Failing internal hard drive

When I run Disk Utility it reports a S.M.A.R.T. status of: Failing for my internal hard drive. I have backed everything up to an external hard drive and am using it as my boot drive. I'm thinking of replacing my internal drive. I was told that I will need to replace it with a 5400 RPM drive. Is this true, or can I replace it with a 7200 RPM drive? Also what is the maximum capacity with which I can replace my internal hard drive? Is there anything else I need to watch for when I get it replaced?
Thanks in advance,
tregarth

7200 would be fine in your computer, but without having an altra ata/133 card inside you are limitied potentially to the 128GB size as was stated. I have heard that there are solftware solutions to this problem if you are interested in putting a larger than 128gb HD in. Another thing is the fact of actually installing the HD, while it is possible to tackle it yourself there are some serious downsides if you do not get the thing back together correctly and with the right amount of torque and thermal paste on the heat sinks...

Similar Messages

Why does dying internal hard drive stop you booting from external hd

Why do I need an internal hard drive if I am booting from an external drive? Doesnt make sense,
Disk Utility warned me that the internal hard drive is failing. I have managed to change start up disks. I have an external bootable drive and even have an empty partition on it, "just in case" I need to install a brand new OS, but here I am waiting for local disks, and I cant access my back-up OS.
Why doesnt OSX just move past the dying faulty hard drive and get to work on the bootable disk? Basically here I am supposedly doing all the right things to cover for an emergency - I may as well have no backup strategy.
Am I missing a step, or is this how OSX works. Perhaps if you read the steps and outcomes below, you can see if there is more I need to do?
If I press "option" at start up, it only shows the internal drive, not recognising the external bootable drive.
fsck -f produced a looping "missing thread" message that went on for an hour or more so I stopped that.
I tried the dvd and command-c at start up, got through to the installer window and when I selected disk utility it hung, but no spinning ball, just nothing was happening.
The next attempt with th DVD i changed start up disk, this time it saw the external bootable drive and I thought I was in business again.
And here I am full circle, waiting for local disks.
Any thoughts most welcome.
btw, does the SMART issue a warning of a failing drive because a drive is definitely unsalvagable due to a mechanical fault? or is there a chance my drive is physiclly healthy but shows as Failing because it has unbelievable directory issues that Apple tools cannot solve - but DW could?
PB Ti 867MHz 768MB RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9)
PB Ti 867MHz 768MB RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9)

The Bombich forums have helped me troubleshoot the integrity of the bootable volumes on my external hard drive which I made using Carbon Copy Cloner. The clones are fine ie after I reset nvram after booting up via command-alt-o-f, the clones are now recognised when I boot up-alt. So it seems that there was nothing wrong with the bootable volumes on the external drive per se.
However, the Powerbook will still not boot up past "Waiting for local disks".
As it stands now, nobody seems to be able to give a reason why I cannot bypass the failed internal hard drive. I found a Knowledge base article from Apple saying Cmd-Alt-shift-delete at start-up should skip you to the next working volume hitched up to your computer, but that didn't work either.
I have a new internal HDD coming, so prior to installing it, the final part of the troubleshoot will be to reboot the PB without an internal HDD. I will see what happens and see what conclusions can be drawn from that. Unless anyone has a clue now from what I have posted?
PB Ti 867MHz 768MB RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Both Internal hard drives fail on Macbook Pro late-2011

Both internal hard drives (SSD and HDD) failed on Macbook Pro late-2011.
Setup: MBP closed with Thunderbolt display attached.
Problem on HDD-A
I called Apple Support to log an issue with my MBP2011. The system is made up of 2 drives - SSD (128GB) and HDD with 2 partitions HDD-A and HDD-B(original 750GB).
HDD-A has LionOSX 10.7 and HDD-B is storage. SSD has LionOSX on it as well. I normally boot HDD-A.
I was working on HDD-A and the Kernel Panic screen appeared prompting me to shutdown the machine and start it up again.
I tried to reboot HDD-A and the grey progress bar appeared for a long time. I then forced shutdown and rebooted into SSD.
I was able to boot from SSD and then I opened Disk Utility to check the drives. I verified the disk for HDD-A and there was an error. I then tried to repair disk and it couldn't repair it. A dialogue said the disk could not be repaired and that data should be backed up.
HDD-A was not visible in Finder but HDD-B was accessible.
I verified HDD-B and it was "ok".
I shutdown, booted from SSD, disk utility HDD-A and the same message occurred.
I called Apple Support and they advised that I boot from my external HDD which was a clone of HDD-A.
Solution
I was successfully able to boot from the Clone HDD-A.
HDD-A was able to be accessed and I could retrieve the files from HDD-A.
I copied over the latest files from HDD-A to an external drive.
Same Problem on SSD
Boot from SSD, i started working for about 3 hours, with the lid closed, and attached to the ACD.
Kernel Panic screen happened again on the SSD.
Couldn't boot boot from either SSD or HDD-A.
I booted from Cloned HDD-A, Disk Utility verify and repair returned errors on SSD. The same issue had occurred on the second drive.
Disk Recovery from a boot recovery USB thumb, Disk Utility, erased SSD, verify was ok.
Tried to install then there was an install error saying that SSD was damaged (large triangle warning icon). Tried 3 times, failed.
Boot from Recovery Drive HDD-A, downloaded LionOSX.
Next steps
Format HDD-A and HDD-B into 2 partitions
Install LionOSX on HDD A.
Note:
I did not do any software updates for about a week before 14.04.2012 and suspect it might be due to the virus.
I normally work with the lid closed and attached to the ACD, I also suspect that overheating caused both drives to fail. However, I have been using this system with the lid closed for atleast a week. One Kernel Panic screen occured.

