Mac OS 9 Lives
Mac OS 9 Discussion => Hardware => Storage => Topic started by: Philgood on November 11, 2015, 12:55:20 AM
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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
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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.
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I did some search on the forum so i`ll auto-respond me in the meanwhile ;D
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...
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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
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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 ?
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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! ;D
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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!
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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.
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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.
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Is It Safe??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzw1_2b-I7A
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Yuk yuk. Now I know why they call you Mr. Happy.
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Is It Safe??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzw1_2b-I7A
[youtube]c-OviftusB8[/youtube]
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Just finished a Complete DAW Restore with Cubase VST/32 with Pre-Authorized Virtual Instuments & FX with Logic and PT with a Panther set up and tried to make the a clone using ASR. First Aid couldn't help me.
Now I have to start again ... :(
The First thing to do in mixed (OS9&X) is force OSX to ignore the 9 volumes!
Now I have another BTree episode. ;D
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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".
It shows me the volumes I asked Spotlight to not to use them.
I think I have deactivated Time Machine, but every time a new volume appears it ask me if it can use it, so we need to exterminate Time Machine even deeper... :D
http://www.cultofmac.com/141070/turn-off-requests-to-use-new-disks-for-time-machine-os-x-tips/ (http://www.cultofmac.com/141070/turn-off-requests-to-use-new-disks-for-time-machine-os-x-tips/)
(Added by DieHard) I am inserting the info. below in case the link dies...
Turn Off Requests To Use New Disks for Time Machine [OS X Tips]
If you don’t use Time Machine, you might notice that every time you attach a new and/or blank hard disk to the computer you get asked if you want to use it for backups. Here’s a simple trick that will stop that happening. You can stop this request dialog box from appearing by opening a Terminal window (Finder -> Applications -> Utilities – > Terminal) and typing the following:
defaults write com.apple.TimeMachine DoNotOfferNewDisksForBackup -bool TRUE
Then log out and back in again for the changes to take effect.
If you’d like to restore the request dialog at a later date, again open Terminal then type the following (log out and back in again after for the changes to take effect):
defaults delete com.apple.TimeMachine DoNotOfferNewDisksForBackup
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The Cult Terminal command does work as advertised! It's really just an annoyance having TM ask about any "new" volume it sees but certainly helpful to the less-knowledgeable Mac user (of which I hear there actually ARE some).
You have to first repair the damage and then stop the process causing it.
Honestly, I must apologize…I wrote this ass-backwards. You have to first stop the processes causing the problem and then repair the damage. Otherwise, it's a death race between you and OSX the moment you boot it with OS9 visible to it.
The good thing is that once you've gone through all of the aggravation to get it all working correctly, you will be extremely unlikely to ever forget and do it again! At least I never have…
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I have a little report to make on this: a few days ago, I had the Invalid Btree Header 0,0 error and I was able to fix it with Norton Utilities 6.05. In the past, I had tried Norton some-version-or-another plus every free repair tool I could scrounge up with no success. I was getting ready to reinitialize my disk (again) as described in this thread when I tried Disk Doctor one more time and was real pleased.
It was this one here: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/norton-utilities-8-macintosh
It's kinda packaged "funny": the webpage describes it as version 8, the download is labeled disk 9, the documentation in it is for version 7, and the "About Norton Utilities..." and version info say 6.05. One thing to note: I used it on a disk (and a partition on another disk) before I had any symptoms. I just happened to have run Disk First Aid and saw the error.
Thanks so much for the info as to why this error occurs. I have not seen that elsewhere, but I never had this error until I started dual booting w/ OSX. I've now told Spotlight to keep out of my classic disks as described above and so far no more troubles. I'd like to access OS9 files from OSX apps, but I haven't tried that since reading the info here. I might run some experiments and see what happens.
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I have a little report to make on this: a few days ago, I had the Invalid Btree Header 0,0 error and I was able to fix it with Norton Utilities 6.05.
It was this one here: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/norton-utilities-8-macintosh
It's kinda packaged "funny": the webpage describes it as version 8, the download is labeled disk 9, the documentation in it is for version 7, and the "About Norton Utilities..." and version info say 6.05. One thing to note: I used it on a disk (and a partition on another disk) before I had any symptoms. I just happened to have run Disk First Aid and saw the error.
