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damaged HD after use as a target disk
Authored by: ettorep on May 13, '02 03:30:10PM

I used my iBook (dual USB 2001) as a target disk with another iBook. <br>
I made a mistake when I was about to disconnect it and reboot: I did NOT unmount it, but just disconnected the
firewire cable. Even worse, I did a reboot on my ibook (probably because I was kinda stoned...) and got back
in T-mode, and then I tried to reconnect it via firewire. (I should have tried to reconnect it immediately, and .).
The mac using my iBook seemed to see it again, but when I tried to copy something from/to it, I had many
errors with code "-127" (which is a HFS error: "fsDSIntErr, Internal file system error" (from appleerrorcoddes.com))
<br>

Then, trying to reboot my ibook, I got a couple of kernel panic from OS-X, but it did complete the boot sequence
smoothly one time; instead, OS 9 completed the reboot without problems but then I got allot of errors
code -127 as well. <br>

Checking the partitions with Drive First Aid, there were errors saying "invalid sibling links".
Repair didn't work, both on 9 and X. <br>
I think one should be VERY careful with "target disk mode". A single error can cost you the file system integrity.
I know that I made a stupid thing: at least, I shouldn't have done that reboot after I improperly removed the
target disk.
Do you know if firewire HDs can have this kind of problem ? Since firewire is hot-swappable, I don't think that would be
very cool... neither is safe.... after all everyone does mistakes sometimes (especially when you're high). Maybe on firewire HDs
there's no problem because noone use the disk except for the computer: I mean, you HAVE TO use it with the
computer, so, even if it's "dirty", when you reconnect it to the computer it fix things up.

Do you know any solutions other than reinstalling everything?



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damaged HD after use as a target disk
Authored by: tombenson on May 13, '02 11:06:11PM

"-127" = HFS parent tree error.....

Diskwarrior shall be your savior here... but you may also want to try fsck'ing your way out of trouble... ;)



[ Reply to This | # ]
damaged HD after use as a target disk
Authored by: ettorep on May 14, '02 08:30:15AM

well, when the damage occurred i didn't have diskwarrior so I couldn't do that.

Right now i already reformatted the whole thing down, since I had no important data on my disk (I clean-installed the systems a few days before.)

About fsck, I thought about that too late to do it. :)

Anyways, I was wondering about the target disk mode itself: is it safe ? did anyone experienced similar problems ? do you know anything more specific? I'd like to know different theories about the cause and possibly a technical explanation of how target disk mode works: i think it writes something on the HD (after all it screwed up mine) but i don't know anything else. I didn't find any in-depth explanation on the knowledge base (only a note on how to use it).
Thanks a lot!



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