Depending on what you are doing on the computer, how hard you are working the computer, it should not overheat. And if it does it should shut down or get very slow because when it starts to overheat the CPU will be throttled back to a lower Ghz speed and or just shut down so it doesn't cause damage to the CPU. The Kernel Panics are a sign that something else is going on. This could be software or hardware.
If after wiping the drives and reinstall Lion on the SSD if the system is running OK then the drives are fine, IE they are not bad. There is something else corrupting them. Again this could be hardware or software, but I doubt it is heat. And using the MBP ion clamshell mode should not cause overheating or excessive heating of either of the drives.
Have you installed iStat Pro or Menu and kept and eye on the temps? If not install iStat Pro and keep and eye on the temps. I bet they do not get above the 150°- 180°F mark which although hot is not overheating.
Be very careful when calling Apple. Removing the DVD drive and installing a hard drive in that bay could void your warranty. The DVD is not a User Removable part and Apple frowns on doing that. So if you call them do not mention that you have replaced the DVD drive with another HDD.
Honestly I suspect you have a hardware problem. But the only way to know that is to install just Lion and your basic programs and run the system. Leave out any AV type software, if you are running some. If you don't get any kernel panics thenn install some of your other software, one programm at a time. If with just the OS and basic software you get a kernel panic then it is hardware related and needs to be checked out by Apple. If you do that re-install the DVD and the original HDD with just the OS on it before you take it in.

I'm an avid Mac enthusiast who works in a creative field. However, I simply cannot afford a new Mac after my old one's internal hard drive failed. Can anyone recommend an affordable Mac option? I don't want to consider a non-Apple product.

I'm an avid Mac enthusiast who works in a creative field. However, I simply cannot afford a new Mac after my old one's internal hard drive failed. Can anyone recommend an affordable Mac option? I don't want to consider a non-Apple product.

Macs with a FireWire port will also boot happily from an External drive. You don't even need to open the MacBook.
Some users buy a drive they would like to have as a future Internal drive, and also buy an external enclosure. They get the External set up the way they want it, then swap with the Internal drive.

My iMac ( Summer 2010 ) internal Hard Drive failing.. It's a Seagate 500GB HDD.

My new iMac ( summer 2010 - July 2010 ) internal Hard Drive is failing..
1) sometimes the imac can't see the hard drive to boot from..
      it would stay in the grey screen ..
2) sometimes the imac boots up after a cold start.
     but some applications such as Safari would die or crash on me.
      I think the file system on the mac is corrupted.
I believe that the internal hard drive is failing..
I can boot up from the external firewire 800 hard drives fine..
The internal hard drive:
Model:   ST3500418AS
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 500GB Hard Drive

Why not starting from the external HDD, and then do a "Repair Disk" of the Seagate.
If that does not help buy a new HDD, put it in and clone the latest external disk to it :
When you have two external disks, make a clone of the Seagate on the one that does not have the latest backup, because the Seagate may fail while doing the cloning. Use Carbon Copy Cloner or Superduper.

TS1967 My computer failed and the main drive had to be formatted but all my music was on a separate internal hard drive. So I downloaded the latest iTunes , problem is it has found all my songs but seems to not recognize half of the album data, half of th

My computer failed and the main drive had to be formatted but all my music was on a separate internal hard drive. So I downloaded the latest iTunes , problem is it has found all my songs but seems to not recognize half of the album data, half of the artists, all of the dates and all ratings data.
I had a large part of it backed up on DVD's but it does not want to recognise them either?
Any tips?

