From Newsgroup: uk.comp.sys.mac

I've survived an HD crash - although recovery took a lot of work.

Luckily I had noticed a few odd glitches, which I attributed to a dodgy connection on the SATA data cable (one of the same make failed a few
years ago), so at the end of each day I had backed-up any significant
changes to my work files. I have the System on a separate partition, so although I kept a backup System copy, I didn't bother updating it
because it didn't change much.

Whan the crash came, the computer automatically reverted to the backed
up copies of the System and Data. I ordered a SSD as a replacement for
the HD, as there is hardly any difference in price nowadays between a
spinning disc and a solid state drive. (I don't think it will make the
beige G3 significantly faster.)

The failed drive would run in read-only mode in a SATA-to-usb cradle
connected to the Mac Mini, so I was able to make further security copies
of both partitions. I transferred the System folder to a USB stick, so
that I could load it onto the new drive, just in case I had altered any
of those files since I made the original security copy.

I installed the new drive and some new cables, but had great difficulty
getting it to work as the startup drive. The system appeared to boot
from it, then suddenly restarted and booted from the backup drive. It
has taken a lot of experimenting to discover that the original failure
was due to corrupted Finder preferences - which, of course, I had
dutifully copied to the new SSD.

Copying the System from my backup HD partition eventually solved the
problem - so everything is now up and working again.
--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk
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