IZation Labs

I know, I know. No summer posts, what was I THINKING? (Lacey, you got some splainin’ to do!) I promise, explanations later, right now I just need to get this out in the open in case anyone ends up having the same problem that I just did. No one should have to work that out on their own if at all possible.

I’ve always had problems with my external hard drive. So many that I don’t know why I still have it, but that’s beside the point. It’s a 1 TB, two drive MyBook Pro formatted by and being run on Mac OSX. Note: This is the second time this has happened in as many summers. Somewhere along the line, the Mac OSX just decides it doesn’t want to freely let go of the drive, and wipes out my partition table, leaving my hard drive feeling incredibly brick-like. My data is still physically there. There was just NO way to get to it.

I found some help from a number of places, the best of which is this website:

http://perrohunter.com/read/30/repair-a-mac-os-x-hfs-partition-table

So following the instructions, testdisk to the rescue, to an extent. This at LEAST let me see that my data was still there and gave me valuable information about the drive.

But that wasn’t enough.

The drive was non writable. No matter what combination of unmounting, different connections into both Windows and Mac machines, I couldn’t progress through the instructions, as pdisk still claimed that the disk was, in essence, write protected, and that I should go home kid, you got no talent. There was just NO way to rewrite the dead partition table.

After four hours of play time on both Windows and Mac, with my head hung in despair, I decide what the heck, I’ll try it on one of my Ubuntu machines in my workshop.

Lo and behold! It mounts. It’s accessible. In fact, nothing at all seems wrong with it. Strange, I thought. Maybe by plugging it into Ubuntu it repaired the partition table. So I plug it back into my Mac. Again, no dice. But that’s okay, because I have access now through Ubuntu, and can copy the files to a different drive and then reformat, right?

Almost. One of my folders has a different owner from the owner/user ID on the Ubuntu machine. So I’m not allowed to access that folder or its contents in any way. The drive is still non-writeable as a whole, so I can’t change file permissions, and can’t change the owners, throwing chmod and chown out the window.

And here’s the saving grace. What if, I wonder, I created a new user on my Ubuntu machine to match the user ID of the Mac account, which I could see by selecting the inaccessible folder and looking through its properties. This may be a big DUH for some people, but for someone relatively new to *nix, it was a tremendous moment of possible comprehension for me.

Surprise. It worked. Created a new user with an identical UID, logged in, and there are my files, ripe for the transferring.

I sincerely hope that that helps someone. If it just saves ONE person from the headache I just had, it was worth the time writing the experience out. If you need more detailed steps along these lines, comment on the article and I’ll see what I can do.

-Lace

So I spent an hour on the phone with various repair centers and official Apple tech support today. I’ve got to hand it to them, Apple’s tech support handled it rather well. I was treated gingerly by the man on the other end of the line until we saw eye to eye on the fact that I actually knew what a Hard Drive failure was and how to identify it. In the end I saved a lot of time because I already knew what the problem was, and only had to do a little checking for him booting from the OS X installer discs.

After a 20 minute or less conversation with him, we had agreed that the hard drive would need to be replaced, and that it wouldn’t cost me a cent, as it is still under warranty. I settled for somewhere between option one and two. Rather than send it to Apple and wait 2 or 3 weeks and never see the broken drive again, I took it to a Apple certified store in Columbus, Ohio, called Computer Site Columbus, or CSC.

CSC was very professional and informative, I was greeted by an open room and multiple people where they took down all of my information, serial number, and Apple support ticket number. The bench time should only be 5 or 6 days, which means I should have it back by mid week. As an added bonus, since I took it to a privately owned store instead of sending it to Apple, I will also get to have my broken HDD returned to me when I go to get my laptop. Possible data recovery, anyone? All’s well that ends well, I suppose.

On a side note, hopefully in a day or two I’ll post a picture of a car model that College-Now grad Matt Spring has been working on in Blender!

–Lace

That’s right, you heard me. Today, to use the words most favored by my College-Now class, “The Macbook’s bust.”