I do have the original Norton Utilities v8 for both os9 and osx - the CD is a dual Boot. OSX and OS9. But I've used both programs over a few years, back in the day, but it causes so much problems - even creating another 128mb volume - why I don't know - but I stopped using it after a while. Did the version you used create a 128mb volume? If not it must be version 6 or 7.
Thanks for reporting that version 6.05 is able to get rid of "Invalid Btree Header 0,0 error".
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TIME OUT!
It appears to me from the last two posts that the two of you are assuming that the infamous b-tree error is related only to and caused only by sexual relations with OSX.
This is not true. B-tree errors are caused by lots of things mostly related to files being moved around, updated by different apps than they were created by, anything written by Microsoft and who knows what else. However, they are for the most part, minor and easily repaired with little or no consequence by Disk First Aid, Norton or many of the disk repair apps.
I think (and don't quote me on this) they may have been indicative of an inherent shortcoming in the HFS filesystem. They are probably one of the reasons Apple went to a journaled filesystem and now they are no more.
The reason the OSX-caused b-tree error is unrepairable is because it's not really a b-tree error. A typical b-tree error is a bit or two "out of place" that results in a checksum error or such and a utility just has to more or less go through the directory, check it against the files and correct the math. The OSX error is caused by OSX writing a whole bunch of what might as well be Klingon code into the directory that is totally incomprehensible to all things OS9 and below. So it is a b-tree error only in the sense that the b-tree has become scrambled eggs and OS9 doesn't have an error message for "Sorry dude, I can't make head or tail out of this 'cause the directory is totally f**ked".
ALSO:
Norton 6.05 is the only version that will work reliably on OS9. I recall some puzzlement at the time when suddenly there was a "new" version but it was still 6.05 underneath. It seemed like the new "versions" were more new packaging than anything else.
AND:
Norton Utilities for OSX is absolutely guaranteed to trash your disk if you use it on OSX. It may have sort of kinda maybe worked on 10.0, but anything newer usually ended up being toast very quickly as far as I can recall. There may be exceptions to that, but I seriously doubt that Norton ever actually did anything positive for any OSX system.
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You're pretty intense there GaryN - but it's okay and thanks for explaining everything.
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It appears to me from the last two posts that the two of you are assuming that the infamous b-tree error is related only to and caused only by sexual relations with OSX.
Garry, that is why I don't let my OS9 and OS X G4s have sex, the off-spring OS would be pretty ugly and definitely confused
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This is an old thread but did anyone mention simply mounting their Mac OS 9 partition read-only in OS X?
I do a lot of booting back and forth between 10.5 and 9.2.2 on my PMG4DA and just OS X mounting my OS 9 partition was sufficient to bring up the btree problem in disk first aid in my experience. Repairing with Disk Doctor would work a few times but eventually would crash and the drive would mount read-only in OS X, with a warning to backup ASAP.
I observed this with at least 10.3 and later(10.2 or older untested), So I came up with always mounting it read-only in OS X.
I edited my OS X fstab (sudo vifs) to have this line, whatever your partition name is:
LABEL=Macintosh\040HD none hfs ro 0 0
(of course you might prefer by UUID)
So I've made a "Shared" partition (hfs+ journaled) I put on things I would normally copy to my OS 9 volumes from OS X. It goes without saying I only repair "Shared" with the OS X disk utility.
I've been using this setup for a while now and I'd say it's the most stable it has been so far with dual booting. I check my OS 9 partition regularly and haven't had any issues since.
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You should read this: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2830.msg18258.html#msg18258
Then follow down to: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2830.msg18311.html#msg18311
There are good reasons to NOT install OSX and OS9 into the same volume but the most serious ones by far are Spotlight and Time machine.
The logical way to avoid having to repair Btree errors is to prevent them from happening,
Spotlight and Time machine can eff-up your OS9 Directory and Btree even if you don't use them.
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[...]The logical way to avoid having to repair Btree errors is to prevent them from happening[...]
That's pretty much what mounting the OS 9 partition read-only from the start does.
