DriveGauge - 3.1

Here in detail is what happened to me!

I installed it into my Macintoch PowerBook G3 PDQ Running with a Sonnet G3 Processor Upgrade with 512 MB of RAM.

My Internal HDD was formatted as follows:

1st Partition HFS+ (Journaled) 7.99 GB in size running Mac OS X 10.4.11, (courtesy of XPostFacto 4.0).

2nd Partition HFS+ (Journaled) 6 GB in size running Mac OS 9.2.2.

3rd Partition HFS+ (Journaled) 61 GB in size, (used for Storage and compatible Applications).

I also had 2 Xcarét Pro internal Bay Drives, manufactured by MCE Technologies installed.

One was formatted as follows:

1st partition HFS+ (Journaled) 7.99 GB in size running Mac OS X 10.2.8 (able to be booted using XPostFacto's Helper Disk Option).

2nd Partition HFS+ (Journaled) 10 GB in size running Mac OS 9.2.2.

The other was formatted as follows:

1st partition HFS+ (Journaled) 7.99 GB in size running Mac OS X 10.3.9

2nd Partition HFS+ (Journaled) 6 GB in size running Mac OS 9.2.2.

3rd Partition HFS+ (Journaled) 61 GB in size (used for Storage).

I launched the DriveGauge.dmg & installed it,Next, I read the DriveGauge - Read Me First file. Here it told me that all my Hard Drive icons had to have .icns added to the end of their names. I clicked the 'Command' 'I' keys on each of my drives, added the .icns to the end of each and as I closed them I got a warning from the System asking me if I wanted to replace the last 3 digits of each Hard Drive's icon with .icns and that doing so may make these Volumes appear as Files instead of Volumes.

I should have heed this dire warning! Instead, I clicked yes to each and launched the DG 3.2 Setup Assistant, followed its instructions, then after it finished, I launched DriveGauge...

After a short while DriveGauge opened the Hard drive list and I proceed to select my mounted Hard Drive's icons and apply the gauges to them. I found that DriveGauge froze as I was almost done doing this, and that eventually it did complete its verification and update the Hard drive icons.

I was disappointed it the very slow performance of DriveGauge, but being a patient person I was prepared for the lengthy waits.

To see what would happened, I next selected to restart from the blue Apple menu. All seemed well upon the restarting of Mac OS 10.4.11 I opened a few Hard Drive Icons and went through some folders and all seem okay.

Fooled into believing that all was well, I decided to shut down. As a precaution I always select via XPostFacto 4.0 to reboot into the internal Hard Drives 2nd Partition running Mac OS 9.2.2 because this system is the natural default one for this PowerBook. In this manner I protect my installations of OS X from inadvertent damage, should my Battery fail to connect fully while shut down.

Oh was I surprised when I booted my PowerBook! At first things seemed normal. However when it was time for the Hard drives to start to appear on the desktop, things went horribly dead wrong! Instead of having my hard drives appear on the desktop, I has horrified to have an open white blank system error window appear and then nothing else at all. I was stuck! I was only able to move a useless cursor around a basically blank screen. No amount of force restarting changed this. I was unable to access any installations of Mac OS X as I had to first boot successfully into Mac OS 9.2.2 to be able to launch XPostFacto to do this.

Next I Force Shut down my PowerBook, removed an Xcarét Pro internal Bay Drive and inserted the CD drive and attempted to boot into Mac OS 9.2.2 from a bootable CD of this System. No success! The only difference was that instead of encountering an open white blank system error window, I instead had the clock shaped cursor, endlessly doing nothing.

Next, realizing that if I could somehow boot into Mac OS X via the first Jaguar install CD, (as without being able to launch XpostFacto, that was the ONLY way I could boot into any version of OS X) that maybe I could fix the problem enough to boot properly using the Jaguar install CD's Disk Utility Application. So I did this. Disk Utility found all my Hard Drives and even displayed them with the DriveGauge icon gauges on them. However when I attempted to repair the Hard Drives I encountered 'incorrect leaf node counts' and the statement that the numbers were far below what they should be! These 'incorrect leaf node counts' were repaired using Disk Utility all except for the internal Hard Drives 2nd Partition. Here Disk Utility said that it had repaired the 'incorrect leaf node counts' when in fact they still showed up after the 'repair' was completed.

Hoping that I had at least 'fixed' the problem enough to reboot into Mac OS 9.2.2, I quit Disk Utility, shut down My PowerBook, ejected the first Jaguar install CD and tried to boot into Mac OS 9.2.2.

NO! That wasn't going to happen! I still encountered the open white blank system error window! What was I to do now? Reinstall all my software entirely from scratch! Out of pure desperation I decided to try the following:

1) Shut down, remove all Power, (batteries etc) from PowerBook

2) Remove the internal Hard Drive and replace it with a small 2 GB Hard drive formatted with an installation of Mac OS 8.6

3) Re supply power to the PowerBook & boot into Mac OS 8.6

4) Insert the internal Hard Drive into an Xcarét Pro internal Bay Drive.

5) insert this Xcarét Pro internal Bay Drive into the PowerBook and wait for the Hard Drives to launch onto the screen.

Success! they all mounted onto the Desktop of Mac OS 8.6! All the Hard Drives still displayed the DriveGauge icons with the gauges on them. next to attempt to repair the problem I selected each Hard Drives name and removed the .icns from the end of them and replaced the custom icons with backed up copies I had made as a precaution.

6) Next swap the internal Hard drive formatted with Mac OS 8.6 with the original Hard Drive formatted with Mac OS X 10.4.11 and 9.2.2

7) Next reboot into Mac OS 9.2.2 then Mac OS X 10.4.11 via XPostFacto.

I thought all was well but I wasn't sure, so I ran Disk Utility from an external SCSI hard Drive formatted with Mac OS X 10.4.11 and I encountered an incorrect number of extended attributes. These Disk Utility repaired. Next as a further precaution I launched DiskWarrior 4.0 and replaced the directories of all my Hard Drives. DiskWarrior discovered and then repaired a myriad of errors and missing pieces of the System as well as many files and folders. Very fortunately all of them were replaced into their proper places by DiskWarrior and nothing was left to be put into Rescued Items Folders.

What a lot to go through all because of a free Application that otherwise would have been cool to use. I was fortunate to have had enough experience to realize hoe to repair the damage. More novice Mac owners would probably have had to do a complete reinstall!

I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS APPLICATION TO ANYONE! Not at least until there is a fix to the necessity of having to add .icns to your crucial hard Drive icons names!

First time I ran it, it unexpectedly quit. Second time it applied the icon to the wrong drive. 3.2 might be a little bit optimistic, as far as version numbers. I love the idea, but if it doesn't even work I can hardly recommend it.