Invalid Node structure on external HD

[koffiejunkie]

The 4gb limitation is due to his desire to use a FAT32 drive so you would still have the same constraint.

That's a file size limit then, not a filesystem size limit.

Pretty crap filesystem if to trust your backups to. But hey, at least there a re loads of recovery tools for it!

 

[bwana]

That's a file size limit then, not a filesystem size limit.

Yes, I understand that.

Pretty crap filesystem if to trust your backups to. But hey, at least there a re loads of recovery tools for it!

I think he had/has a fat32 formatted drive with content already on it that he wanted to preserve. At least that it the impression I got from what I read.

 

[koffiejunkie]

I just wish there were decent ext2/ext3 drivers for OSX. Not that ext2/3 is my favourite filesystem, but I used it on my external because I was told there are drivers of OSX, so I can use the same drive between Linux and OSX

Unfortunately the driver kit cannot even see that there is a filesystem on the partition, and the included tools look really old.

And I noticed more recently that Linux can quite happily read and write to HFS+ so I'll know what to do next time.

 

[adsl3g]

Drive Genius sorts out 'invalid node structure'

Yes, I understand that. I think he had/has a fat32 formatted drive with content already on it that he wanted to preserve. At least that it the impression I got from what I read.

The external USB is hfs+ formatted. Was just thinking of rather doing a fat32 format to prevent this funny 'invalid node structure' happening in future - as Koffie said, there are lots of free tools to 'fix' fat32 errors - not so for Mac - Tools are usually in the region of $80 to $100 - once you have one then you are sorted.

The data on the USB I have on my LAN drive - just a schlep to transfer it over again.

I managed to obtain a copy of Drive Genius - ran the disk rebuild utility and it sorted the drive out in 4 seconds flat.

 

[koffiejunkie]

as Koffie said, there are lots of free tools to 'fix' fat32 errors

Yeah but you still have the problem that incomplete writes from an untimely unplug will give you corrupt data. No journal. Working with Linux/BSD/Unix has absolutely spoiled me for that...

not so for Mac - Tools are usually in the region of $80 to $100 - once you have one then you are sorted.

I suspect much of what those those $80-$100 tools do could be accomplished by the fsck_hfs tool. Fire up a terminal, and type 'man fsck_hfs' to learn how to use it.

People's fear of the keyboard costs them money

 

[bwana]

I suspect much of what those those $80-$100 tools do could be accomplished by the fsck_hfs tool. Fire up a terminal, and type 'man fsck_hfs' to learn how to use it.

People's fear of the keyboard costs them money

Are you sure you're not confusing apple's Disk Utility with those $80-$100 tools?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_Utility

 

[koffiejunkie]

Are you sure you're not confusing apple's Disk Utility with those $80-$100 tools?

No. Disc Utility probably uses the command line tools but it doesn't give you all the combinations of options you can use on the command line. I haven't needed any of the commercial tools, but my experience with recovering filesystems or stuff on filesystems in UNIX like operating systems in general is that there is little that you can't fix with the tools available.

If I have time some time I'll grab my extra external disc and plug/unplug it randomly untill I break the filesystem so I can play around with the tools abit and see what they can do. Should be fun!

 

[adsl3g]

Yeah but you still have the problem that incomplete writes from an untimely unplug will give you corrupt data. No journal. Working with Linux/BSD/Unix has absolutely spoiled me for that...



I suspect much of what those those $80-$100 tools do could be accomplished by the fsck_hfs tool. Fire up a terminal, and type 'man fsck_hfs' to learn how to use it.

People's fear of the keyboard costs them money

I am running the Mac USB drive on Macdrive here at work again.... Will verify it tonight to see if there is a problem again then I will try the Fsck tool from the command line - can you give me the full command line to run it on the connected USB drive pse - else it will obviously run on the Macbook's HD - will probably have to point it to the USB drive.

As mentioned before, Applejack couldn't fix it either - just reported a problem and requested if it should run again - ran it 3 times after each other w/o success.

 

[koffiejunkie]

I am running the Mac USB drive on Macdrive here at work again.... Will verify it tonight to see if there is a problem again then I will try the Fsck tool from the command line - can you give me the full command line to run it on the connected USB drive pse - else it will obviously run on the Macbook's HD - will probably have to point it to the USB drive.

Good question. I'm not sure how OSX labels its drives I'll check tonight when I get home (which will be around midnight your time).

 

[koffiejunkie]

I just ssh-ed into my Mac

My internal hard drive (IDE) shows up as:

/dev/rdisk0

And the partition is

/dev/rdisk0s1

So your external drive will probably be something like

/dev/rdisk1

and the partition

/dev/drisk1s1

You will probably want to start with something like

fsck_hfs -l -n /dev/rdisk1s1

But check your /dev/rdisk* devices first.

Also I'm completely guessing now, will gave to try it out tonight first. You can run 'man fsck_hfs' in the console to hive you detailed usage.

 

[bwana]

Good question. I'm not sure how OSX labels its drives I'll check tonight when I get home (which will be around midnight your time).

Its easy enough to tell - just fire up disk utility and it says under info.

I dont know why some people are afraid to use the available GUIs

 

[koffiejunkie]

I dont know why some people are afraid to use the available GUIs

Touche touche.

But in my defence, I have only ssh access to my Mac at the moment. And I don't recall seing the device names in Disc Utility - only the model name of the disc with the partition labels under that.