My OS 9 volume no longer has a .fseventd or or .com.apple.timemachine.supported or any hidden file that OS X normally creates, which supports the fact it never gets to write to it.
Well, given both norton and disk first aid no longer complain I'm happy with the results.
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This is an old thread but did anyone mention simply mounting their Mac OS 9 partition read-only in OS X?
I do a lot of booting back and forth between 10.5 and 9.2.2 on my PMG4DA and just OS X mounting my OS 9 partition was sufficient to bring up the btree problem in disk first aid in my experience. Repairing with Disk Doctor would work a few times but eventually would crash and the drive would mount read-only in OS X, with a warning to backup ASAP.
I observed this with at least 10.3 and later(10.2 or older untested), So I came up with always mounting it read-only in OS X.
I edited my OS X fstab (sudo vifs) to have this line, whatever your partition name is:
LABEL=Macintosh\040HD none hfs ro 0 0
(of course you might prefer by UUID)
So I've made a "Shared" partition (hfs+ journaled) I put on things I would normally copy to my OS 9 volumes from OS X. It goes without saying I only repair "Shared" with the OS X disk utility.
I've been using this setup for a while now and I'd say it's the most stable it has been so far with dual booting. I check my OS 9 partition regularly and haven't had any issues since.
This is a simple, yet great idea. Normally I don't dual-boot because nowadays I only like using the best machines for the task (MDD for OS9, high-end G5 for OSX), but once G5s become able to boot OS9, maybe in 2031+, this may come in handy for me. :)
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[...]The logical way to avoid having to repair Btree errors is to prevent them from happening[...]
That's pretty much what mounting the OS 9 partition read-only from the start does.
My OS 9 volume no longer has a .fseventd or or .com.apple.timemachine.supported or any hidden file that OS X normally creates, which supports the fact it never gets to write to it.
Well, given both norton and disk first aid no longer complain I'm happy with the results.
That works as long as you never have to alter, remove from or add to your OS9 System folder and such…ever.
If you use OS 9 for music production or other real work, as I do, Extensions, Prefs, Help files, and a thousand other things are updated and changed all the time.
It's easy to prevent a ".com.apple.timemachine.supported" file from being created by simply locking TM and Spotlight out of the OS 9 partition in OSX TM and Spotlight Prefs.
It's not the presence an OSX-related small file or flag that causes the trouble… it's the constant updating and re-writing of a "foreign" index. Both Spotlight and TM do that. They store their indexes on the volumes. Eventually those indexes bump into and fragment around the OS9 directory files and then OS9 Disk repair tries to "fix" it. That works…ONCE. The first time you boot back into OSX, it see the "repairs" made by OS9 as corruption, re-fixes it and the battle is on.
I have both the .fseventd and .com.apple.timemachine files on my OS9 volumes but they just sit there cause no problem as long as they're not getting updated every time I run OSX.
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As always, thanks to all; these posts are invaluable as many will search the forum for "Btree error" in the future.
Gary, you have done a great job explaining and we can finally put this "Btree" baby to bed.
Another "side effect" of the dual boot scenario is renaming things on the OS9 volume with file names that are past 32 characters, this will yield some awesome funky characters and screwed up files names when booting back into OS9.
Summary (if you must have both OS X and OS 9 on the same machine):
1) Avoid dual booting on the same volume
2) Use separate drives (if Possible)
3) Follow Garry's settings so Spotlight and Time Machine keeps their hands off the OS9 Indexes or give member "Image.Material" settings a try
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long filenames are not really a problem, they just look funny. sometimes i wish there would be an option in 10.4. finder to limit renaming to x amount of characters.
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Hello All,
So, I am also getting this b'tree error as well. Sadly, on a PowerBook G4, its not that simple, since I have one 512GB SSD(M2 SATA) which does work due to LBA-48 addressing on the Titanium G4 1ghz DVI. I have no choice but to partition separately for both OS 9.2.2 and macOS 10.5 Leopard.
As of this message, I do have 6.0.5 Norton Utilities and I was told that will fix this error under OS 9, or am I missing something ?
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As of this message, I do have 6.0.5 Norton Utilities and I was told that will fix this error under OS 9, or am I missing something ?
