A few days ago I posted this to <uk.comp.sys.mac> but nobody replied
with any suggestions. Does anyone here have an idea of what might have
gone wrong?
~~~~~~~~~~
Beige G3 runing OS8.6
There are two drives (call them 'A' and 'B'). Drive 'A' is an SSD with
two partitions, one for the System and one for the Applications & Data.
Drive 'B' is disk HD with two similar partitions: Backup System and
Backup data.
On shutdown, a script runs Folders Synchroniser to backup Data from 'A'
to 'B' - although I often cancel this if nothing essential has taken
place during the session (backup takes about 90 minutes, as there are a
lot of files). The System is not regularly backed up, as it doesn't
change.
Everything has been working normally until this morning: when I switched
on, the Startup drive, System 'A', booted up as usual but the Finder
crashed when the other three partitions tried to mount, I disconected
drive 'A' and forced the system to boot up from drive 'B'. System 'B' mounted up but the Finder crashed when it tried to mount the remaining partition: 'Data 'B'.
This suggested that Data 'B' was causing the trouble, so I reconnected drive'A' and disconnected drive 'B'. System 'A' and Data 'A' both
mounted up but when I tried to open either of them, the Finder crashed.
With extensions switched off, system 'B' would run the machine and allow
data 'B' to open but the date was wrong and I could not get at nospam's
patch to correct it.
Finally I started up on a CD ROM and replace the System folder 'A' with
a copy of the backup System folder on 'B' . Then I ran Disk Warrior on
both system partitions. Finally I patched the date and re-ran Disk
Warrior to put the dates back correctly.
It has taken me most of the morning and I still don't know what caused
it.
~~~~~~
On 2026-01-28 15:54:04 +0000, Liz Tuddenham said:
A few days ago I posted this to <uk.comp.sys.mac> but nobody replied
with any suggestions. Does anyone here have an idea of what might have gone wrong?
~~~~~~~~~~
Beige G3 runing OS8.6
There are two drives (call them 'A' and 'B'). Drive 'A' is an SSD with
two partitions, one for the System and one for the Applications & Data. Drive 'B' is disk HD with two similar partitions: Backup System and
Backup data.
On shutdown, a script runs Folders Synchroniser to backup Data from 'A'
to 'B' - although I often cancel this if nothing essential has taken
place during the session (backup takes about 90 minutes, as there are a
lot of files). The System is not regularly backed up, as it doesn't change.
Everything has been working normally until this morning: when I switched on, the Startup drive, System 'A', booted up as usual but the Finder crashed when the other three partitions tried to mount, I disconected drive 'A' and forced the system to boot up from drive 'B'. System 'B' mounted up but the Finder crashed when it tried to mount the remaining partition: 'Data 'B'.
This suggested that Data 'B' was causing the trouble, so I reconnected drive'A' and disconnected drive 'B'. System 'A' and Data 'A' both
mounted up but when I tried to open either of them, the Finder crashed. With extensions switched off, system 'B' would run the machine and allow data 'B' to open but the date was wrong and I could not get at nospam's patch to correct it.
Finally I started up on a CD ROM and replace the System folder 'A' with
a copy of the backup System folder on 'B' . Then I ran Disk Warrior on both system partitions. Finally I patched the date and re-ran Disk
Warrior to put the dates back correctly.
It has taken me most of the morning and I still don't know what caused
it.
~~~~~~
Could be a one-off glitch, but it does sound similar-ish to what
happened to my beige G3 minitower. With mine, things got worse and eventually I had to replace the computer. Something in the I/O hardware simply broke, because the machine eventually refused to work properly
with any drive, including USB drives via a USB card, but the drives themselves were all fine (and still being used as external drives for
this Mac Mini). Even clean reinstalling the OS before that didn't fix
the issue.
Best option is to do regular backups in case the computer suddenly dies completely.
Disk Warrior sorted it out, so it had to be a software fault - but what?
Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> wrote:
On 2026-01-28 15:54:04 +0000, Liz Tuddenham said:
A few days ago I posted this to <uk.comp.sys.mac> but nobody replied
with any suggestions. Does anyone here have an idea of what might have
gone wrong?