Hey briannagrace96,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities! I'd check out the following article, it looks like it applies to your situation:
iPod: Appears in Windows but not in iTunes
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1363
You'll want to go through the following troubleshooting steps, and for more detail on each step follow the link to the article above:
Try the iPod troubleshooting assistant:
If you have not already done so, try the steps in the iPod Troubleshooting Assistant (choose your iPod model from the list).
If the issue remains after following your iPod's troubleshooting assistant, follow the steps below to continue troubleshooting your issue.
Restart the iPod Service
Restart the Apple Mobile Device Service
Empty your Temp directory and restart
Verify that the Apple Mobile Device USB Driver is installed
Change your iPod's drive letter
Remove and reinstall iTunes
Disable conflicting System Services and Startup Items
Update, Reconfigure, Disable, or Remove Security Software
Deleting damaged or incorrect registry keys
Take care,
David

Internal hard drive fails to mount in Disk Utility.

My internal hard drive fails to mount in Disk Utility for the past year, so I cannot verify it. However, it does mount in Disk Warrior. (1) I am concerned that it will not mount within the Apple software, and what that bodes for my computer. (2) I also have MANY spinning beach balls daily and have to use the power button to reboot. I just bought extra Crucial RAM and have yet to install it. Somehow, I don't think it wil help my issue # 1 though. Please advise, anyone out there! Thank you.

No, there are never any errors like that. Also, I have upgraded the Mac OS from 10.5 to 10.6.8. That did nothing. I backed up my Users = Christina folders to a good, 15 year old Firewire 800 La Cie 1 TB external hard drive. I also tested using the Apple Hardware test, which showed no problems, and Alsoft's Disk Warrior and defragged, and fixed a very minor issure re directory count, probably resulting from many improper shutdowns lately due to frozen spinning beach balls. None of these procedures alleviated the issues, and I still have the same issues: mainly that super-frequent spinning beach ball. Do you think I ought to install that new RAM sitting here finally? Perhaps it is a lack of RAM??I only have 2 lousy GB's of RAM after all! Thank you so very much for a reply.
Message was edited by: Flamingcreatures

Internal hard drive failed - install Mac OS X on external firewire?

Hi, hope someone can help me.
The other day my internal hard drive in my MacBook started to click. I did a hardware test, and the drive now doesn't show up at all, either in the test or when I go to install Mac OS X.
Is it possible to buy an external Firewire hard drive, and install Mac OS X on it, even though the internal hard drive isn't recognised?
Here is the external hard drive I was going to buy http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Premium-External-Firewire/dp/B000F6SGB4/ ref=sr11/203-7120413-7742330?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1174334464&sr=1-1
Also, is there any thing else I need to know before I do this...
I need to boot from an external hard drive as I cannot go to an Apple store to get it fixed and I am not really in a position to send it off for repair, as I am at Uni.
Thanks for your help!

You need to call AppleCare Support and get the hard drive replaced. None of the MacBooks are a year old yet, so they're all still covered by the original one year warranty. This sounds like a problem that should be covered, why bother with an external drive? If you're not willing to be without it, yes, you can install Mac OS X to a FireWire or USB 2.0 hard drive and run your MacBook from that.
-Doug
P.S. If I were you, I'd spend the extra £15 and get the 320GB version of that drive. I'd get as big of a drive as you can!

How to move an iTunes library from the internal hard drive to another bootable disk.

         I got two Mac OS X installations on my i Mac system. One on the internal hard drive (320 Gb), that has been there since the iMac was bought 3 years ago, upgraded to Lion on 2 August. (call that INT) . I have a USB external drive, and recently bought a firewire Lacie external drive (2Tb), so to boot from there when I can, with hard drive space getting tight this year. I successfully installed another copy of Lion on LACIE.
         Then I went to work to transfer my iTunes library, which the media files were optioned to store on the USB drive. Intending to transfer both the music and video files, and the megadata ( playlists, ratings, playcounts ) I found the media files and the iTunes library file and the .xml document in my iTunes folder from INT. I made a new folder in the USB drive, and copied the contents from the old iTunes folder to that new folder. I re-started in LACIE, and found my empty iTunes folder. I copied over to the new iTunes folder, then opened iTunes. My eyes saw the music library to the same number of items, with the playlists etc showing.
        However, I tried to sync an iPod Nano, and a window came up saying 100 songs could not be copied to the iPod because they could not be found. After ejecting the iPod I tried to play a song from iTunes, and the screen filled with exclamation points. A small window came up, asking for a password to open "sparsebundle" and my name. I entered my password for the administrator's log-in and it said try again with the password. Without knowing what password to put in, I clicked Cancel, and got another small window asking to locate the file. Then clicked Cancel again, not knowing where to search. All the media folders were showing after quitting iTunes and opening Finder .
      I re-booted into INT, and opened iTunes. The library was still there. I synced my iPod again, ejected it, played 3 songs on the iPod, synced again, ejected it again, and opened the playlist "Recently Played". It showed up okay with no problems. So my iTunes library in INT is alright.
      Has anyone got any idea how to make the transfer into LACIE and get it running alright, or what went wrong with what I did ?
      In the meantime I will empty my LACIE iTunes library folder's contents to the trash, and securily empty the trash .

