Re: More Hard Drive Woes

In article <agisaak-520154.16035406062006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"André G. Isaak" <agisaak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The directory problems which I mentioned in my previous thread were
apparently harbingers of things to come.

After retrieving as much of my data as I could, I tried to do a clean
reinstall of my system (10.3), but ran into problems initially because
the installer kept hanging. I thought this might be a problem with the
DVD, so I cleaned both the disc and the lens, and eventually managed to
get a bootable system.

However, the hangs started recurring when I tried to copy a variety of
files back from backup CDs. Again, I thought a problem with the DVD
drive, until similar problems arose while copying files back from my
iPod.

Opening the system log, I see nothing which looks like it has to do with
either the DVD or Firewire, but I do note lots of lines scattered
throughout the log which read 'IOATAController Device Blocking Bus'
which to me suggests that all these hangs might relate to the copy
destination rather than source.

However, neither techtool nor disk utility nor apple hardware test
report any problems with the drive and the SMART status is showing up as
verified.

I can't find any entry on the apple support site for 'IOATAController',
and I don't normally read log files so I'm not sure if this line is a
normal occurrence or if it is a serious error.

Note that these hangs only seem to occur when copying relatively large
files located on different physical volumes. Duplicating files or
copying from one partition to another don't seem to create this problem.

Does this sound like a hardware issue, or is it something I might be
able to address myself?

TIA,

André

A drive is unresponsive or communications with it is garbled. Some
older Macs and MANY older Firewire drives have bad I/O controllers that
will cause this.
.

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