That will NOT fix the error AFAIR... you must backup all files and re-initialize the drive
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I have not get Invalid Btree Header error in my Powerbook in it's 15 years installation period (although I have copied partitions to new disks one time), but reason might be these:
- It's dual booting OS 9 and OSX 10.3 in same partition (If I now do these, I will put these separate partitions)
- OSX 10.4 is on different partition in same drive (so machine is actually trible boot)
- first thing I did after OSX 10.4 installation I did run Disable Tiger Features-software that turns Spotlight off (it easy to do without software too in Terminal).
- I didn't install OSX 10.5 at all in it. (If I really needed I use G5 for it)
On OSX side I really don't need Spotlight, EasyFind is better and not make index-files. Even good old Sherlock is better than Spotlight, learn use it.
Time machine might be useful, but remember if make small partitions, you can backup them with Diskutility from another machine with firewire target diskmode.
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Hello All,
So, I am also getting this b'tree error as well. Sadly, on a PowerBook G4, its not that simple, since I have one 512GB SSD(M2 SATA) which does work due to LBA-48 addressing on the Titanium G4 1ghz DVI. I have no choice but to partition separately for both OS 9.2.2 and macOS 10.5 Leopard.
As of this message, I do have 6.0.5 Norton Utilities and I was told that will fix this error under OS 9, or am I missing something ?
In my experience, Norton Disk Doctor 6.0.3-6.0.5 can fix this problem, provided that your SATA/IDE (if you're using one) is compatible with Disk Doctor.
That is, I never could repair my HDD with Disk Doctor (unknown error or something like that) when it's connected to an adapter with JMicron chip. After moving it to my Firmtek 1s2 clone PCI card, all errors were fixed.
Then, to prevent the problem, I just follow GaryN's advice.
Of course, OS X's Disk Utility will not agree and report the repaired partition as needing repair. I just ignore it.
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As of this message, I do have 6.0.5 Norton Utilities and I was told that will fix this error under OS 9, or am I missing something ?
That will NOT fix the error AFAIR... you must backup all files and re-initialize the drive
Damn.. That means I will need to format my entire M2 SATA 512GB stick which includes Leopard and OS 9 - wow. If I were to try Norton Disk Doctor 6.0.5, it still won't fix it ?
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As of this message, I do have 6.0.5 Norton Utilities and I was told that will fix this error under OS 9, or am I missing something ?
That will NOT fix the error AFAIR... you must backup all files and re-initialize the drive
Damn.. That means I will need to format my entire M2 SATA 512GB stick which includes Leopard and OS 9 - wow. If I were to try Norton Disk Doctor 6.0.5, it still won't fix it ?
Actually, if you have Leopard in HD then I recommend Alsoft DiskWarrior 5, it support HFS+ Journaled partitions too. And Alsoft still support G4 and G5 Macs(!) and sell it.
But big warning if you have ruined your disk with Norton then sometimes DiskWarrior cannot help, so order is try Diskwarrior first then Norton, because DiskWarrior tell what it can do, before it do anything.
I have seen older Diskwarrior (maybe version 2) installed on OSX 10.3 live-CD with iMac G3 in action about 15 years ago and it helped make physically broken HD (it made head sound) readable for backup..it make new directory structure and then about half of files readable and it was last time that HD works when those files backup.
EDIT: It seems that Alsoft still sale older DiskWarrior 4 to G3 Macs too:
" If you have an older Mac running Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) through 10.6 (Snow Leopard), you may consider ordering DiskWarrior 4 which ships on a Mac OS X startup CD or DVD. DiskWarrior 4 requires that you start up in Mac OS X version 10.3.9 (Panther) through 10.10.x (Yosemite). DiskWarrior 4 is not compatible with OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) or later. DiskWarrior 4 can only be obtained by first contacting our Technical Support Department" from https://www.alsoft.com/terms-of-sale
EDIT2: BIG WARNING! older DiskWarrior 3 doesn't support HDs that had been used with OSX 10.5.
EDIT3: little typo at > and.
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>Actually, if you have Leopard in HD then I recommend Alsoft DiskWarrior 5
I agree that DiskWarrior 4.3 is indispensible. It works fine on G4 and G5.
