Disk Warrior for a small portable HD. Why won't this work?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve got a Smartdisk brand “FireLite” 40 gig HD. Used only on Macs. I use Tiger. ( 10.4.9 )

I can NOT get Disk Warrior to do anything with this hard drive. The drive seems to work fine, and has for quite a while ( I’ve had it maybe 18 months ) but I cannot run the software. Therefore, I cannot rebuild and clean the Directories, make sure it is functioning smoothly and most importantly, rebuild and defrag the Hard Drive files.

Any idea why this might be happening? I can do it on my LaCie 120 Gig HD just fine and that’s wicked old compared to the Smartdrive.

Cartooniverse

2

Does DiskWarrior fail to list the volume at all?

If it lists it, what, explicitly, happens, when you select that volume and say “sic’em boy”? Does DiskWarrior go down in beachballs? Does the progress bar jam midway across? Does it go all the way to the other side and then DW tosses an error message about being unable to do jackshit with this volume? Does it get so far as to report diffs between the rebuld directory and the original and what it says is that there’s nothing on this drive?

3

It sees it but it is “grayer” than the HD on the laptop. It says, " This disk does not appear on the desktop" which is odd because it mounts properly and I use it incessantly on this laptop and it always appears visibly and electronically on the desktop.

I am able to tell it to Rebuild. It has found problems in the “wrapper”. It goes as far as Rebuidling the Directory.

Then, it fails and the error reads as follows: ( colors are accurate)

[quote]
Disk Warrior has successfully built a new directory for the disk named " FireLite 40GB". The new directory cannot replace the original directory because of a disk malfunction.

Try rebuilding again. If this problem persists, please restart from the Disk Warrior CD and then try rebuilding again.

The origianl directory is severely damaged and it was necessary to scavenge the directory to find file and folder data.

Some file and folder data may be missing, and some files that have been lost or thrown away may have been recovered.

  • All errors in the directory structure such as tree depth, header node, map nodes, node counts, node links, indexes and more have been repaired.

  • 2 missing folders had to be recreated.

  • 2 folders had an incorrect item count that was repaired.

  • The Root creation date was repaired.

  • Incorrect values in the Volume Information was repaired.

  • Critical values in the Volume Information were incorrect and were repaired.

  • The Boot Blocks are damaged and will be repaired after replacing the directory.

So. All of this nice work was done and none of it matters because the Directory cannot be replaced. Before this thing shits for good, as it is my primary backup, I am feeling like I need to buy another small HD and back this puppy uppy.

Thoughts?

4

Wound up transferring all data off to another external drive. Mounted that irksome HD again, and went into Disk Utility and went to Partition. Lo and behold I find that way back when, for some ungodly reason, it was partitioned as a Windows HD.

I wiped it, re-partitioned as an OS-X drive and now it’s right as rain.

Live and learn.

5

Hmm, that didn’t occur to me. Live and learn, as you say.