Mac OS 8.5 and 'The Case of the Disappearing Hard Drives'
HERE'S ONE for Apple's much ballyhooed new Sherlock search utility: "The Case of The Disappearing Hard Drives."
It appears the newest version of Apple's flagship operating system (or OS) has bugs which may cause files and even entire drives to disappear after upgrading to Mac OS 8.5.
"Life is HELL with a brand new Mac PowerBook 266 and Mac OS 8.5!" wrote Mac devotee Kevin Callahan on the MacInTouch web site.
"It's not the blazing speed; it's not the incredible performance enhancements of 8.5's native code; it's not the innumerable features
proffered by the latest MacOS release; it's not the most gorgeous display you have ever seen which causes Wintel users to open their wallets and pay for a sex change; it's the stinkin' driver corruption! In less than 10 days, I have TWICE been forced to reformat and rebuild my drive from scratch...
"I think I will return this thing and sell my stock on Monday."
Another Macophile, Richard Kelly, described the symptoms reported by many. "Just thought I'd let you know that I also experienced the 8.5 hard drive kiss of death... with the last fatal problem block 0 corruption with loss of the Master Data Block."
From the postings on MacInTouch, it appears that most of the people who have lost hard drives previously used third-party tools to reformat or partition their hard drives.
Most of these people were able to get their drives and their files back after some scrambling. You can read their accounts at
macintouch.com.
There are also multiple reports of other problems, including:
PowerBooks and FWB's Hard Disk ToolKit losing files after upgrading to OS 8.5
Microsoft Word 6.01a not working after upgrading to OS 8.5
Folder icons gradually disappearing from Finder windows after upgrading to OS 8.5
Both MacInTouch and BugNet have issued advisories on Mac OS 8.5, suggesting that users delay upgrading important systems "until the problems are isolated and resolved."
On October 28, Apple spokeswoman Staci Sheppard said, "We are aware of reports of damage to some hard disks [associated with Mac OS 8.5], and we are thoroughly investigating the cause of the problem."
Meanwhile, former Mac clone maker Umax has revealed it discovered the "rare" but "severe" problem before the October 17 release of Mac OS 8.5.
– Bruce Kratofil and Bruce Brown
bugnet.com
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