15" PB Problem: Beach ball & drive noise

[drummingcraig]

Greetings folks,

I have recently developed a pretty irksome issue with my 15" Aluminum Powerbook (1.25GHz, 80GB, SD, OSX 10.3.9). When working in various application (mail, Firefox, etc) I get the spinning beach ball, no response from anything, I cannot even force quit apps. I have also noticed than both times this has happened I can hear my HD spinning and making a "tick" sound about every second or so.

The first time this happened I thought it was Apple Mail acting up. I tried force quitting it to no avail So I forced a shutdown, waited a few minutes, and booted back up. Everything seemed normal for about 5-10 minutes and then the same thing happened. I forced shutdown again, and went to bed.

Yesterday morning I fired her up and things seemed "OK". I was able to work in Firefox for quite awhile (an hour or so) and the it happened again.

Does anyone have any suggestions/diagnosis?

Thanks in advance,

Craig

 

[builder]

Interestingly enough, I have the same PB (almost, the 1.5GHZ but everything else is the same), I had the same thing happen, and I have the same name...

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your hard drive is failing....

It will act the way you are describing it for a little while and then in will just freeze forever.....

The good news is a seagate 5400 120GB HD is around 60-80 bucks and it is not hard to do yourself.... Separting top from the bottom is the hardest part....

Good Luck

 

[Mr. G4]

Check in Drive Utility for the SMART status...your hard drive might be dying.
It happened twice on my PB 17" and 15". If your Applecare is still good take to Apple store they swap for a new one for free. Good luck.

 

[drummingcraig]

Interestingly enough, I have the same PB (almost, the 1.5GHZ but everything else is the same), I had the same thing happen, and I have the same name...

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your hard drive is failing....

It will act the way you are describing it for a little while and then in will just freeze forever.....

The good news is a seagate 5400 120GB HD is around 60-80 bucks and it is not hard to do yourself.... Separting top from the bottom is the hardest part....

Good Luck

Well, this is what I was afraid of and assumed was the issue.

Ironically, I decided about two weeks ago that it was time to upgrade the HD to something bigger, and have been pricing drives out and researching how to do the swap myself. I guess my HD got jealous and is committing "Seppuku".

My Applecare ran out awhile ago so that's not an option. Guess its time to pull the trigger on a new drive. I just hope this one holds together long enough for me to do a full backup.

Thanks for the help folks,

Craig

 

[drummingcraig]

One more question...

Just a quick thought and you guys may not even know the answer:

DO you think it would be better to try and backup my current (failing) HD now while it is still in the laptop -OR- yank it and put it in an external case and try and get what I want off from there?

It seems to me that it may be a little more stable when its out of the machine and not functioning as the boot drive, but thats just a hunch.

Any thoughts?

Craig

 

[Mr. G4]

If you don't have an external drive already, I think it would be better to replace the drive and have a working OS on your PowerBook first than try to salvage whatever you can from the old drive. Data Rescue is pretty good for that. Otherwise, install OSX on your external drive and boot from there and salvage your data that way. The internal HD is 2.5" so you need special connector to plug it on your External case if it's not 2.5".

 

[drummingcraig]

If you don't have an external drive already, I think it would be better to replace the drive and have a working OS on your PowerBook first than try to salvage whatever you can from the old drive. Data Rescue is pretty good for that. Otherwise, install OSX on your external drive and boot from there and salvage your data that way. The internal HD is 2.5" so you need special connector to plug it on your External case if it's not 2.5".

I do have two externals (both 120GB and both Firewire) but neither has enough room to actual copy my PB drive.

I am thinking about just going ahead with the swap, installing Tiger on the PB, and then trying to see what I can resurrect from the old drive.

Hopefully I can get my address book, email database and keychains off of there and back onto the PB.

Craig

 

[Draddy]

Greetings folks,

I have recently developed a pretty irksome issue with my 15" Aluminum Powerbook (1.25GHz, 80GB, SD, OSX 10.3.9). When working in various application (mail, Firefox, etc) I get the spinning beach ball, no response from anything, I cannot even force quit apps. I have also noticed than both times this has happened I can hear my HD spinning and making a "tick" sound about every second or so.

The first time this happened I thought it was Apple Mail acting up. I tried force quitting it to no avail So I forced a shutdown, waited a few minutes, and booted back up. Everything seemed normal for about 5-10 minutes and then the same thing happened. I forced shutdown again, and went to bed.

Yesterday morning I fired her up and things seemed "OK". I was able to work in Firefox for quite awhile (an hour or so) and the it happened again.

Does anyone have any suggestions/diagnosis?

Thanks in advance,

Craig

My Macbook Pro has been doing it since 2 months after I bought it (going on a year and 2 months now) .... freaks me out, I've sent it in twice to get that fixed and neither time they've changed or messed with the harddrive at all.


I'm just waiting for it to die so they will replace it... backing up literally every couple of hours. kind of like a ticking time bomb.



although it's been more infrequent since this latest leopard clean install

 

[drummingcraig]

New Drive Question...

OK...so I began surgery on my PB this evening and removed the failing HD.

My question is this: My new 160 GB Hitachi will be here in the AM, and I plan on installing it and then booting from the 10.4 discs which came with my Mac Mini. Does the HD need to have any formatting done to it prior to the installation, or can I just go for it?

Craig

 

[upsguy27]

OK...so I began surgery on my PB this evening and removed the failing HD.

My question is this: My new 160 GB Hitachi will be here in the AM, and I plan on installing it and then booting from the 10.4 discs which came with my Mac Mini. Does the HD need to have any formatting done to it prior to the installation, or can I just go for it?

Craig

It may be a good idea just to format it before your first install. That's what I have done every time I got a new hard drive.

 

[drummingcraig]

It may be a good idea just to format it before your first install. That's what I have done every time I got a new hard drive.

Do you know if this can be done the OSX install disc(s), or do I need to use something else (ie will I be able to run DIsc Utility off of the DVD's)? THis is uncharted ground for me so I'm a little in the dark on some of this.

Craig