Help Please: disk errors with FMPDev 5.5 (MacOS9x)

[xandra]

I'm frequently getting disk errors something like: "Sorry, unable to read/write to disk..can't find blocks".

There's seems to be no particular activity which seems to generate the error.

Occassionally db's opened at the time, need to be recovered.

I'd suspect True disk errors, BUT:

I only experience these probs in FMP.

I've NEVER had any sort of read/write error (Finder or other Apps)

I've run numerous testing utilities (Tech Tool, Disk Warrior etc) and none can find problems...

I reinstalled FMP and trashed the pref's - which at first appeared to resolve the problems, but alas they returned

I'm somewhat leary of the fact the ancient "Microsoft Ole" is still used by FMP and may conflict with the more recent components install by Office/IE.

I hesitate to reinitialize my 80 gig disk over what may really be an FMP issue

Any ideas?

[kenneth2k1]

An iMac I know of was getting read/write errors which ended up being a bad sector on the HDD. Disk Warrior did not detect it. Tech Tool Pro found the bad sector.

If it is a bad HDD, you may not notice the error with other programs because those programs may not reside on the bad sector. Just to be sure, I would reinstall FM, or backup the entire drive and reformat the disk.

Ken

[Kurt Knippel]

Something else that will pretty much indicate the bad sector thing is to make a copy of the files and then open those copies and see if the problem goes away.

Since the new files will ocupy totally different sectors on the HDD, it will indicate whether the problem is file or disk related.

[xandra]

Thanks, I've considered Bad sector issues --

(It's been the lack of problems with any other programs, files on this disk that's made me wonder about software issues)

I am about to:

1. Reinstall FMP (on another disk)

2. copy some DB's (again to another disk - and also to same disk tho I'm quite sure I tried that)

Thanks again, will report back shortly.

xandra

[xandra]

Hopefully the last report on this issue...

I didn't get error messages while working with a few DB's on another disk (though can't say I put it thru very serious testing).

So, I went ahead and reinitialized the "bad disk" (zeroing out all data - to ensure any bad blocks got mapped out.) Will see if this does the trick.

Unfortunately the "disk error messages" were erratic , so I expect it will be some time before I can really feel confident with my DB's.

However, I just had a hard crash using Explorer (THE ONLY APP capable of bringing down my machine) So if problems suddenly reoccur -- my prime suspect will be the OLE extensions...

Thanks for the help,

xandra

[kenneth2k1]

Unfortuantely, disk problems are not always eliminated by simply formatting the disk. There may be surface errors that cannot be fixed and if they become too many, the disk will not be operational. Not saying that your disk is definitely trashed, but if you get frequent disk errors, it may be time to replace it.

Ken