Solved the issue without using the trash . I tried to consolidate the library in LACIE, then clicked on any exclamation-mark song and tried to locate the file. Repeating those steps 3 or 4 times cleared it up. That was confirmed when I synced the entire library on a iPod Classic, and showed up no problems after syncing the Nano.
     What went wrong was perhaps to fail to consolidate the library at first .

Internal Hard Drives Disappeared, Finder Memory Problem

Hello Helpful Folks,
I recently installed an addional internal Hard Drive, and an additional 1GB SDRAM. This worked great for a day, but the next morning, after powering up, system was extremely sluggish, and after much deadline-induced impatient problem solving, has gone from bad to worse (system refuses to acknowledge existence of internal Hard Drives). I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but as
the devil is in the details, I figure too much info is better than not enough.
Following is a breakdown of my system: AS IT LAST WORKED; RECENT UPGRADES; and MY LAME ATTEMPTS AT PROBLEM SOLVING THAT HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE. Please don't interpret my all caps as shouting, just trying to organize this post for better clarity.
System is dedicated to Video Editing with FCP 3, running under OS 9.2.2. System is "off the Grid", i.e. no network, no internet, no printer, no gaming devices. System was purchased new in July 2001, by a friend. At one point I know this system had an Airport card, which was removed prior to my purchase in 2003. I can't remember what else it may have had installed in its history, but here's what it has now:
SYSTEM AS IT LAST WORKED:
**bold items are upgrades Original Owner or I installed with no apparent problems**
Power Mac G4 "Quicksilver" 2001
867 PowerPC G4, 256 L2, 2MB L3
-1 Stick "ValueRAM - KVR 133 x 64 C3/512" in PC 133 DIMM slot **
- "Virtual Memory" was turned off years ago due to conflict with FCP 3
-2 empty DIMM slots
-1 60 GB internal HD (Maxtor Ultra ATA/100), 1 partition, formatted HFS+, jumpered as "Master" on Internal ATA 2 ID=0 (which as I understand it is ATA/66 speed)
-1 Pioneer "Superdrive" DVD-R/W/CD-R/W on Internal ATA 0 ID=0
-NVIDIA GeForce2 MX with 32MB SDRAM in AGP Slot, feeding a 17" Apple Studio Display.
-PCI Display Card "formacGA7" - not attached to any external device, not sure what its intended purpose is.**
-3 Empty PCI Slots
-OEM Keyboard attached to Monitor's rear USB port.
-Microsoft 3 Button Wheel mouse with "IntelliEye" (wheel is 3rd Button) connected to Keyboard USB port (right side).**
-2 OEM FireWire (400) ports
-2 OEM USB (1) ports
Peripherals that have worked in various configurations with this system over the past 3 years:
-3 OWC Mercury Elite ("Oxford Chipset") Externally powered, External FireWire(400) 200GB Hard Drives, 1 partition each, formatted HFS+, daisy-chained to either of the FireWire ports.
-1 Canon GL1 MiniDV camera, attached either to the other FireWire port, or to the last drive in the chain, depending on my urgency/laziness factor. BTW, FCP 3 has worked flawlessly controlling this Cam for logging and Batch Capturing.
Applications on System Hard Drive that I have OEM CDs for:
-OS 9.2 - (I think I remember that OS X was removed from system due to conflicts shortly after original purchase)
-FCP 3
-DiskWarrior (version unknown, purchased from Alsoft in 2003)
-OWC Intech Hard Disk SpeedTools ver 3.5
Other CDs I have:
OEM CDs for Power Mac G4:
-Software Install, OS 9.2, CD vers 1
-Software Install, OS 10.0.4, CD vers 1
-Software Restore, OS 9.2 & 10.0.4 CDs vers 1, Discs 1-4 of 4.
-OEM Apple Hardware Test; Power Mac G4, SW vers 1.2.1
Applications on system Hard Drive that I don't have CDs for, that I rarely use, but I'd like to keep:
-After Effects 5.0
-QuickTime Player 6.0.2
-Toast Audio Extractor 1.1
-Toast Titanium 5.0.2
Applications on system Hard Drive I use if my wife is busy on our Windows XP machine:
-Photshop 6.0
-Microsoft Word & Excel
# of other Applications on System Hard Drive I either don't use or may be integral to the system: 260
# of Control Panels:
-Enabled: 34
-Disabled: 0
# of Extensions:
-Enabled: 174
-Disabled: 0
note: a number of the applications and extensions are for AOL, Quickbooks, Microsoft Money and the like, as well as other things I don't use (Airport, USB printers, Networking, etc.)
Smart things I did:
-Regularly made backup copies of my FCP projects to the external drives.
-Bought a copy of MacDrive so I can see what's on my External Drives on the XP machine.
-Printed out System Profile before I installed upgrades.
-Thoroughly searched this discussion board for and gathered as much info as I could before upgrading.
Dumb things I did:
-Made a copy, but not a clone, of my System Folder to one of the external drives when I first got it.
-Didn't keep any sort of separate log of what's on the External Drives.
-Never ran any sort of Disk Maintenance, even after one of the Externals crashed (DiskWarrior saved my butt on that).
-Ignored some of the advice on this discussion board.
Really dumb thing I did without even realizing it:
Captured all media for a rush job onto my internal system Hard Drive, as well as storing and using massive jpgs for the same job on that same drive...
Which led to painfully slow rendering times, and crashes caused by "Error: Out of Memory", which I interpreted as "Must buy more memory" and not "must make sure I'm not trying to edit media stored on system drive, especially with massive jpgs that I should reduce"
RECENT UPGRADES:
Here's what I did, and how I did it:
Turned off system, disconnected all External FireWire Devices, disconnected Monitor, opened case, touched various metal parts of case and power supply to discharge any Static, unplugged power cable.
-Installed 2 512MB sticks of "Lifetime" PC 133 SDRAM; total System RAM is now 1.5GB, all 3 DIMM slots now occupied.
-Installed 1 Maxtor "DiamondMax" Ultra ATA/133 100GB Hard Drive (8 MB buffer) as "Slave" (no jumper) in top of U-Carrier above System Hard Drive; attached to middle of original Apple ribbon cable, attached available power plug.
