PB 12" Dead after replacing HD 6 mos ago.

[CEAbiscuit]

Last night while runing iChat, my PB 1.33 hard drive started making an on and off crunching noise... everything froze. Now it won't even boot... getting the "?" in a folder when I try to boot up.

From my limited experience and from confering with a mac "expert", the hard drive is dead. I replced this hard drive in February, and from what I understand, according to the paperwork, it is already out of warrantee (90 days)

So here's the question..

-do I bring it to the apple sotre and pray they understand and replace the drive for free? (ha ha)
-Do I shell out another $320 bucks for a third hard drive when they tell me "sorry"?
-Or as my mac expert friend said "there's something electrifal causing the hard drives to burn out," a cough up the dough for a new laptop, assuing the next drive will burn out in 6 months like the last?

With WWDC around the corner, I'm tempted to wait 2 weeks for the new MBP, but the MB is looking awfull tempting as a stopgap. I just loved the 12" case of my old PB. Any thoughts appreciated...

 

[Josias]

Go Intel! Wait for a Rev. B MBP, or get yaself a nice MB!

 

[bwanac]

Buy harddrive and replace it yourself? Saving hundreds in the process.

 

[CEAbiscuit]

Buy harddrive and replace it yourself? Saving hundreds in the process.

Good idea, but the concern is that the last hard drive only lasted 6 months. Do you think it's possible that there's something that is causing such a quick burnout of the drive?

 

[VE3NEF]

Buy harddrive and replace it yourself? Saving hundreds in the process.

That's the best way to go it seems. Question: Once you have your blank hardrive in the computer, do you just put in your tiger disk and boot from that? Or do you have to take it to a apple store for them to install the OS?


V

 

[slooksterPSV]

I'd suggest to try booting from the Tiger DVD or OS DVD/CD and go to Disk Utility. (It's under the utilities menu of the installer) and see if the Hard Drive shows up there, if it doesn't, then yes the HDD is gone, completely gone, if you do see it, try to repair it, if it doesn't repair it, reformat it then repair it, then reinstall OS X.

 

[CEAbiscuit]

I'd suggest to try booting from the Tiger DVD or OS DVD/CD and go to Disk Utility. (It's under the utilities menu of the installer) and see if the Hard Drive shows up there, if it doesn't, then yes the HDD is gone, completely gone, if you do see it, try to repair it, if it doesn't repair it, reformat it then repair it, then reinstall OS X.

Great Idea. Thanks!

 

[Palad1]

A 6-months old hard drive should still be under warranty, why don't you check (enter the part# of you hd on google and find the manufacturer's warranty).

I had two deskstar replaced after nearly one year of use.

Cheers,
Palad1

 

[California]

Good idea, but the concern is that the last hard drive only lasted 6 months. Do you think it's possible that there's something that is causing such a quick burnout of the drive?

There is a lot of heat in the 12" pb. Remember to try to keep the machine as cool as possible, this kills hard drives.

 

[CEAbiscuit]

There is a lot of heat in the 12" pb. Remember to try to keep the machine as cool as possible, this kills hard drives.

I had it propped up on an iCurve.. and it didn't seem to be running to hard or hot. I did however do a massive file transfer to a MB (10 gigs) over my wireless network. May be this heated it up? Either way going to try to boot it off the CD. However, the CUNCH CRUNCH sound was really disturbing...

 

[California]

I had it propped up on an iCurve.. and it didn't seem to be running to hard or hot. I did however do a massive file transfer to a MB (10 gigs) over my wireless network. May be this heated it up? Either way going to try to boot it off the CD. However, the CUNCH CRUNCH sound was really disturbing...

There is a problem with Toshiba laptop drives in that the breather holes are sometimes covered up by the factory labels. This is a somewhat discussed problem on 12" pbs. I had a Toshiba drive with this problem fail on a 12 PB.

Other than that, your drive should be under warranty. I have had great luck with Hitachi on their warrantied drives, great service.

 

[Obsidian6]

I had it propped up on an iCurve.. and it didn't seem to be running to hard or hot. I did however do a massive file transfer to a MB (10 gigs) over my wireless network. May be this heated it up? Either way going to try to boot it off the CD. However, the CUNCH CRUNCH sound was really disturbing...

wouldnt it have been easier to connect the computer you were sending to as a firewire target disk and transfer that way?

would have saved you a whole lot of time ( unless the other computer was far far away )

 

[gallagb]

similar thing has happened to me...

I'd suggest to try booting from the Tiger DVD or OS DVD/CD and go to Disk Utility. (It's under the utilities menu of the installer) and see if the Hard Drive shows up there, if it doesn't, then yes the HDD is gone, completely gone, if you do see it, try to repair it, if it doesn't repair it, reformat it then repair it, then reinstall OS X.

do this ^^^^

if nessesary do the 'erase HD down to 1&0's'
then run disk utility again

also run Apple Hardware Test
that will tell u if the HD is 'ok' or not from a hardware only perspective


--
recently i had a HD that was fine under apple hardware test
but the TIGER DVD wouldn't recognize it as a HD to upload TIGER onto it
had to erase 7 times over- or whatever- to get it to work
then worked fine- since then- no prbm

what caused all this?
maybe the Ghost of x-mas past? who the ** knows

 

[CEAbiscuit]

Thanks for all the advice everyone. Here's where things are at:

Still have the Crunch Crunch sound..Tried to boot up off the both the original system disk and the 10.4 disk. First time the drive wouldn't show. The second time, I could see it, but the disk utility would not allow me to do any repair or reformatting. Finally called apple (they replaced the drive 6 mos ago) and they had me go through the dsame process. After an hour, the "product expert" said I should go to the apple store and basically pleasd for them to fix it for free. At this point, I'm thinking ogoign to OWC and trying to install myself, but will give the apple store a last try before cracking the PB myself. Thanks again for all the advice.