"Invalid Btree Header, 0, 0" error...

[Philgood]

Last night the harddrives of my MDD halted and after forcing the reboot i got the blinking Question mark Folder. Duh.
Harddrives dead i thought and so i got the idea to try to connect them to my windows box with an USB-IDE bridge adapter as i recently installed the demo version of Paragons HFS+ for windows. But it already passed the trial period so i had the stupid idea of buying their 2in1 bundle for 29$ only to see that it isn't working with OS9 partitions...at least it's not working for me. i tried on the windows 7 partition first installing their program and after that on my XP partition. I searched the support forum but couldn't find any information about mac os9 partitions...Does anyone use their Program successfully ?
I'll request a refund as soon as possible if it's not working...

Well, i grabbed finally my Mavericks Macbook and connected them with the same USB-IDE adapter and got immediately all partitions shown on the desktop....should have tried that in the first place.
I made backups of the 2 harddrives with Superduper to an external Firewire one and did nothing else as to put the 2 harddrives back into the MDD as they didn't seem to be dead.
I only changed the configuration as before the 2 ones were connected to the same ATA100 bus as master/slave configuration so i put the system on the ATA66 and left the other one on the ATA100 bus.
My MDD booted and everything looks good but i'm getting now the famous "Invalid Btree Header, 0, 0" scanning with FirstAidUtility...sure this bad did the evil MacOSX but do i have to worry about it?
Is there any way to repair it ?

Thanks guys

[supernova777]

i had the same problem and couldnt repair it.. once it happens the best thing u can do is back up all your data to a new drive .. and reinstall or restore using ASR.. ASR is a lifesaver for this kind of crap... but of course requires that u prepared a backup/restore image beforehand

i havent read of anyone finding a solution to this stupid error.
i have a feeling its caused by a clash between softwares' copyright techniques?
some people think its caused by using osx on the same partition as 9? i think its possible it can be caused by both.

[Philgood]

I did some search on the forum so i`ll auto-respond me in the meanwhile 

Look what DieHard posted regarding the issue...

Don't know if this helps, but to avoid the whole

Invalid BTree Header , 0, 0

error; the basic rule of thumb is to not access any OS 8 or OS 9 volumes while being booted to OS X, eventually OS X will write to areas of the OS 9 volume that OS 8/9 will report as Invalid Btree Header 0,0; a real pain the the ass that no utilities (and I have tried them all) will fix... So, that is why I mentioned to keep OS 9 machines as OS 9 only and OS X Machines the same.`

The bold letters were put by me...Seems that i'm out of luck to try to successfully repair it.

Use good old file sharing or FTP to transfer files or USE a home made firewire Flash drive... I made many FW400 flash drives with a Lexar FireWire CF Compact Flash Card Reader and a CF 4G or 8GB Card, this will transfer files between OS X and OS 9 with no issues.

I think i'll redone that Backups to make them straight from a OS9 CD booted...will try that Mactron goodie from here...http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=1654.0

PS: Get enough RAM in the unit to make a large RAM disk and Copy a stripped down 9.2.2 to it and reboot to it... your ACG400 will turn into a freakishly fast super Mac.

I and many others have done this.... from the Web...

"you first start up of the hard drive, make your ram disk say 130Mb(given the fact I have 160Mb), this leaves about 30Mb for applications and the OS.
restart the machine, the ram disk is now active. gut the dup the system folder and then gut it until is fits onto the 130Mb ram disk. Bless the system folder on the ram disk. choose the startup disk in via the control panel, restart. Power is stillgoing to ram so the contents of the ram disk are not lost....bingo boot of a ram disk, watch laptop battery life jump and a system that starts up in seconds  .
there you go people....booting off a ram disk 
that also why solid state ram drives have then own power instead of just of the PCI bus....."

I'm quite sure that having a ram disk isn't something recommendable in an audio production environment but maybe worth a try... 

[supernova777]

yep the best way to avoid it is to not let osx "see" the os9 partition.. and vice versa..
for me this means if i want to use a g3 or g4 for os9 + osx .. always partition the drive.. and NEVER READ OR WRITE THE OTHER PARTITION!!! there are steps u can do to "hide" the drive so it doesnt show up.. on os9 this is accomplished in drivesetup i think? but u need a certain level version of drivesetup i think... and in osx.. i forget.. id have to google it..  so u would copy files to an external drive.. or copy them to a network share.. then reboot  to the alternate os and copy the files

ramdisk works too but is more applicable to small files

[Philgood]

I just saw that speedy Chris posted before i could finish my post...

