Mac OS X - Disk gone AWOL

AAAAAAAAARGH!

I have a Mac G4 running Mac OS X Panther. It has two hard drives in it. One of these is partitioned into four segments. It has Mac OS 9 and Mas OS X 10.1 on it (Original disk). The second is also partitioned and has the later version of Mac OS X on it 10.3 etc Panther. There are also a couple of data partitions on this disk. Now when I start up I get the smiley mac (as if it's going to load OS 9) but this then gives way to the OS X 10.1 start up screen and (sometimes) a message saying that I have started up with a disk with no volumes that can be read by OS X -Continue or Initialise (I continue).
None of the partitions on the second disk come up and they don't show up in Disk Utility (when loaded from the HD)... but does show up in the Disk Utilty when opened from the installation CD - but the Verify and Repair options are greyed out.

Any ideas on how I can mount or repair this disk?

Andrew

www.google.com

Originally posted by Santa Drummer
www.google.com

Yes tried that, was hoping there were some mac experts on this site...

With two drives, maybe you ought to have set up a RAID system.

Have you tried the Mac forums already? This problem must have occured by other people before. Apple has one on it's own domain (http://discussions.info.apple.com/index.jspa), and there is a Dutch one (forum.macosx.nl), surely they will be helpfull and open to any English questions.

I don't know any Mac OS X but had a quick google.
It sounds like you have boot problems and it looks like following command may be useful:


bless

/usr/sbin/bless is used to set volume bootability characteristics for Macintoshes. The command can be used to select a folder on a mounted volume to act as the blessed system folder, and optionally update Open Firmware to boot from that volume. It can also be used to format and setup a volume for the first time. Finally, it can be used to query the folder(s) that are blessed on a volume. Try the following (non-destructive) commands:

% sudo bless -verbose -info /
...
% sudo bless -verbose -plist -info /


So if you can, try and run this command and in particular to check the second drive boot setup.

Originally posted by Aiko
...surely they will be HELPFULL and open to any ENGLISH questions.

They may make room for one more. Particularly if they can understand his English 😵