~~~~~~~~~~
Beige G3 runing OS8.6
There are two drives (call them 'A' and 'B'). Drive 'A' is an SSD with
two partitions, one for the System and one for the Applications & Data.
Drive 'B' is disk HD with two similar partitions: Backup System and
Backup data.
On shutdown, a script runs Folders Synchroniser to backup Data from 'A'
to 'B' - although I often cancel this if nothing essential has taken
place during the session (backup takes about 90 minutes, as there are a
lot of files). The System is not regularly backed up, as it doesn't
change.
Everything has been working normally until this morning: when I switched >>> on, the Startup drive, System 'A', booted up as usual but the Finder
crashed when the other three partitions tried to mount, I disconected
drive 'A' and forced the system to boot up from drive 'B'. System 'B'
mounted up but the Finder crashed when it tried to mount the remaining
partition: 'Data 'B'.
This suggested that Data 'B' was causing the trouble, so I reconnected
drive'A' and disconnected drive 'B'. System 'A' and Data 'A' both
mounted up but when I tried to open either of them, the Finder crashed.
With extensions switched off, system 'B' would run the machine and allow >>> data 'B' to open but the date was wrong and I could not get at nospam's
patch to correct it.
Finally I started up on a CD ROM and replace the System folder 'A' with >>> a copy of the backup System folder on 'B' . Then I ran Disk Warrior on
both system partitions. Finally I patched the date and re-ran Disk
Warrior to put the dates back correctly.
It has taken me most of the morning and I still don't know what caused
it.
~~~~~~
Could be a one-off glitch, but it does sound similar-ish to what
happened to my beige G3 minitower. With mine, things got worse and
eventually I had to replace the computer. Something in the I/O hardware
simply broke, because the machine eventually refused to work properly
with any drive, including USB drives via a USB card, but the drives
themselves were all fine (and still being used as external drives for
this Mac Mini). Even clean reinstalling the OS before that didn't fix
the issue.
I initially suspected a hardware fault, so I re-seated all the
connectors and baords (with one hand resting on earthed metalwork) but
that made no difference.
Best option is to do regular backups in case the computer suddenly dies
completely.
This was affecting the main drive and the backup. I've been trying to
think what components of the software could be common to both drives
e.g. some extensions, the Desktop or the Launcher, but both drives gave similar (but not identical) faults when the other, unused, drive was physically disconnected. It couldn't have been something faulty backed
up and corrupting both drives because the last backup had been done
several days before the fault showed up.
Disk Warrior sorted it out, so it had to be a software fault - but what?
On 29/01/2026 15:01, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Disk Warrior sorted it out, so it had to be a software fault - but what?
In ye olde days - i.e. up to OS9.x and pre osx 10.5 ish - things were often like that. Sometimes things went wrong for no apparent reason. I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out but these days rarely have that problem, mostly now it's brain failure...
In article <10lg16r$1dt4l$1@dont-email.me>, davidkennedy@nospamtodaythanks.invald wrote:
On 29/01/2026 15:01, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
Disk Warrior sorted it out, so it had to be a software fault - but what?
In ye olde days - i.e. up to OS9.x and pre osx 10.5 ish - things were often like that. Sometimes things went wrong for no apparent reason. I spent a lot
of time trying to figure it out but these days rarely have that problem, mostly now it's brain failure...
A number of years ago, one of my OS9 machines (it was a G4 MDD) started
going glitchy, not the same kind of issue as described by the original
poster but similar kinda random odd stuff that I could never get to the bottom of.
One day, I upgraded the stock CPU fan with a new SilenX one, and at the
same time moved the internal speaker out of the way and sat a small fan against the grille where the speaker formerly faced - the glitchiness went away, so I made the presumption that something somewhere was simply
getting too hot and adding in better air circulation solved it.
Might be worth giving a try, get some new fans into the machine for cooler running?
scole <vintageapplemac@gmail.com> wrote:
Might be worth giving a try, get some new fans into the machine for cooler running?
Thanks for that suggestion, I could clean some of the dust out of the original one!
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