invisible disks, time machine restore failed... and snow everywhere

[crow12]

First I'd like to say hello to everyone here. And wish a happy good year, too.

Second, let me introduce briefly myself: I am french (nobody's perfect :biggrin: )
I love macs and I've been a newbie for about 15 years. The problem is I think Macs don't love me.
Third : why post on a non french forum? Just because i've been doing that for a while and it led me nowhere. Plus, more and more people on these sites tend to despise newbies and be rude. I don't feel welcome anymore.
I'm a little bit fed up with answers like "read the FAQ, search the forum, and so on.
Obviously I did, but it failed. And it takes hours to browse a forum. There aren't two similar issues from our naive point of view. Being a MD, I believe there aren't two identical diseases nor two identical patients.

That is why I rather take a chance elsewhere, hoping someone could help me, maybe just by advising me on where to find what i need to fix my problem.

Well, to cut a long story short, and for the brave ones that have read this post so far, here goes my problem:

Machine : Powermac G5 dual processor with 4 GB RAM. Two internal hard drives (160 GB primary supposed boot disc (A) and 1TB with 2 partitions (B &C). 1TB time capsule managing the backup of the first disk and the smaller partition of the other.
Connected via dsl ethernet. Mac OS 10.5.8

Problem : after my girlfriend try to download a brutal amount of data (16 GB) while there was not enough space on the disk (A), a crash occurred. Then I tried rebooting from a (old version) of disk warrior disk image and perform a repair. The result was catasrophic as the whole system then kernelpanicked on me each time i tried to boot. Until I found the installer DVD.
Thanx to it, i've been able to boot.
Then I erased A, reinstalled OS X from the DVD on A and on B.
Performed a "restore from backup" on A.

Since then :"A" won't boot (little grey wheel spinning and computer very noisy)
B works for booting, but won't show in finder, neither does C.
I tried disk utility, told me every drives appeared to work OK.
I tried fsck in single mode : same answer.

Where did I go wrong
If anyone has an idea, welcome he (or she) is.
Thanks really.

 

[Walrus666]

Hello,
Exactly, what was restored from backup to disc A?
If after an erase & install of the operating system disc A boots up, I would merely boot up, update, repair permissions, and manually transfer my Pictures, Documents, Music and Movie folders to the new Home folder, then reinstall my apps from scratch.

 

[crow12]

Thanx for your anwer.
What I did on disk A was a "restore from backup" in the utilities menu of the installer disk.
Then a window prompted me to select which disk i would like to backup from. I chose Lenin (that was the name of my computer) on "Data" volume in time capsule backup to disk A.
Then it worked for quite a long time.
After that was done, I had almost everything I expected on disk, including applications, documents, etc..
Good ! , i thought, before I realized only my admin account was present (my girlfriend's, son's, guest, cousin's, limo chauffeur's and others (joking ) disappeared).
Plus no way to boot from it.
I have to boot from B which won't show in finder, along with C).

So I believe i'd better do as you suggest.
By the way, what does "reinstall applications from scratch" mean ?

 

[Walrus666]

"By the way, what does "reinstall applications from scratch" mean ?"
"From scratch" is a phrase that means "without utilizing or relying on any previous work for assistance."

 

[crow12]

OK, merci. Sorry for asking silly questions.
My english is not so good, i'm afraid.

 

[Walrus666]

On the contrary, not only was your question not silly, but your English is quite good.
Is disc A functioning as it should?

 

[crow12]

Merci again, Walrus !
I was just feeling a little bit concerned about the matter, as it happens sometimes.

I didn't have time yet to fix disc A according to your advice, because I had to rush to northern Brittany for work reasons, but i'll be back in Nantes on next week-end and try to tame the beast.
I'll keep you informed, then.

 

[crow12]

OK, another clumsily half-fixed problem.

I erased A and reistalled the OS from the DVD.
I found B & C by showing hidden files and folders. The problem seemed to be there are not mounted in right place. A is at /. while the others are at /Volumes/xxxx

What I did was make aliases and place them on my desktop.

Does it sound any good for you, experts ?

In the meanwhile, time capsule has insidiously erased almost all my previous backups.
Thus sending most of my favorite files to who knows where.
It seems to me that either Time Machine is a cursed piece of filth (or is possessed by Micro$oft demons), or it misbehaves with PPC based Macs.

Thanks again anyway.