dariusd wrote: Yep, it's a bad HD. Quoth vm-05-30-13.8566.tgz/var/log/system.log:
May 30 12:31:39 kernel[0]: disk0s2: I/O error.
May 30 12:59:34 kernel[0]: disk0s2: I/O error.
May 30 13:01:03 kernel[0]: disk0s2: I/O error.
May 30 13:02:28 kernel[0]: disk0s2: I/O error.
May 30 13:03:11 kernel[0]: disk0s2: I/O error.
While I/O errors are indicative of a bad HDD nonetheless "bad" is a relative term in that some HDD manufactures provide utilities like Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test (DFT) that not only preform the low level test it also is capable of writing out the bad sectors thus rendering the HDD useful. However personally in most cases even if any manufactures DFT is capable of writing out the bad sectors thus rendering the HDD useful I wouldn't continue to use it for other then temporary storage knowing that it may continue to develop more bad sectors.
The point I'm making is until the proper utilities are run on the HDD it is not officially "bad" as I've had DFT write out the bad sectors and continued to use many HDD's like that for years.
Unfortunately on a Mac the HDD would need to be removed and temporarily placed in a PC to use the Manufactures DFT.