[bugjah]

NOTE ADDED A FEW HOURS LATER:
The title for this post is no longer relevant, as I was able to "uncorrupt" my HD (as described below), but that didn't solve the main problem: I can't boot, I can't mount the drive, and hence I cant recover data!
================================

[I already posted this in Meklort's Blog, but that's not very active right now, so I am trying here]

Help!

I’ve been running the 0.8.5 preview/SL 10.6.5 on my mini 10v with no problems for over a month, adding programs, etc. Start up was really fast (1 minute+?) compared to previous NBI versions. The last time I used this machine, my version of NeoOffice stopped working mysteriously. Bounced in dock for a while then stopped. That was practically the only strange thing I noticed. I shut down and hadn’t started up again for a few days.

Yesterday, I started up and it was on the apple grey screen with the spinning circle for a long time (8 minutes?), and then got the dreaded “circle with a slash through it” symbol.

uh oh.

Cold shut down (holding power button). Restart. Same.

Cold shut down. Restart. boot:recovery=y

This led to a verbose start up which went by quickly and eventually it went into an endless loop of lines of text, so I typed in the part that kept looping as follows:

From path “uuid”,
Waiting for boot volume with UUID A1E1BE17-C7C5-37B3-B41B-834653D9982E
Waiting on IOProviderClassIOResources<IOResourceMatchboot-uuid-media
Got boot device = IOService:/AppleACPIPlatformExpert/PC10@0/AppleACPIPI/SATA@1F,2/AppleIntelPIIXATARoot/PRID@0/AppleIntelICHxSATA/ATADEviceNub@0/AppleATADiskDriver/IOATABlockStorageDriver/ST9160314AS ST9160314AS/IOGUIDPart
BSD root:disk0s2, major 14, minor 2
hfs: open_journal_dev: no available external journal partition found. waiting 10 seconds
hfs: open_journal_dev: no available external journal partition found. waiting 10 seconds
hfs: open_journal_dev: no available external journal partition found. waiting 10 seconds
hfs: volume: unknown-dev: did not find jnl device uuid: from machine serial number:
cannot mount root, errno = 19
From path “uuid”,
Waiting for boot volume with UUID A1E1BE17-C7C5-37B3-B41B-834653D9982E

…etc (endless loop)

Cold shut down. Start up booting onto my install disk. Got into the installer. Opened terminal. My hard disk does not appear to be there!! YIKES!!

[in a previous meltdown with NBI 0.8.4 I was able to recover data this way - from terminal in the installer. But not this time!]

Most of what I have on this machine is redundant with my main computer, but I have a few very important files only on the hackintosh which I unfortunately haven’t backed up lately.

a few more things I tried:
*boot:-x doesn’t work (same as regular boot: spinning circle then circle with slash)
*boot:-s -f -x -v, rusn through pages and pages of extensions, and then ends with verbose endless loop as above

I can’t find any other obvious specific errors (though it goes by quickly!) except for:

“unable to detect alps”
“sound assertion failed”

I went back into the SL install USB stick and tried disk utility.

My hard disk is shown there as 160.04 GB ST9160314AS

The volume name “Afriq” is shown below that but is “greyed out.” When I click on it, it says “Mount Point: Not mounted”

I ran a “verify disk” on the 160.04 GB option and it started “Verifying volume ‘Afriq’”

The following errors (in red) came up:
*Volume bitmap needs minor repair
*The volume Afriq was found to be corrupt and needs to be repaired
*Error: this disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.

Should I go ahead and Repair the disk? Will this risk overwriting my important not-backed-up-yet documents (see above)? I realize that disk repair doesn't generally overwrite files, but I am concerned about what would happen in this case, where my hard disk is not being recognized at all.

Alternatively, is there any other boot command that I haven't tried yet to see if it will startup? If not, does anyone have a recommendation short of removing the hard disk to get my data off before trying to reinstall?

And has anyone else had a similar problem?

Any help would be very appreciated!!

By the way, I never did run UpdateExtra after the initial 0.8.5pre install.

[Side.Step.Society]

Repair disk SHOULDN'T delete/remove any of your data. I'd suggest trying it.

I'd like to add that I also had a problem with NBI 0.8.5pre corrupting my HD. Something to do with a "B catalog" I believe. Had to reformat the drive and start from scratch. Which I'm glad I did. Running NBI 2010whatever now and outside of the boot time and a couple of hibernation hiccoughs, it works just as good, if not better than 0.8.5pre. Which is of course to be expected since pre is very beta.

Quick question for you. When your computer was working, did you have a battery tab in your Energy Saver preference pane? I didn't. Also had a bit of trouble with WiFi after waking from sleep.

[bugjah]

Dear sidestep

Thanks for your reply. I won't blame you if the repair disk makes things worse, but its nice to have a little encouragement, as I really have minimal clue what I'm doing (hence, as you imply, 0.8.5pre was a bit cavalier; but I had so many problems with 0.8.4 in its various instantiations that I thought it was worth it to wipe clean and try the new version).

With 0.8.5pre:
I have had sound problems sometimes... IF I let the computer go to sleep, the sound problems arose on the NEXT reboot. The sound then reappeared if I then did another reboot again, this time before letting it go to sleep. Never noticed wifi problems. Never noticed battery problems (it has always been in the banner). The one really odd problem I had was that the trackpad preferences pane was unavailable for about the first 2 weeks after install. Then the trackpad preferences was literally suddenly available. I swear that it totally just fixed itself. I have no idea how.

OK, I'm going to try repairing disk now and will report back.

[Side.Step.Society]

Best of luck!

[bugjah]

So...the good news is that repairing the disk was successful and it didn't make anything obviously worse.

The bad news is that there is no difference in the problem.

After completing the disk repair, it said it was successful, but the 'Afriq' volume in disk utility was still greyed out, and was listed as not mounted.

Likewise, it was still not appearing in Terminal under "Volumes."

So I restarted by quitting the Installer, took off USB legacy support, and booted into recovery=y

Same verbose startup loop that I quoted in my original post. Drats.

Forced shut down. Booted to Install disk again. Rechecked Disk Utility. Afriq still greyed out (unmounted), but verified as "Appearing OK."

Terminal still not showing Afriq under /Volumes/

Restarted by quitting Installer. Took off USB legacy support. Boot:-s -f -x -v same problem as before (verbose startup loop, similar text).

Any other ideas or is this sucker just hooped?

[Side.Step.Society]

This might be a little elementary, but have you tried manually mounting the drive in Disk Utility?

[bugjah]

ummm...no. i didn't see that option. Let me check again

[Oscar]

Originally Posted by bugjah

ummm...no. i didn't see that option. Let me check again

Right click the drive.

But usually of it doesn't automatically mount you have to repair the disk.

[Side.Step.Society]

You'll have to press the "Show Toolbar" button on the top right of window.

Or, as Oscar posted, you can right click on the drive.

[bugjah]

Thanks both of you for your help.

I tried mounting as suggested and it will not mount. I tried repairing again, and it still says that it "appears OK."

Any other suggestions?

A few other random things that occurred to me which may or may not be relevant/useful:

1) my SL install USB stick was made with an old version of NBI/NBM (0.8.3 I think). It is not bootable into SL itself other than the install. Would it be worthwhile to remake this USB drive and make it bootable into SL desktop etc.?

2) is there anything else I can do in terminal to try to access the disk? something like fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk0s2

3) would starting happy hour 2 hours early help?