DiskWarrior came out it versions 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 and 5.2 (rel 2). On my G4 or G5, each versions starts the rebuild but freezes, and requires a Force Quit. Sometimes it causes a kernal panic.
Have others actually been able to have DiskWarrior 5.2 complete a rebuild?
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Please re-post video with Norton Disk Doctor fix... although I don't recommend disk doctor 6.0.3 on 9.2.2 as it has been known to make some errors on Mac OS 9.2.2 worse :(
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Please re-post video with Norton Disk Doctor fix...
[youtube]O1kEjT6JCwg[/youtube]
There are two drives with an OS 9 partition on each. Mac1 OS 9 is attached to a Firmtek 1s2 clone PCI card, while Backup OS 9 is connected through an IDE/SATA adapter with JMicron chip.
Here I booted from Backup OS 9 to fix Mac1 OS 9. Norton Disk Doctor could fix the problem. But if I boot from Mac1 OS 9 to fix Backup OS 9, Disk Doctor, be it 6.0.3, 6.0.4, or 6.0.5, won't be able to fix it ("an unknown error occurred..."). The adapter is the culprit (or you may say it's the Disk Doctor that can't operate through it). Because when both drives are connected to the PCI card, they can fix each other.
But having both drives on the card creates other problem. System will hang if I copy files between them. It looks like the card doesn't like current Seagate Barracuda drives.
although I don't recommend disk doctor 6.0.3 on 9.2.2 as it has been known to make some errors on Mac OS 9.2.2 worse :(
Acknowledged.
PS. I think this error, specifically one that is caused by OS X's Spotlight and Time Machine, doesn't need to get fixed. It has not caused any problem to me.
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First time I get "Invalid Btree Header, 0, 0" error and I done that very fast:
I put new SSD.
I installed MacOS 9 and OSX 10.2 from Recovery DVD.
I little used Mac OS 9 (I made some tests with mLAN and format external Firewire drive with Lacie Silverlining)
Then I install OSX 10.5 to another partition (Yes I know, I should install OSX10.4 or OSX 10.3).
And in first boot of OS X 10.5 Apple logo turns forbidden logo.
Booting to Mac OS 9 and check with Disk First Aid and there it is: "Invalid Btree Header, 0, 0" error in all(!) partitions.
Both Installation Disks was original. OSX was retail 10.5.0.
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DiskWarrior came out it versions 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 and 5.2 (rel 2). On my G4 or G5, each versions starts the rebuild but freezes, and requires a Force Quit. Sometimes it causes a kernal panic.
Have others actually been able to have DiskWarrior 5.2 complete a rebuild?
Have you get contacted to Alsoft about that problem? And what they answered?
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There are two drives with an OS 9 partition on each.
this is not a general advice how to avid, fix, or ignore b-tree errors, but from my experience you can successfully keep using such partitions for 10 or 15 years without problems even after norton reported such a dramatic total failure error bug kind of thing.
when i an not wrong norton already reports that when you allowed journalling on that volume. (which you should not do when it is mostly used in OS9, but it is also not harmful.)
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where to order a working Firmtek 1s2 clone?
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I've been trying to get an OS9 (separate SSD), 10.4, 10.5 setup on my MDD and have tried both GaryN's approach and Image.Material's.
Mac OS 10.2 (and I assume 10.3) doesn't seem to cause these errors because Spotlight and Time Machine aren't present.
Mac OS 10.4 is fine as long as you install it and disable Spotlight before creating OS9 drives with the following steps:
1. Launch Terminal and run the following command:
sudo nano /etc/hostconfig
2. Scroll to the bottom with the down arrow key to the following entry:
SPOTLIGHT=-YES-
3. Change this to:
SPOTLIGHT=-NO-
4. Save your changes by pressing Control + O, then press the return key.
Next press the key combination Control + X to close the editor.
5. Next, disable indexing by typing:
sudo mdutil -i off- I assume GaryN's approach would work for 10.4, this is how I set it up before I came across this post.
Mac OS 10.5 I had a lot more trouble with, the Invalid Btree Header error would come about just from booting for the first time into Leopard and restarting into OS9. I tried GaryN's solution by excluding the OS9 drives from Spotlight and Time Machine but this install of Leopard seemed to be much more stubborn, it would cause disk errors no matter how I did this.