Well, i think it's nothing critical to just wipe the system disk and make a fresh OS install. About the other one which contains Protools sessions with all the audio recordings i would prefer to salvage/preserve it...will this Btree header error affect the data sooner or later ?
What if all utilities seems to fail on this would be a good method of preserving the data ?
Just copy the data to another harddrive ? Will this restructure the directory problems ?

[MacTron]

Yes, I agree with DieHard, as being Mac Os X the main cause of Invalid B Tree header errors. I have achieved to solve the problem using a combination of rescue utilities, including Mac Os X Disk Utility. But in any case, I can't trust any more the rescued HD, so it must be re-formatted as soon as it can.

[Philgood]

Yes ok. But is it safe to just write the content of the Protools session Data harddrive to another one to "refresh" the directory structure which is what got damaged in the first place or how can I salvage this ?

As an reminder.
I have an system harddrive with the OS which I will just reinstall but I need to know what is best to do with the Data harddrive.

[DieHard]

While in OS 9, Copying the data from the damaged volume to another volume will NOT transfer any issues to the new volume.  If the files read and transfer, you will be fine.  The errors are limited to the source volume tables

[mrhappy]

Agree with DieHard... Used to get these problems all the time using a portable FW drive between my OS9 PT system and OS X PT at studio location.... Even with the errors (as long as the drive would function) the data would transfers fine. At first I would try to 'fix' the drive when this would happen but eventually wound up just ignoring the the error messages, still using the drive until I could initialize it.

[Philgood]

Thanks Boss (DieHard) and MrHappy!

I feel more relieved now about it.

What about the HFS+ thing from Paragon ?
Can anyone recommend it ?
It would be handy if I go down the network route to move files around between the bigger harddrives I have in the Windows rig and leave my FireWire external harddrive only for direct filetransfer between Mac OS9 systems so that this scenario won't repeat.

I got no response from Paragon yet about the issue of not mounting the partitions which where formatted under OS9...I don't know where the support is located but is it holiday in USA today?

[IIO]

no need for any third party software here.

like mactron said it is enough to copy the files to another volume, initialise the corrupt one, and copy the files back.

you can do that with OS9, but eventually copying in OSX can be much faster.

and dont copy 1 million files at once, do it in smaller branches.

[GaryN]

From a previous discussion here:

I've been running a dual-boot MDD for a very long time. I had constant mysterious directory-related problems early on. However, I never once had a problem - as far as I could tell - with 9 writing something to X. (Of course, I never allowed 9 to attempt to rebuild the X desktop or some such folly)

On the other hand, I had constant recurring problems on my 9 drive until I set the preferences in OSX to keep both Time Machine and Spotlight from caring about - and therefore writing to - the OS9 drive. I haven't had any issues since.

I'm well aware there are those well-informed folks on this forum (you know who you are) who absolutely insist that operating a dual-boot Mac is the guaranteed path to cyber hell and damnation, but evidently I'm either blessed or damn lucky or the solution is simple: just treat the two systems as though they're Shiites and Sunnis - don't let them talk to each other and peace will prevail…

I repeat: In my long experience, it is Spotlight and Time Machine (if you have Leopard) that both write stuff on ALL of the drives / partitions in your computer that cause the b-tree errors in OS9. You MUST lock your OS9 volume out from them in their System Prefs settings even if you don't use Spotlight or Time Machine.

It's the indexing function in OSX that writes the gobbledegook. When you see your system slow down in OSX and there's that little "mds" owned by "nobody" running in Activity monitor, OSX is busy indexing every single file it can find wherever it's allowed to go look and writing little notes to itself in that volume header. It does the same thing if you run Disk Utility on a volume.

Disk First Aid in OS9 can't fix it because it doesn't understand it.
Disk Utility in OSX won't fix it because as far as it knows, there's nothing wrong!

I was about to give up on my MDD entirely at one point because of this insanity. But I'm Polish and very stubborn, so I just kept at it and at it. Since I did the above over 4 years ago, I have not had a single one of those b-tree issues! I'm pretty damn sure I've found the cause and the cure.