Taped spare jumper to inside of empty drive bay, noting origin and date. Did NOT push PMU button. Carefully closed case. Reconnected Monitor, did NOT reconnect any FireWire devices. Powered System on, but did NOT perform PRAM reset.
I don't remember the exact order of what happened next, but I think: System booted up normally, a window popped up saying a new drive had been found, would I like to intitialize it?, which I did as Mac OS extended, and then named. If I was instructed to restart, I did so, otherwise did not. Clicked on "about this Mac" and saw that it now showed 1.5GB RAM. I then went about moving Media/Render files off the System drive (and one of the Externals) onto the Internal Drive, with a combination of FCP's Media Manager, and dragging from the Finder. After files had copied, dragged Media/Render files from System Drive to Trash. Opened FCP project, had FCP re-link to new locations of missing files. Saved, closed, and re-opened project, set Capture/Scratch disc to new internal Drive. At some point I changed FCP's Memory Allocation from whatever it was to 512000KB Minimum, and 900000KB Prefered (and I hope I got all those zeroes right). Did NOT restart after changing Memory Allocation, unless a window popped up instructing me to do so, in which case I did. Re-opened my project, rendered a few thing at a noticeably increased speed, saved everything, emptied the Trash, shut everything down, and called it a night as it was 4:30 am.
A few hours later, I plugged the MiniDV and an External Drive into the FW ports and powered up the System. It was behaving extremely sluggishly. I would click on something, the pointer would turn into a wristwatch (sometimes with the minute-hand moving, sometimes not) and like an actual minute later, what I'd clicked on would open. All three drives were on the desktop, still had their files, and "About this Mac" still showed 1.5GB total Memory. So I powered down, disconnected the FW devices, waited a bit, and powered back up. Same sluggish response. I tried to open my FCP project file, and instead got a Window that said something to the effect of "The Application associated with this document could not be found". I think I tried to open FCP from the Applications folder on the System Drive and got the same message (I'd only had 3 hours sleep, no coffee, my client had died, and his family was coming for whatever I had in a few hours).
LAME ATTEMPTS AT PROBLEM SOLVING THAT HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE
Panic had set in, which never solves anything, so I don't remember what order I performed which tasks, between searching for clues in this forum, and convincing myself that that would be faster than trying to compose a question, waiting for a response, etc.
The first two things I did, and I can't remember which I did first (both from Keyboard Commands during Restart):
Rebuild Desktop
PRAM Reset
Neither of those solved the problem, so I continued.
I tried restarting without extensions.
I would get errors that said something like "Not Enough Memory to Open Finder".
I tried booting from Disc 1 of the Software Restore Disk, which only wanted to destroy my data.
I tried booting from the OS 10 disk, with the same result.
I was finally able to boot from the OS 9.2 Software Install Disk, and actually saw both internal drives on the desktop, and the 1.5GB RAM in About this Mac. I tried to allocate more memory to Finder, but was informed that "Cannot Perform Requested Operation. This operation requires versions above 8.0".
I think at this point I decided that I must have too many extensions, and started disabling ones I thought irrelevent to my cause (mostly anything that said "AOL", "Airport", "Ethernet", "Printer", "Modem", "Speakable", and a couple things called "Open TPT".
It gets worse. Then I decided to turn off some "unnecessary" things via the control panels, but somehow managed to disable the control panels themselves: AppleTalk, DialAssist, File Sharing, Modem, Mouse (as I saw that Microsoft Mouse was among the others), Remote Access, Speech, USB Printer Sharing, and possibly TCP/IP.
That certainly didn't help anything (though upon restarting from the OS 9.2 Disc I was able to see the extensions and control panels in their respective "Disabled" folders in the System Folder). But I still wasn't able to get more Memory to Finder.
So, I decided a few more PRAM resets might help, which succeeded in making both Internal Hard Drives disappear. I tried booting up from the DiskWarrior disc, but even the Mighty DiskWarrior couldn't find the drives. I performed the longer, in depth version of the Apple Hardware Tools tests, which reported that everything's fine (including the new RAM), but made no mention of the Hard Drives at all. The deadline having long passed, I shut the system down. I read through more posts and tech articles, etc.
I searched my External drives with MacDrive on my XP, and found the drive that has the copy of my System Folder (which shows all extensions and control panels as enabled); not sure if the Quicksilver will boot from that, I don't know what the Keyboard command for booting from a FireWire drive is (if there is one) and the drive itself only has 900MB of free space.
I can't find any reference to Internal ATA drives anywhere in the MacDrive documentation; if it was possible I'd put them into the XP, get the files off the Mac drives, reformat them and install OS9 from the Discs.
This is where I am now:
The Quick Silver is still powered down. I removed the Microsft mouse and replaced it with the OEM Apple mouse. I opened the case, and removed the PRAM/Backup battery (manufacture date: July 2001). Couldn't find my voltmeter, so took the bat to Radio Shack and bought a new one. Had the Radio Shack guy test the old one: it showed 3.69 volts still. Have not installed the new battery yet. The case is still open, waiting for any advice any of you might have to offer.
Thank you all so much for your patience in perusing and pursuing this.
Sincerely,
Patterson
Power Mac G4 Quicksilver 867 Mac OS 9.2.x 17" Studio Display, 512MB RAM