Image.Material's solution has worked for me in this case. By running the commands below the OS9 drives are set to read-only within OSX, while leaving them writable to OS9.
Here's how I set this up:
- Install OSX 10.5 on one partition
- Install OSX 10.4 on another partition
- Boot into OSX 10.4 and disable Spotlight with the steps above
- Boot an OS9 installer and format OS9 only drives, then install the system
- Run Disk First Aid to ensure there are no disk errors
- Boot OSX 10.4 (with spotlight previously disabled)
Open terminal and run the command below and copy the drive's UUID:
diskutil info /Volumes/yourOS9drivename
Then run the following command, but substitute "Leopard" with your 10.5 drive's name:
sudo nano /Volumes/Leopard/etc/fstab
Add this line to prevent Leopard from writing to the OS9 drive:
UUID=YOURCOPIEDUUID none hfs ro
Press Control + O to save changes, and the Control + X to exit the editor
When you boot into Leopard the drives should be read-only. They will be writable under OS9.
This has been working well for me and has stopped these errors from occurring. Be sure to boot into 10.4 and repeat the above steps again if you erase a drive.
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You can also try forensic tool called 'Disk Arbitrator' to prevent mounting or mount drives as read only.
https://github.com/aburgh/Disk-Arbitrator
Version v0.4.0 is the last one containing PPC code.
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I've been trying to get an OS9 (separate SSD), 10.4, 10.5 setup on my MDD and have tried both GaryN's approach and Image.Material's.
Mac OS 10.2 (and I assume 10.3) doesn't seem to cause these errors because Spotlight and Time Machine aren't present.
Mac OS 10.4 is fine as long as you install it and disable Spotlight before creating OS9 drives with the following steps:
There were so many referrals to this subject over years that I can't remember every single detail of every one of my posts about it.
In OSX 10.4 for Spotlight and 10.5 for both including Time Machine, unless you never boot or use OSX – and I know there are those who don't – both Spotlight and TM are easily locked out of the OS9 volume in OSX prefs… no typing required.
Also, TM doesn't even begin to cause a problem unless/until you enable it, specify a BU Volume etc and allow it to start cataloging everything for the initial backup.
When you first boot OSX with a newer or older OS9 Volume present, or any other volume, it will invariably take notice of it and write itself a little invisible note in the "new" Volume Directory. This is not the problem… in fact you want this to be so or else the OS9 Volume won't even appear in OSX and OSX won't be able to read the OS9 Directory at all. It won't even appear on the OSX Desktop and you won't be able to access any files or move anything to or from the OS9 Volume.
So again, at first OSX boot in 10.4, Spotlight will immediately start to read the OS9 Directory and if allowed time, will begin indexing the files. That is what must be prevented because on the first OS9 boot, it will be seen by the OS9 Finder as corruption and the OS will try to "fix" it. On the next OSX boot, the "fix" will be seen by OSX as corruption and it will fix the fix. OSX will not have a problem but go back on OS9 and it will be seen a serious B-Tree error.
Neither OS9 Disk Repair or Norton-anything or Uncle's Joe's Magic OS9 Repair can "fix" the UNIX-derived gobbledegook simply because all of them pre-date OSX and they've never even seen this stuff before.
If you simply go to OSX prefs immediately after this "first" OSX boot and tell Spotlight to not index OS9, that's all it takes to stop all the insanity before it starts. If it's 10.5, you then take the opportunity to lock out TM the same way, even if you're not using it just to prevent trouble in case you decide to use it in the future. I've never found it necessary to resort to anything more than this.
It's really that simple as long as you don't forget to do it.
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It's really that simple as long as you don't forget to do it.
in theory it sounds in simple.
in practice people have 30 harddisks and whenever you attach a new one under OSX for the first time, you have to remember to excude it in the spotlight prefs.
if anyone knows how to remove or competely turn off spotlight and or the coreservice or deamon which does the indexing shit in 10.4, let me know.
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if anyone knows how to remove or completely turn off spotlight and or the coreservice or deamon which does the indexing shit in 10.4, let me know.
(http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2830.0;attach=13456;image)
[NOT Schrödinger's cat.] IIO’s Cat. 8)
Or Gary' sudo mdutil -i off ;)
See next post below.
