . .

Du-oh! :I My bad . . . try zapping the PRAM as your first troubleshooting step. IMADOPE! :

After that, if needs be, swap IDs between your external SCSI FLASH Drive (if possible) and the borked Internal HDD.

 

[CC_333]

Hi,

It could be that the driver that was installed on the disk is incompatible with 68k Macintosh. Do you have any different/newer Macs with which this drive may be compatible?

c

 

[danielb]

Not very likely. It is the same driver that I used for the flash drive.

 

[danielb]

try zapping the PRAM / After that, if needs be, swap IDs

I already tried zapping the PRAM.

Swapping the SCSI IDs sounds like a good idea.

Thanks,

Daniel

 

[spiceyokooko]

Not very likely. It is the same driver that I used for the flash drive.

I agree with cc_333. Just because the HDT driver worked okay on the flash drive doesn't mean it will be okay on the SCSI drive.

Which version of Hard Disk Toolkit are you using? Which System software version?

The problems you've had sound a lot like a possible driver conflict or corrupted or incompatible driver on that particular operating system.

You've not really given enough information to be able to comment further.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

Try unplugging the power cable to the hard drive and booting the Mac from a boot disk that contains the hacked Apple HD SC setup program. Then once the Mac is booted, plug in the power cable to the hard drive. This prevents the Mac from loading the driver from the hard drive during boot (which probably causes the sad Mac) and it should still show up on the SCSI bus this way, allowing you to format it again. This should at least get you back to a working state where you can try your FWB formatting again if you want. Note that the SCSI ribbon should remain plugged in during this entire procedure.

There is a chance that plugging in the hard drive with the Mac already on will cause the power supply voltage(s) to dip down and crash/reset/turn off the Mac. The ideal way to do this is to put the drive into an external enclosure and wait for the Mac to boot before turning on the power to the enclosure.

Another solution to the power problem (if applicable) is just another computer, even if it's a vile old PC. Pull out a power connector from the other computer, plug it into the Mac's hard drive, and turn on the other computer when you want the hard drive to turn on. Crude but very effective.

 

[beachycove]

Try unplugging the power cable ... very effective.

Thanks for this. I have been around old Macs and their lives, drives and hives a fair bit, but have never heard of that one.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

It's only useful if the drive prevents the Mac from booting due to a corrupted hard disk driver, and it only works with SCSI. It is a rare opportunity for this trick to have a chance of doing something useful.

 

[CC_333]

It's only useful if the drive prevents the Mac from booting due to a corrupted hard disk driver,

Well, it seems to me that this would be the case here.
c

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

That power plugging trick sounds like a plan for an internal drive.

When I had difficulties w/SCSI Drives they were invariably in external cases, these being the drives that came as standard equipment when I bought the Macs used, refurbished or new. Out came the standard drive and in went a brand new, much higher capacity, Seagate or Western Digital Drive, starting with the PowerBook 100's 20 MB drive slapped into an APS PowerBook Portable HDD Case and a 320MB Toshiba from the same purchase going into BabyPB. The A/B switch worked for those drives just fine, but I'm sure it's not a recommended procedure. [}] ]'>

If you don't have one already, think about picking up one of the inexpensive SATA/IDE <-> USB-2 bridges. Mine cost around $15 and consists of a dongle with plugs for either drive type on it with a USB connector tail and a small AC adapter to run the drive. I end up using the little Power Brick for odds and ends on the bench more often than I use the actual adapter.

Having one plugged into a power strip in your situation would be safer than hot-plugging and less cumbersome than running an external supply connector from another computer in there.

The USB-2 bridge adapter also turns a pile of "too small to be really useful" IDE HDDs into a box full of goodies on disk or for use as gonzo thumb drives. :approve:

While we're on the subject of troubleshooting, having a couple of old AT/XT PSU's banging around in a box is a great thing for situations like this. Plug in the connector, plug in the PSU, flip the switch and you've got power. If you know what you're doing you can hoodwink an ATX PSU into the same type of behavior but . . . whatever!

 

[danielb]

Fixed it

The hot plugging method worked. I had indeed made a mess with incompatible versions of the System, disk drivers etc.

Thanks very much for all your help.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Bonus techno credits to Dennis!