Thank you Rodney and John,
The jumpers are correct for both Maxtor Drives.
Rodney, you are correct in that the initial problem (slow rendering/"out of Memory" crashes) was caused by my not realizing I'd stupidly captured several GBs of media to my system drive, and not checking which drives those files were on (as I'd assumed I'd put them on one of my external media drives) once that problem presented itself.
Before I'd determined what I'd done, I bought the extra RAM. After I'd found the media files on the System Drive, and saw that my dedicated media drives were too full to easily move them, I decided to buy an additional Internal drive so that I could:
-Move the Media onto it relatively quickly and finish my urgent project.
-Juggle all my media into a more organized fashion for archiving (as most of my projects are on-going long-term affairs)
-Wipe it, Partition it, and clone my System Drive onto it, as a spare bootable drive in case my OEM System Drive failed.
Copying the Media files onto the New Drive and moving the System Drive's Media files into the Trash worked great: huge improvement in Rendering, etc.
Before shutting down for the night I Emptied the Trash, and was pleased with the amount of space I'd freed up on the System Drive.
My guess is that the System Drive was terribly fragmented, having been subjected to intense use over the past 5 years without any sort of Drive Maintainence, and deleting that massive amount from it in one shot caused my extreme system sluggishness upon Startup the next day.
My subsequent lame attempts to solve the sluggishnes ultimately resulted in my losing access to both drives.
Today, I replaced the Backup Battery, pushed the PMU, re-attached the AC, and Powered Up with the case open as per your suggestion.
It was trying for a few minutes (the gray screen went black at one point, and then returned to gray) before presenting me with the flashing question mark.
There was, however, a quiet but distinct "buzzing" sound that would alternate: 1 sec "buzz", one second silence, one second "buzz", one second silence, etc. coming from the drives, even after the "?" appeared.
I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power Cables from the new "Slave" drive, and powered up again, with the exact same results.
I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power cables from the original "Master" drive, reinstalled the Jumper on the New Drive as "Master", plugged the End of the Ribbon and the Power cables into the New "Master" drive and powered up. The screen went to the "?" within 20 seconds instead of 4+ minutes, and no more "buzzing".
I put the Apple Hardware Tools Disk in, ran the "long" test, and everything came out fine.
I have to abandon this for now, but thanks again for your previous advice, and any more you may have!
Cheers,
Patterson

I am running 10.5.2 from a USB, I need to mount my internal hard drive, can anyone help me?