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It's really that simple as long as you don't forget to do it.
in theory it sounds in simple.
in practice people have 30 harddisks and whenever you attach a new one under OSX for the first time, you have to remember to excude it in the spotlight prefs.
if anyone knows how to remove or competely turn off spotlight and or the coreservice or deamon which does the indexing shit in 10.4, let me know.
Personally, I've never met anybody with anywhere close to 30 HDDs strung like Xmas tree lights on a Mac old enough to run OS9!
If you do, congratulations. That's got to be some kind of record. ;D ;D
I honestly can't imagine why or how one can possibly have all those as active resources without some kind of seriously capable search utility exactly like Spotlight to index and search thru them. Sherlock2 is a forerunner of Spotlight that pretty much works - I use it myself - but I would never imagine it functioning smoothly over 30 HDDs of data. But hey, as they say, YMMV…
If you have an OS9 3rd-party search app or such that works that well, let me know. I'd like to try it. I could certainly make something out of Filemaker or such but that would require constant manual updating which would just be silly.
Personally (again since that's all anyone can draw from) after going through the hair-pulling aggravation of have to trash a disk full of data and restart from scratch a couple of times, I learned my lesson and I have absolutely no problem whatsoever remembering to lock those nasty OSX utilities out if and when I introduce a new OS9 Volume to the mix… but I guess that's just me and I have only a few of them and they don't come and go regularly.
BUT… if you really want to sacrifice the use of Spotlight within your OSX volume(s), it's easy.
sudo mdutil -i off
OH wow! aBc just pointed out Greystash already went there…… before you asked for it. Must be some kind of time paradox!
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OH wow! aBc just pointed out Greystash already went there…… before you asked for it. Must be some kind of time paradox!
Hey Gary… Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum. (aBc grins)
Think we might need a bit of levity 'round here lately?
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:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
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I only had a chance to read a portion of this thread. Some of this is redundant to most reading this.
Attached is a photo of the files you need to trash in Leopard to disable Spotlight forever. Also attached is a great search utility Easyfind which searches invisible files as well as contents. Command Prompts aren't my cup of tea. I prefer a hammer blow to send things bye-bye.
Format a drive and install OS9 drivers in one shot with Leopard's own Drive Setup. The drive must be externally connected for the OS9 driver option to show up. Choose Apple Partition Map and size as many partitions you need. Done.
Connect the drive to your OS9 machine. You may now have a few empty folders visible at the top level. Delete them or erase the disk in HFS or HFS+. Drag copy your preferred System Folder to the new drive (Do not copy OS9 system files in OSX). Drag out the Finder to any other location and then drag it back into the System Folder to "bless" it.
Years ago I stopped checking and attempting to repair the b-tree , and since haven't had problems swapping firewire drives or transfering files over the Appletalk/ethernet network.
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Personally, I've never met anybody with anywhere close to 30 HDDs strung like Xmas tree lights on a Mac old enough to run OS9!
it is enough to connect one single additional harddrive, which does not even need to be your own, to cause the issues with spotlight when you forget to exclude that volume from indexing.
I honestly can't imagine why or how one can possibly have all those as active resources without some kind of seriously capable search utility exactly like Spotlight to index and search thru them.
for me personally filename and date is all i need to search for. good catalog searches search disks once and then you can search offline, which then takes 5 seconds for 10 million files.
though i have to add that you normally also have some kind of sorting system which prevents you from not knowing on which disk something could be. so of course you index and search disk by disk.
if you have 30 disks you do not write new files onto them on a daily basis. :)
sherlock belongs in the trash after installations just like spotlight and itunes do, too.
regarding "OSX volumes" and "OS9 volumes"... if i would not like to share all disks between both systems, i would not use the same computer for them.
sudo mdutil -i off
that´s the one, thanks.
seems much easier than disabling disks one by one.
it would even feel better to remove the services involved from the system, so that it can´t be switched back on by those little green men who usually live inside apple products.
this cat seems familiar... if only i could remember...
