All the troubleshooting assistance found here has been re-written and updated
in my Macintosh Troubleshooting book: 'Fix a troubled Mac'
Available to purchase ($15), from the KAGI online store.
These Procedures are for any Macintosh that can boot into Mac OS 9.2.2 or earlier.
If you need Mac OS X bootable only Support, go
here
Problematic, unreadable, unrecognised format
or hard disk locked Issues
- Verify that the correct USB/PCCard/Firewire or adaptec SCSI or Iomega driver is installed.
- Check that latest driver is updated and any interfaces have the newest firmware (if applicable)
- Check that the correct hard disk driver is 'formatted' with correct utility for the MacOS used.
- If disk is HFS+ you need to Boot off MacOS 8.1 or later. To convert HFS to HFS+ use Plusmaker.
- Restart & Boot off CD-ROM, run Diskwarrior to fix any 'volume wrapper' issues and to 'preview' volume
- backup essential data & preferences before 'optimising' or 'repairing' disk directories
- scan media check & MBD/wrapper etc (REPORT mode only) using Nortons Disk Doctor (v5.0.2 or later)
- defragment disk with Nortons Speed Disk (v5.0.2 or later) with 'Check Media' option turn ON
- An Invisible Disk can be made visible with Alsoft's Make Visible utility
- If Disk cannot be 'unlocked', run Nortons Disk Editor to 'low level edit the bits value' and write to disk.
(WARNING: make sure you know what you are doing before try this)