Hi everybody. My imac suddenly died on me. It couldn't start, right after the apple sign appeared, an interrogation sign showed. I ran the disk utility, and the problem was that the internal hard drive was not mounted. I installed the 10.5.2 (the one it came with the imac) in a USB flash drive, which I am running now. Is it possible to mount my internal drive so I can back up my data? (I know should back my data up regularly, but I didn't). Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Best regards,
Alvaro.

I suspect a failed HD, in that case I'd recommend Apple Hardware Test in Extended Mode at least 3x. You will need the original install discs that shipped with the computer, if you do not have them any longer you will need to order a replacement set from Apple by calling AppleCare. You will need a credit card and the serial number of the machine. The cost should be nominal.

Safe to delete Lightroom from my internal hard drive?

Hi
I shoot in raw and have been using Lightroom for approx 4 years, most recently Lightroom 4 and before that Lightroom 2. Lightroom is taking up a lot of disk space on my internal hard drive and my computer is not happy.
I have deleted all but a couple of backups and then copied all my Lightroom lrcat files to an external hard drive. Now, Lightroom will only open if I have that external hard drive plugged in. Great! That is what I wanted. Is now safe to delete my Lightroom files from my internal hard drive? I am not that computer savvy and I am also terrified of losing all my work.
Thanks

Well, if you have them on a single external drive and you delete them from your internal drive, then you have only one copy left, correct? In that case you are at extreme risk of losing your one and only copy.
I worked in the disk drive industry for 30 years and have my lrcat files backed up on three hard drives and two USB sticks. Maybe I'm just paranoid but it's likely a hard drive will eventually fail. And based on experience, for some Murphy's law reason they fail most often for people who have not backed up their data.
I'll bet there is all kinds of other stuff that can be removed from your hard drive, various temporary files, log files, etc. Try a free app like CCleaner (on Windows) to see what it does.
But I would not have just one copy of my latest lrcat files in existence.

I've lost the use of Appleworks in 10.9.2. Is it possible to partition the internal hard drive of my MacBook Pro and install an older Mac OS (10.6.8) on the second partition with OS 10.9.2 on the other?

I've lost the use of Appleworks by upgrading to 10.9.2.
Is it possible to partition the internal hard drive of my MacBook Pro and install an older Mac OS (10.6.8) on the second partition with OS 10.9.2 on the other? I'd like to be able to boot to the older OS when I need Appleworks and few other applications that aren't available on OS 10.9.2.
Any suggestions?
Thank you for your help.

Hello again, WZZZ,
Here's an update. I was successful in creating two partitions on my internal drive, and in installing OS 10.6.6 on the second partition, as per your guidence. I now have it up to 10.6.8 with all the security updates and AppleWorks. A great thing.
Some thoughts:
• The partitioning had one hitch; it failed at first. But once I "repaired" the disc with Disc Utility the partitioning went thru.
• The partitioning took a long time in 'resizing the partition.' A few hours I think it was. Lots of progress bar watching.
• If I had it to do again, I'd size the two partitions differently. My original data was occupying about 230 Gb of the 320 Gb disc. I made the new partitions share the space, about 230 and 75Gb. That left very little available space for the main disc. I ought to have put some breathing room in there. As it is, it's an incentive to clean up all those files, especially all those iTunes files. I now have about 10% of available space there and mean to continue deleting.
So, all in all a good project that got me where I wanted to go. Thank you for your help.
Appreciatively,
wallah