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Years ago I stopped checking and attempting to repair the b-tree , and since haven't had problems swapping firewire
not using norton disk destroyer at all and/or ignoring (most) "errors" you get informed about is another important tip. i have to admit that i still have norton stuff installe,d but i think it is >10 years ago that i ran some of them.
with HDDs i loved to use defrag 1-2 times per year, but today where disks are all bigger than 500mb, it wont work anyway.
the best mass storage care plan is to back up all files every 4-5 years by copying things from one disk to another, folder by folder, under OSX (since it is a bit faster), then do a tech check of the HD, if it is ok, reformat the HD and copy things back. this way you will also find out about file integrity and readability.
i do the same with ancient CD backups every 20 years. (and yes, you might not believe it, but about 1 out of 20,000 files from your old CDs are no longer readable. it is not only that the file might be lost, it is also a pita to find it: if there is a single file not readable, you can no longer copy the CD content as a whole. that alone requires to "fix" it.)
all on BD M-Disk now. as 500mb toast images, one per former CD.
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sherlock belongs in the trash after installations just like spotlight and itunes do, too.
Exactly! Great minds think alike, heh? :D
If you take the old search application 'Find File' from OS7, move it over to OS9 and rename it 'Sherlock2', search will work just like in the old days. And it will be blazing fast. That's what I've been using since forever.
In OSX, there's an app that works in a similar fashion and even looks like the old 'Find File'. That's what I use today.
Brilliant stuff, very powerful and very fast.
https://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/ (https://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/)
btw, sudo mdutil -i off only turns off indexing. To disable it, you have to use this one:
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
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So, from what i have read in this post, OS X and OS9 together are causing the issue...
Now, what about a BTree error that is strictly OS9? as in no OS X anywhere on this machine? X is not allowed on this mac at all, i have other machines that deal with X when i need it. How do i repair the error then?
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Disk Warrior or Norton. In that order. Booted from another drive.
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downloaded and burned norton 6 (from mac garden) on the mdd, but when i tried to boot it, it didn't want to boot. so currently i'm booted into 9 and norton is doing a slow check on the drive now.
as of writing this, norton found the error, and it's asking to fix it but i'm still booted into os 9. if all else fails, i will strip out the old drives and throw in an ssd partitioned to 2 drives and just redo what i have
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You should have used Disk Warrior first, as I wrote. Norton has a tendency to screw up things sometimes.
If Norton is slow, turn off 'checking for bad blocks' or 'media scan' in preferences.
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@reddrag0n
After you have “repaired” the Invalid Btree Header error with Disk Warrior (with and or in conjunction with Norton Disk Doctor) would you kindly check, test and monitor the drive over the next couple of weeks and report if it in fact remains “repaired”?
And also… if you eventually convert to an SSD too?
There are many reported instances in the past where these errors have supposedly been repaired - only to find that soon thereafter, the errors again reappear.
Thanks.
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after norton found the error, it crashed. twice...
i said "eff it" and am converting everything over to a single ssd. take the 3 heat generating drives out and leave the single ssd in.
should be faster and hopefully kill my boot time in half. before with the hdd it would take about 2 min to boot into os 9. been like that since i installed the drives. so maybe this will fix it all *fingers crossed*
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Yee-ikes!
Maybe run Apple Hardware Test… if available for whatever machine you’re working with.
Usually, I could always get Disk Doctor to repair and report a-OK, but then eventually back to same errors.
Often ended up just reformatting with Drive Setup 2.1 and then clean installing OS 9.2.2.
But running AHT (if possible) can help identify other possible problems. Best of luck.
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Yee-ikes!
Maybe run Apple Hardware Test… if available for whatever machine you’re working with.
no, the mac didn't crash, norton did
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no, the mac didn't crash, norton did
Many swore off of using Norton soon after the arrival of OS X and some (moi) still use it exclusively on OS 9 partitions, drives, etc.
And if you check the “Diagnostic CD Images & TechTools” download area here: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?board=33.0 / there are two versions of “Mactron’s Bootable Rescue CD & Disk Repair” that both contain a usable version of Norton. (As well as Drive Setup 2.1 - I believe.)
There are also many specific versions of AHT there in that download area as well. ;)
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Many swore off of using Norton soon after the arrival of OS X and some (moi) still use it exclusively on OS 9 partitions, drives, etc.
Hear! Hear!