Dead. Came home from a nine hour work day, and the system is frozen, the little spinning umbrella staring insistently at me, as if to say, “Just two more seconds, I promise I’ll start working again soon!” I let it sit for awhile, eventually become frustrated, and then hard reboot (hold the power button for 5 seconds).

First sign of trouble:

“Uh-oh. What’s that sound? Oh crap. No, I know that sound.” *smacks forehead* “No! NO! Come on!”

What was it I was hearing? It was the hard disk drive. Making the same sounds as a floppy disk drive out of the 80′s and 90′s. (I’m dating myself with that comment, but still.) A few loud crackle/scratch/grind sounds followed by the sound of a short, thin piece of metal ‘pinging’ once or twice.

“Well,” I think, “at least the screen is blue, like it’s going to boot. Wait. Oh no..”

Second sign of trouble:

This is it. This is all the Mac had to say? Not even a cryptic error message? I can just IMAGINE the confusion that would ensue if a typical, non techy Mac user (such as one portrayed by the…ahem, person in the Mac commercials) came across this image, blinking incessantly on screen where they expected their beautiful background and dock to be.

So I rebooted, knowing already that I was most horribly, utterly, (again, to use a common College-Now phrase,) hosed.

Third sign of trouble:

Upon reboot…
Oh well now we’re talking! This is much better! So informative and explanatory!

So the system is kaput, and I’m not sure what my next move is. I figure that I have two options, however.

One: I fix it myself. Who says Macs are inaccessible? I remove a (good few) screws and pop out the hard drive, then give data recovery a shot on my own, replacing the dead one with a bigger, hopefully more hearty MBPro compatible one. The con, however, is that it will void my warranty, which would be a shame, as the fans already need replacing because I’ve run them on full all the time due to the heat generated by rendering in Blender.

Two: I send it in to a (cr)Apple repair center. They fix it under warranty and two weeks later I get my system back, with no idea if the data would have been recoverable, or the security of the data that was on the hard drive, or really any information or guarantee that it won’t happen again. Great. At least I only lost about 2 weeks worth of data, the rest was backed up. Unfortunately, that two weeks included ALL the work on WNBG, as well as a bunch of daily models. :/

Opinions?

–Lace

I’m writing this at 12:50 in the morning, and I need to be up in 7 hours for work, so I’ll try to keep it short and sweet.

The newest build of WNBG is working for both Mac and Windows now. Primary updates include a scrolling cautionary opening, an audio test, and some UV Mapping tests on background textures. I’m getting close to the point where I need to start coding in python to keep up with the game logic. I’ve got a good friend of mine who should be able to give me a jump start, though. Make sure to leave your constructive criticism and comments below the post!

(Don’t forget to right click and save.)

05-04-2009

Mac Build — [Build 0.2]

5.7 MB

Windows Build — [Build 0.2]

8.1 MB

–Lace

Today’s post is a double whammy. Not only did I find a nice old animation of water falling into a ceramic bowl that I have never posted on IZL, but I decided to post it without going through Youtube, Vimeo, or any external hosting site! Great thanks go out to the mac-dev.net for creating such a nicely little flash video player plugin for WordPress! So here it is, in all it’s glory. The first totally independent IZationLabs video.

–Lace

I finally started doing some reading, and some playing around with the Blender3D Game Engine, and this is the output of a few hours worth of learning experience. This Game is Alpha. Pre-pre-release. Read, “were this an actual attempt, the game would probably never be shown to the public on this level”, so no need to tear it apart, it’s a work in progress. I’ve already learned a lot, and I hope to have a nice little game developed when it’s all over.

The game is being produced under the codename WNBG. At this point, there is only one rule. Knock down the green one! Post your comments on bugs (there will be tons) and constructive criticism in the comment section of this post.

(Make sure to right click and save.)

05-01-2009

Mac Build — [Build 01]

8.8 MB

Windows Build — Not up yet

?

Blend File [Build 01]

3.4 MB

– Lace