My MDD now has 4 drives, 7 volumes, 3 OS's (9, 10.4 and 10.5) and no b-tree issues.

[Philgood]

I repeat: In my long experience, it is Spotlight and Time Machine (if you have Leopard) that both write stuff on ALL of the drives / partitions in your computer that cause the b-tree errors in OS9. You MUST lock your OS9 volume out from them in their System Prefs settings even if you don't use Spotlight or Time Machine.

It's the indexing function in OSX that writes the gobbledegook. When you see your system slow down in OSX and there's that little "mds" owned by "nobody" running in Activity monitor, OSX is busy indexing every single file it can find wherever it's allowed to go look and writing little notes to itself in that volume header. It does the same thing if you run Disk Utility on a volume.

Disk First Aid in OS9 can't fix it because it doesn't understand it.
Disk Utility in OSX won't fix it because as far as it knows, there's nothing wrong!

I was about to give up on my MDD entirely at one point because of this insanity. But I'm Polish and very stubborn, so I just kept at it and at it. Since I did the above over 4 years ago, I have not had a single one of those b-tree issues! I'm pretty damn sure I've found the cause and the cure.

My MDD now has 4 drives, 7 volumes, 3 OS's (9, 10.4 and 10.5) and no b-tree issues.

How exactly can i achieve this ?
Do i have to kind of safe boot the osx partition to prevent that the system writes to the os9 partition while i do the necessary terminal commands to hide the partition for the next time?
Can you provide some guide please?

[mrhappy]

From a previous discussion here:

You MUST lock your OS9 volume out from them in their System Prefs settings even if you don't use Spotlight or Time Machine.

Yes It would be useful to have a little 'OS 9 Locking' tutorial here!

[GaryN]

How exactly can i achieve this ?
Do i have to kind of safe boot the osx partition to prevent that the system writes to the os9 partition while i do the necessary terminal commands to hide the partition for the next time?
Can you provide some guide please?

No no no no! You are completely overthinking it!
Actually, it's ridiculously simple. You have to first repair the damage and then stop the process causing it. To wit:

1.  Boot OSX.
2.  Open System Prefs.
3.  Select Spotlight / Privacy. You'll see a list form "Prevent Spotlight from searching these locations".
4.  Drag your OS9 volume icon onto the list.
5.  Go to Time Machine Prefs. Click "Options"…you'll get the same kind of drop-down form called "Do not back up".
6.  Drag your OS9 volume icon onto the list.

NOW: You can erase your b-tree-corrupted OS9 volume and then restore it from backup (which you of course, have, right?) BUT
You cannot just restore the entire volume whole because it probably also contains a corrupted header… SO

7.  Boot OS9 from CD (either your own or MacTron's Rescue CD is perfect) and reinstall OS9.
8.  Restore your OS9 files from your backup folder by folder.
9.  You're done.

Yes, it's THAT simple. Just never, never again allow those pref settings to get changed back. If you upgrade OSX or add another version of OSX to the computer, IMMEDIATELY go to all OSX prefs and confirm that OS9 is locked out.

You'll find that you can still "see" all the OS9 files from OSX so you can open them, copy them etc. You just can't search them by / for keywords and such with Spotlight and of course, you'll have to backup OS9 with something other than Time Machine - which is fine because Time Machine won't make a useable OS9 restoration anyway. (It usually messes up all of the file permissions and you can't write to them or even move them afterward when you're back in OS9)

Now, enjoy your happily dual-booting Mac!

[Protools5LEGuy]

Now, enjoy your happily dual-booting Mac!

OK.
10.5 have Spotlight and Time Machine
10.4 have Spotlight only
10.3 is safe? It hasn't Spotlight or Time Machine. My 001 and my AM-3 play nice there too.

[GaryN]

I would think so. Can't say for certain but I don't remember having the same problems then when I was running Jaguar - although that was YEARS ago!
The biggest culprit is Spotlight and the "mds" system function. Those didn't exist in the 10.3 era so that's probably safe.

[mrhappy]

Is It Safe??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzw1_2b-I7A

[GaryN]

Yuk yuk. Now I know why they call you Mr. Happy.

[Protools5LEGuy]

Is It Safe??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzw1_2b-I7A

[youtube]c-OviftusB8[/youtube]