My iBook hard drive crapped out

[Awsi Dooger]

Very suddenly a couple of nights ago. First major hardware problem I've had on a Mac, dating to my first Macs, a Quadra 610 Dos Compatible and Powerbook 145B, both in maybe '93.

I got a spinning beach ball on Firefox. Didn't think much of it. After a restart, in fact a very slow restart, the same thing happened on Safari. Couldn't force quit or anything. No system response. I had to do a hard shut down by pushing the power button.

At that point I knew it had to be hard drive related so I immediately summoned my firewire drive and tried to restart and copy a few things that I hadn't backed up. No luck. The iBook wouldn't start via the internal hard drive, any of the startup disks, or the firewire drive. It kept getting held up at, "Waiting for local disks." Even the Apple Hardware Test CD wouldn't load. I stayed up until 6 AM with one failure after another, including single user mode and other keyboard tricks. I tried Target Disk Mode to my desktop with no success.

The next day I turned on the iBook and was treated to a remarkable audio display -- loud squealing and grinding from the main hard drive. The previous night there had been nothing of the sort. None of the boot disks worked except Apple Hardware Test, which reported error 2STF/1/4. A quick check of the internet revealed that is a fatal error message indicating a dead drive. The noises are long gone. It doesn't threaten to spin.

I went to the Apple Store the next day. They confirmed it as dead, and want $350 to replace the thing with the EXACT 30 GB shitty Toshiba hard drive :rofl:

No, I didn't purchase Apple Care. I'm a gambler and prioritize probability and value. Why do you think they gleefully offer and promote it? Apple comes out way ahead on Apple Care.

The iBook is 2.5 years old, so apparently I fared better than many have with the lousy Toshiba drive. I'm going to choose between a Seagate Momentus 5400 or 7200 drive, at least 80 GB, depending on the best deal in the next two weeks before my summer trip. Then I'll undertake the lengthy and ambitious task of replacing the hard drive in a 12 inch iBook. I just checked on iFixit. It's a 21 page print out with numerous steps including dozens of tiny screws to remove and carefully set aside: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/iBook-G4-12-Inch/Hard-Drive-Replacement/83/14

Now I need to find a spudger.

Then I'll get a cheap exterior 2.5 hard drive enclosure and try the various tricks to briefly rescue the dead drive, stuff like freezing it overnight, dropping it, spinning it.

[alfredo]

1. Freezing helped me run a drive long enough to rescue important files.

[Awsi Dooger]

2. Thanks, I'm going to try that once I get an external case

Damn, I got outbid in the final 4 seconds on eBay the other day for a Macally version.

I don't think I could freeze the drive and then get it into the iBook when the drive was still frozen. The process takes too long.

BTW, I had another problem over the weekend, this time with a SmartDisk Firelite Firewire Drive. It was running very hot and wouldn't copy anything. Many freezes and error messages. I thought I was in deep shit since my stuff off the iBook was on that drive.

Disk Warrior predictably gave up immediately. I know people swear by that software. I'd like to spit on it. It's never done a damn thing for me. So limited it's a joke. It tries one or two things, never sees drives that others see, and then gives up with a brief error message that doesn't help at all. I've had two or three times when Disk Warrior completely screwed up my hard drives by trying to replace a directory then quitting in midstream, leaving me with a messed up directory and nothing but problems.

This time Tech Tool Pro was able to locate and work on the firewire drive. I finally got it mounted along with some help from Disk Utility. Then for some reason those utilities were unable to erase and reformat the drive, but the new kid on the block Drive Genius took over and did a splendid job. Disk Warrior, meanwhile, sat in the corner with one pathetic excuse after another. I'll never spend another penny on that worthless software.

[Awsi Dooger]

3. One gaffe when installing the new hard drive

It took nearly 5 hours to carefully take apart the iBook and install the new 80 GB Seagate drive. I got it from Newegg.com with a 5 year warranty for $60.

The main problem was removing the lower case with the spudger. Half of it went very quickly but I was stalled for nearly an hour near the optical drive. Finally I used a small flat screwdriver along with the spudger and was able to detach the three clips in that area.

I was confident everything went fine but when I tried to start the iBook I got no response other than 3 beeps. This happened repeatedly. I checked online and posters said that means the Mac can't access the RAM. That made no sense to me because I hadn't removed the RAM at all, not even touched it. I have the 256 original plus a 512.

Then someone wrote he had taken apart an iBook and had a similar problem with the 3 beeps. Turned out he had left some type of fragment on the logic board and it was touching the RAM, completely screwing up the computer. A person replied that anything touching the RAM can prevent the Mac from accessing the RAM.

I still didn't see how this applied to my situation but when I removed the RAM shield I immediately saw the one alteration I had unintentionally made. In removing the Airport Extreme card, which I don't use, I had mistakenly left the Airport cable below the RAM shield instead of feeding it back through the tiny opening and resting atop the RAM shield. It was sitting atop the additional 512 RAM. Frankly, it seemed like too simple of a cure but once I put the cable in the right place the iBook cooperated and I had my new 80 GB hard drive up and running. :)

So much for shelling out $350, which is what the Apple Store wanted to install an identical 30 GB Toshiba drive to the one that failed. I paid $60 for the new hard drive and $8 combined for the torx screwdriver and spudger. Plus about 5 hours labor.