Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks August 2001

When not to rescue your data with Norton Utilities
Last week a client called with a problem of damaged files on his hard drive. The first thing I asked was had he tried any of the tools like Norton Utilities to rescue the files; he replied "no." I had him bring the machine to my work place so I could use all of my resources to recover the files. After getting the machine started up, the first thing I checked was if the files on the machine could be copied to a new drive. Many could, but many were reported to be damaged. At this point I started to look around at the data on the hard drive and noticed there was a Norton "rescued files" folder. Asked about this, the fellow replied that he had run Norton but didn't think he had tried to rescue the files, and even if he did what was wrong with that? He had started up with the Norton CD so he should be able the save the files. The thing that is wrong here is that you never, ever, rescue files from and to the same disk. Always place rescued files on a different disk or volume. You do this because the data you are writing may very well be overwriting the data you have not recovered yet.

What not to do...
What not to do if you think you have thrown away a program or file accidentally–keep using your computer like nothing has happened! Please understand that your computer saves information to your hard drive even if all you do is shut down. However, if you edit documents and save email, you're basically writing things to your hard drive possibly over the very file you want to recover. So if you want to have a shot at recovering the file the first thing you do is to run a file recovery program like Norton. Do this by starting up from the Norton CD.

SCSI Termination
In an article, Bill Mudd wrote:
"I would open up your 7600 and make your HD the first in the internal SCSI chain (plug the first cable connector into it and un-terminate it) and plug the next and/or last cable connector into the CD-RW and terminate it."

Charles wrote:
"You would not have the termination in the correct place. The very first drive in the SCSI chain is the only internal device to be terminated. Never terminate in the middle of the chain. The only other termination would be on the very last device on the external SCSI chain. On the 7600 the SCSI chain has 3 connectors (other than the one that connects it to the mother board). Following along from the end of the cable that is connected to the Hard drive you will find two other connectors. The second connector will allow you to add a additional hard drive or zip drive to the second HD bay. The third connector you have removed from the CDROM drive is the only one that can reach the CD bay. Using the terminator in the chain as you suggest violates the rules and is a problem waiting to happen."

Bill:
"I'm new to Macs so I'm just following instructions that came with my equipment. Here is the relevant quote from the Plextor manual.

'The last peripheral on your internal cable should retain their termination. All other SCSI peripherals connected between the host adapter and the last peripheral should have their termination removed, disabled or turned OFF.' (capitalization is theirs) 'REMEMBER: Only the last SCSI peripheral in a daisy chain should have termination enabled.'

You sound like you know what you are talking about so I'm concerned I have my drives setup wrong. I have to add that they are working just fine as described in my previous post. But I want to learn something here so let me describe again how I have my drives set up. If you would tell me what is wrong with it and how you believe it should be set up I will try it out.

Beginning with where the internal SCSI cable connects at the motherboard: the first plug is connected to a 2 gig HD; the second is not connected to anything and the third is connected to a SCSI Plextor internal CD-RW drive. The HD is not terminated, the CD-RW is terminated. The external SCSI cable (a system cable) is plugged into the external SCSI connector at the back of the computer's case and the other end plugs into one of two SCSI connectors on an enclosure that houses the Apple CDROM drive that is terminated."

Charles writes:
" SCSI chain 0: The end of the SCSI cable is the end of the SCSI chain so the very last device hooked to the very end of the cable is the last device. The motherboard counts as a SCSI device in the chain.

SCSI chain 1: Your external device is also on the end of the SCSI chain however it is on the end of SCSI chain number 1 There are two SCSI chains on many of the PPC Macs. The internal is SCSI 0 and the external is SCSI 1 (note these are SCSI port numbers and have no relation to the SCSI numbering on the SCSI chain 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7) By the way, 7 is always the CPU on both chains and no other device is ever given this number.

I teach hard disk management for the local user group and have been a Mac consultant for 10 years."

Microsoft
At last Microsoft's grand plan is coming together. You won't be able to use their product if the product decides it does not like the way you configured it. One of the PC writers got informed on a plane flight that Word would not be doing much until he reloaded it due to the fact he had installed some software on his Windows machine. During mid flight MS Word told him it was going to run in limited mode until he put the CDROM in the drive and re-entered his serial number. So all you folks that wonder why some of us are not MS fans–there's your answer.

In the past MS has been noted for things like causing other programs to stop working, or needing to be reinstalled. However this is the first salvo at playing Big Brother on its products. Currently MS is working on all of its products to be basically leased to the end user. So your time runs out and up pops a window saying insert your credit card number and we'll let you have another 12 months. Well, for my 2 cents, they can keep their programs.

OS X
Chances are that the 10.1 version of System X will be delayed into September due to the fact that it's not ready for release. What really gets me is that Apple keeps trying to say System X is ready to be used by average consumers. If I can't burn a CD on my CDROM burner and Apple itself can't release software to do this, how do they expect third party developers to do so? Yes, I just picked on the thing that bugs me the most. If I can't use Apple equipment to do the things I need to do using Apple software, why should Apple expect third party companies to be able to do it? Yes, I did repeat myself. When Apple can give those companies the support they need to do their jobs we'll be a lot closer to having System X be an Apple Operating System. At System X introduction, Steve Jobs said that CD burning is coming shortly . Well shortly is here. I'm sticking to System 9.1 'til they have a System that I can use to get all my work completed and not have to shut down and startup in another System to finish a project.

LCD
Well I did it, bit the bullet and purchased a LCD 15" panel. KDS is the brand name of the unit. Seems to work as advertised although I do notice it has some features I'm not fond of. One of these features is, if I change resolution I sometimes have to restart the monitor by turning it off then back on in order to get the picture back. The other thing is that it is addictive to use. Text on the new monitor is very clear and crisp. Blacks look blacker. Maybe it's just me but I really do think the picture is great. There was very little set up to do–take it out of the box, hook it up, and choose a resolution.

Hard Drive Death
For those of you who still don't believe me when I talk about hard drives dying when they feel like it; the hard drive in our refurbished G4 died Saturday night right after Janet had completed a full reinstall of all of its software and System. She'd been working on a project for another group and wanted to be sure everything was ready to go. Luckily there was no data on the drive so we didn't lose anything. However the drive is completely dead and will not show up using Norton or TechTool Pro. This machine also has a 40 GB Maxtor drive in it so we just started the project over. Please do remember that you can't count on recovering every hard drive's data.

Back yours up today.

You can reach me at charles@cdevsol.com.

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