Disappering hard drive...

March 18, 2005 2:39 PM

I hate to use AskMe for tech support like this but this has me scratching my head. Ok this is the set up...G4 (AGP) has the stock drive(20GB) and a Maxtor 150Gb drive on a Sonnet PCI ATA/100 card. Sporadically, and I emphisise that word, the big drive will either not be recognized at all or not mount because the drive shows up as having 0 Bytes as the drive size. What is the cause? -->

the drive has been in there for at least 8 months, no problems. is it the card? the drive?
asdise question, because of the 128 GB HD limit of the MOBO, could i just partion the drive (ie 100GB and 50GB) so i could just add it on the stock bus? thanks in advance.

posted by ShawnString to computers & internet (7 comments total)

What version of the OS are you running?
posted by spock at 2:49 PM on March 18, 2005

10.3, after about 2 installs and archives
posted by ShawnString at 3:00 PM on March 18, 2005

10.3, after about 2 installs and archives, but before that 10.3.8
posted by ShawnString at 3:00 PM on March 18, 2005

Perhaps this discussion will help?
posted by spock at 3:10 PM on March 18, 2005

well that answers my second question..
posted by ShawnString at 3:16 PM on March 18, 2005

I suggest reading ALL the comments in the discussion. One mentions recommendations for new PCI ATA card, I believe.

I'm assuming you have already run Disk Utility on it (to Verify & Repair?)

This page lists a utility called Micromat Drive 10. The new version (1.1.4) "fixes reported 0 byte issues for Volume Content size. Never used it myself and not sure if that is referring to a HD problem or a previous problem with earlier versions of the software. Comments on VersionTracker about the software sound a little iffy.

Do you have any other disk diagnositic tools TechTool, etc.?
posted by spock at 3:26 PM on March 18, 2005

yep ran disk utility, disk warrior, i might able to "borrow" tech tools and some other drive utils from the service guys at work. but i have actually taken this machine in twice and of course it never acts up there.
posted by ShawnString at 3:39 PM on March 18, 2005