Got a problem with two Mac external HDDs..

[Migroo]

One of our clients has had two external firewire HDDs break in the past month. They were the same make but one contains a Quantum and the other a Maxtor.

It seems to be a problem with the actual external 'bit' ie the power supply. I think the drives are still working. Since we only have two its not a case of putting the drive into a working enclosure and hoping for the best.

Tried them as secondary drives on a Mac G4 (boot drive as master, external as slave) but no joy. The Mac bombs out on startup when trying both drives.

Suggestions? Were pretty certain the drives still work. Theyre Mac formatted (obviously) IDE drives.

 

[thorin]

Were they jumpered correctly?

Thorin

 

[Migroo]

Yeap!

When we took both drives out of the external casing, they were both masters.

Checked to see, and the primary drive in the G4 was a master. We tried the disks to be tested as slaves in the G4.

 

[Migroo]

These failures occurred within a few days of each other on different machines. My guess is that the boot block has been corrupted, such that the drive does not mount. This may have arisen as a result of a virus attack. If it is, the virus attackes only FireWire drives, leaving ATA drives alone.

Has anyone has come across failure of this kind recently?

Regards
Chris

 

[Cadaver]

I'm both a Mac user and a PC user... and I've never seen a Mac virus that attacks only FireWire drives (nor have I seen a Mac virus in a long time, either).
What were the symptoms of the external HD failure? Were you able to mount the drives? What model G4 did you try these drives in as slaves? How exactly did the Mac "bomb out" when booting? What version of MacOS or MacOS X are you using?
You may be able to restore the driver on to the HD if you can get Disk First Aid (in MacOS 8/9) to recognise the drive exists. You can tell it to reinstall the driver. I think this can be done in MacOS X with Disk Utility, but I'd have to check the exact procedure (haven't needed to do this on MacOS X ever, so far).

 

[Migroo]

Hi Cadaver, thanks for replying. I'll try to answer your questions as best I can:

Sympoms of the HDD failure: When the Mac(s) booted up in the morning, the HDs didnt mount. AFAIK this was the first time an error had been seen.
Were we able to mount the drives: Trying to mount them 'normally' ie within the external 'drive' and via firewire - No. Trying to mount them as a secondary IDE (slave) - No.
What model G4 did we test these on? - Powermac G4 400Mhz w/ 384mb RAM running OS 9.2
Mac bombed out by showing a bomb icon as the cursor.
AFAIK (I'll check this) the drives 'normal' machines are both Mac OS 9.1 and OS 9.2

We've tried 'Disk First Aid' but because the drive doesnt mount, Disk First Aid wont run.

Thankyou very much Cadaver