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Reparation old Mac disk

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
Did you use gparted to do this?

My original recommendation was to boot an OS 9 install CD and use that to repartition. I stand by that as the best way to do this, even if it seems inconvenient.

The reason for that is that doing so adds the necessary drivers for OS 8/9 to be able to read the disk. It's possible Gparted doesn't realize this is a need or doesn't have this feature, especially if, as they say on the forum, they don't see much use on MacPPC any more.

 

jamie marchant

Well-known member
Yes, I used Gparted cause it saved the step of reinstalling Mac OS 9 and unstuffing my Stuffit Archives. The driver partition is still there but it might be incorrect. Do you think if I reverted the disk back to the way it was, it would work? I am finding OS X.2 is not that useful to me on that machine, so I could probably live without out it. 

 

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
I think you should repartition using an OS9 boot disk. It's annoying but at this point you've wasted a lot more time trying to avid making and restoring a backup than it would have taken you if you had done the backup to begin with.

 

jamie marchant

Well-known member
No, not really, it took me about 3 - 8 hours to backup things up(and  I skipped some things like the system folder that would not backup properly). I have spent an hour or less trying to fix it. I have had other things to do and was not waiting for a response. I only use these machines a few times a month. Also, I have an IDE/SATA to USB device* where I can mount the drive without putting it in an enclosure. This means it only takes about 5 -10 minutes to remove the drive and read it on my PC and that's only to find my screwdriver. (to remove the one skrew the holds the drive cage in place) 

* Fyi found it a Thrift Store was only missing a power supply, so a great find for this sort of thing. 

 

jamie marchant

Well-known member
In case anyone else has this issue, I finally fixed it, I followed the instruction in this article:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030202134714/http://docs.info.apple.com:80/article.html?artnum=106849

NOTES

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-> If OS 9 won't boot you might have to reset the motherboard or PRAM first then try and boot from the HD till you get the flashing "?" at that point insert the OS 9 disk. 

-> I also ran Norton Utilities(had to get it to probe for hidden disk) but that did not seem to fix anything. 

-> Had to tell "Drive Setup" to search for hidden drives. 

FUTURE RECOMMENDATION

--------------------------------------------

Partition your disk before installing any OS. 

 
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