Swapping circuit boards for an internal hard drive

My story may be a bit long and roundabout, so please try and bear with me as I explain.
My PowerMac G5 is 4.5 years old and over the past few months, the DVD and my secondary internal hard drive, both the originals that came with my computer, have been slowly dying. I finally replaced the DVD drive the other day and was little by little copying the data off my secondary internal drive before it completely failed. One thing that seemed to help the internal drive run more smooth was unplugging the power cable and plugging it back in. A worker at an Apple store's Genius Bar also suggested swapping each internal drive to the bay that the other was originally in, to see if that helped at all.
Anyways, in the end, the drive was giving me so much trouble and I had unplugged/plugged the power cable so many times that eventually the part of the circuit board that holds the pin connectors straight broke off, so now I had no way to get my data off the slowly failing drive. Another visit to the Genius Bar and I was told that the drive was as good as done, but not wanting to believe that the majority of my film projects were gone forever, I contacted a store across the street from my old NYU dorm called Digital Society. They told me that the circuit board on the drive needed to be replaced and that the new board had to be taken from an identical drive. I soon realized that the primary/system drive of my G5 was in fact identical. So, after running Time Machine, purchasing new primary and secondary internal drives, re-installing the OS and doing a Time Machine restore - which was flawless - I took my two drives back to Digital Society where they swapped the circuit boards rather quickly.
Now that I'm back home, I was easily able to recover all my data from my failing drive... only after having its circuit board replaced, the drive is showing no signs whatsoever of the read/write difficulties and failures that it had been showing prior to the circuit board swap, which leads me to a few questions
a) Was it really the drive that had a problem, or the circuit board itself? Is there anywhere I could buy just a circuit board without having to buy a new drive just to get a circuit board? The drives in question are 400 gig Hitachi Deskstar, model #HDS724040KLSA80. While I'm not entirely sure the once failing drive should be trusted again, my old system drive - which now has a busted circuit board on it - still works perfectly fine.
b) If I'm able to get a new circuit board, how easy is it to replace myself? The guy at Digital Society did it very quickly and for a price of $120. Are there any video tutorials?
Thanks!

Lot's of good question Will,
Hard drives are not what they used to be, if your work is important I'd replace them every 3 years & have 2 backups in the meantime.
I doubt you can get the circuit boards separate without buying a while questionable drive.
If I'm able to get a new circuit board, how easy is it to replace myself? The guy at Digital Society did it very quickly and for a price of $120.
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All of a sudden unaccessible imac internal hard drive, renamed "disk1s3"

Hello,
I am having a very serious problem and I hope someone can help.
Yesterday I turned on my imac G5 1.8ghz running Mac OS X (10.4.10) and I got this message:
*"the disk you have inserted is not readable by this computer"*. Not having inserted any disk I just clicked ignore and restarted the imac. After the restart it looked like the computer frose, I could see my desktop wallpaper but none of the files on my desktop and then when I restarted again the computer I had the case of grey screen with the blinking question mark/file icon.
Knowing that this means that the computer can't find a startup disk, I restarted the computer and inserted the CD with the OS X and opened utilities manager from the CD.There I saw that the internal hard drive has been renamed "disk0S3" and the only info the manager was giving me was that it was not mounted, it's size and that it is mac OS Extended (Journaled) formated. I tried to repair it but I got an error message each time I tried.
I tried to restart the computer several times during the day and each time I had the grey screen/globe followed by the grey screen/blinking question mark folder. At one point the computer went into a kernel screen and frose.
I then tried to restart in target mode and use the utilities manager from my intel 2Ghz Macbook. In target mode the fans of the imac go nuts, it sounds like the computer is going to take off and then I get on the MacBook the *"the disk you have inserted is not readable by this computer"* message. There the manager recognizes the internal hard drive of the imac as "disk1s3" and gives me the same info as the OS X CD manager.
If I click on the icon of the hard drive "above" on the utilities menu, the manager recognises the imac as AAPL FireWire Target Media, it's size, it's write status, apple partition map but says that the S.M.A.R.T. status is not supported.
I shuted down and restarted in target mode but now, when I try to open the imac in target mode it goes into target mode but the MacBook freezes.
Now I must say that this happened out of nowhere. I didn't do any software update, I didn't perform any different task on the imac from the ones I normally perform.
I have so many important files in that computer I cannot begin to describe how serious the situation will be if I lose them all. I know I should back-up my files and I usually do but now it's been a while and I am really learning the lesson the hard way.
Please if someone can help I would really appreciate it.
I apologize for the length of the post but I tried many things before posting here and I thought that it would be useful to give as many details as possible to someone that could help.
Thank you in advance

Welcome to Discussions - the fact that the S.M.A.R.T. status is not recognized and the flashing questions mark appear seem to indicate that your hard drive has failed. If you have access to TechToolPro or Disk Warrior, try to use them to check the drive status. This will likely not work, and I'm afraid your disk is toast.
You could try to remove the drive and put it in an external case and try to mount it on your MacBook, but I don't hold out much hope for that either. You can try using [Data Rescue|http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/211375] to retrieve your data.
You can also take it in to Apple and see what they say. Please let us know how things turn out,

Failing internal hard drive

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