Disk Utility is quitting, help!
I am a bit worried and stumped at the same time. I run Onyx at times to clean caches and run some scripts; included with this utility is a feature that alerts if there is a S.M.A.R.T. hard disk problem about to occur. A message started coming up today saying: "error occurred when checking the SMART status of your hard disk... Onyx has detected a problem, back up your hard drive." To add to this wonderful message, disk utility crashes every time I try to repair permissions and I have already gone into terminal and run through fsck. Does anyone have a clue what is going on here and how to resolve this; I really need some help here. I have a powerbook G4 if that matter and yes, I have backed up my entire hard drive. I can post the crash report if that helps. 
Comments
Unfortunately, some drives just fail early, some seem to last forever. If you end up replacing the drive, you can use something like SMARTReporter to give early warning of a failing drive.
I just replaced the boot drive with a brand new Westy 80MB. Partitioned to give myself a minority OS 9 partition, you never know when that might come in handy. Clean installed 10.3.9 on the majority OS X partition, fetched all the updates and installed them too. Installed a few apps.
Got a gray-screen "you must re-start your computer..." message while scanning (Vuescan 8..1.14). Restarted fine. For the hell of it, booted again from the install disk and ran Repair Permissions on the (NEW) boot disk FROM THE INSTALLATION DISK and got the gray-screen restart crash. Tried again twice with the same result.
Now aside from that, the computer's working fine. Including Vuescan. But it's weird and worrying.
Any ideas, anyone?
I'm not sure that's such a good idea though since your hard drive seem to be physically failing and trying to do a disc repair might do more damage than good, I dunno. So maybe the best option is just to backup and reinstall everything on a fresh drive.
A quick and safe way to run a HD fix is to restart holding down the Shift key right after the startup chime sounds. This will startup in Safe Mode after running a disc repair.
I'm not sure that's such a good idea though since your hard drive seem to be physically failing and trying to do a disc repair might do more damage than good, I dunno. So maybe the best option is just to backup and reinstall everything on a fresh drive.
Eh, sounds worse than that. A kernel panic while booted form the OS X disc is NEVER a good sign. In my professional opinion, I'd look into a bad logic board or CPU. Not for sure, obviously, but entirely possible.
Eh, sounds worse than that. A kernel panic while booted form the OS X disc is NEVER a good sign. In my professional opinion, I'd look into a bad logic board or CPU. Not for sure, obviously, but entirely possible.
This sounds similar to a problem I had after installing boot camp. Disk utility kept failing when I tried to verify/repair the disk. I called AppleCare and after about ten minutes the diagnosis was "ah crap, You're gonna have to do a fresh install." My HD was fine, and after the major hassle of fixing settings and files and apps I am going again.
Eh, sounds worse than that. A kernel panic while booted form the OS X disc is NEVER a good sign. In my professional opinion, I'd look into a bad logic board or CPU. Not for sure, obviously, but entirely possible.
Thanks for giving it to me straight: from observation, I'm afraid that's more than possible since I seem to have eliminated the removable hardware as sources of the problem. The new boot disk (and some new SDRAM) arose because I was getting ascii-across-the-screen kernel panics last week. The new hardware has fixed the problem -- the computer is behaving fine in general use, except for that one crash yesterday while scanning and the subsequent, more worrying inability to repair permissions.
What's curious though is that Disk Utility run FROM the boot disk has no problem repairing the second (internal) HD.
The machine is eight years old and has been in daily use. About 82 cents per day for computing services, so it really doesn't owe us much. I should probably get inside it with a (grounded) vacuum cleaner, since it's a bit dusty, but if it's the CPU or a pcb, then something's burned out, I guess.
Thanks again for the input - much appreciated.
This sounds similar to a problem I had after installing boot camp. Disk utility kept failing when I tried to verify/repair the disk. I called AppleCare and after about ten minutes the diagnosis was "ah crap, You're gonna have to do a fresh install." My HD was fine, and after the major hassle of fixing settings and files and apps I am going again.
Bob, After the fresh install, were you successfully able to run Repair Permissions on the boot disk? Was it a fresh install of Boot Camp or of the OS??
One possibility, though one that I am hesitant to consider, is that the problem has something to do with having partitioned the boot disk (using Disk Utility) to give myself an OS 9 partition. That's new on this computer. I am half tempted to erase/reformat the boot disk and re-install everything without the partition. But it is sooooo time-consuming.
By the way, I loved the Basra badgers story too.
Bob, After the fresh install, were you successfully able to run Repair Permissions on the boot disk? Was it a fresh install of Boot Camp or of the OS??
I did a fresh install of Tiger, because it wouldn't boot, all i got was the spinny gray screen for about 30 seconds at startup until it just shut down. Windows would boot fine. Yes I can do anything normal with my OS X partition now. I tried every single option anyone suggested before being forced to reinstall, and yes it sucks, but not as much as not being able to run Tiger.
One possibility, though one that I am hesitant to consider, is that the problem has something to do with having partitioned the boot disk (using Disk Utility) to give myself an OS 9 partition.
That was exactly my problem.