Is It a Dead Drive?

Hi.
I've made a lot of research about this problem before I post this. I found a lot of posts having a similar issue, but all the posts didn't have a resolving answer. I'm hoping that this one will.
I have a mac pro (10.8.2) with 3 SATA drives in it. All drives are the same type, all came originally with the mac. Today, I turned on the computer, and the first thing I got is a message saying "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" with three options saying "initialize", "ignore" and "eject." I clicked "initialize" and it opened the Disk Utility for me and I noticed different things:
The first thing I noticed is a drive named "Media" on top of the list. It doesn't have any information. Total Capacity is 0. Its Connection ID is Bay 3 (The dead drive apparently). I don't know why it is named Media. It cannot be erased, verified nor repaired. All options are grayed out.
The second thing I noticed is that the 3rd drive is missing from the list. It used to have the name Macintosh HD 3, but now it's not there.
I opened the Finder to check things out. Macintosh HD 3 is not there. Even this drive Media is not visible also.
I rebooted the Mac using the recovery mode. I went to the Disk Utility. Same thing. Media is on top. Disk 3 is missing.
What happened before that? Last night. I tried to create an encrypted blank disk image inside Macintosh HD 3, but the process was stopped for some reason. I don't remember what was the error message exactly. The image file was there on the drive although the process stopped. I couldn't delete it. I suspect that this could be related to the disk failure somehow. Is it dead?

Rotating drives are really quite complex. They contain a micro-controller, a little private RAM, a buffer at least as big as a Track, and a Sea of Magnetic media. All that stuff has to be working correctly for the drive to be useable.
Data are written to the drive using a semi-redundant code that can accommodate bursts of errors. Each read is passed through error-correction logic in an attempt to launder out any bursts of errors that may have occurred.
The Sea of magnetic media is so vast that there will inevitably be defects in the magnetic regions. Drives have always had the ability to have a few spare blocks, and the micro-controller can make semi-permanent substitutions for any blocks found to be bad at the factory. There are also spare blocks that can be substituted for blocks that go bad in the field (they may or may not be from the same pool of spares as the factory spares.)
In some drives, important drive information, such as the spares substitution table, is stored on a private track on the drive. If that information becomes unusable, the drive cannot report a sensible size/capacity. At that point, the drive is unusable.
There is also certain analog calibration and track location information encoded on the drive. If that gets messed up, the drive is unusable.
It can also develop so many Bad Blocks that there are not enough spares to fix it up. At that point it may continue to respond to requests to initialize, but initialization will fail. Then the drive is not reliable enough for you to trust it with your data, and should be retired.
And lastly, some drives encountering internal errors will simply "disappear". They drop out and no longer show in System Profiler when they encounter a serious internal error. Only a power-off cycle brings them back for a little while, then they drop out again.
I think what you are fishing for is, ¿Did I do something wrong to make this drive die?
The answer is, you did not. Stuff happens. Drives die.
"Any drive can fail at any time." That's why we need backups.

Similar Messages

Dead Drive: Data Recovery?

The hard drive on my MacBook died--my last back up was about 2 months ago (I know, not wise on my part.) I took the machine to the apple store today where they confirmed the drive was dead. I'm under apple care still so they will replace the drive. However, they said that they could not give me back my original drive to take to a data recovery specialist.
They said that if I wanted to do that, I would need to take the drive for data recovery before getting the hard drive replaced by apple or replace the hard drive at my own cost. I need a working machine quickly as it is my sole computer for work/persnal use (right now I am borrowing a super old PC laptop that is not adequate for work) so I can't wait to get my machine fixed until after I try to recovery my data. But, since I'm under apple care, I don't want to have to buy a drive myself just ot keep my old one, which I may or may not even be able to recover data from.
Given these options, I left my computer at the store this afternoon for them to replace the drive. But, now I am having second thoughts and wondering whether I should try to get my data back. They said it would be 3-5 days before they can replace the drive (which they will do on-site), so I think I could likely get the machine back before they replace the drive tomorrow.
My questions are: (1) does anyone know of a way to get the apple store to give me my original drive back after they replace the old one (e.g., talking to a manager, etc.)? I'm a life-long Mac user, but am honeslty a little surprised and annoyed that they have this policy, which puts people with dead drives in the position of either postponing repair or having to pay fo their own repair even when they are under apple care. It's especially annoying as I don't see the benefit to them of keeping a drive if it is truly dead and only potentially useful for the chance of recovering data.
(2) What would be my options for data recovery if I kept the drive? The data I will lose if I lose the drive (or if it can't be recovered) is moderately important (ie, would be very frustrating to lose but not devistating.) Given this, I don't know if I would even pay the $300 plus it would cost to go to a data recovery place. Is there software out there that is known to be good at data recovery that I could get for less (say $100 or less.) I'm hesitant to go back to the store and ask for my machine back if the only result is that I have to put off getting my drive replaced by a week only to spend $300 plus and possilbly not even get any of my data back.
Any thoughs, advice, suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I apologize for the long post, but am stumped about what to do (and still pretty upset that Apple is making this situation more difficult by iisting on keeping my original dead drive after a repair.)

adk97 wrote:
Thanks so much for the reply. I guess I can see why apple would want to keep the drive maybe to refurbish it, but still it seems odd they don't have an option to pay some fee to keep the old drive. Requiring people to do all data recovery efforts before getting a drive replaced through apple care, with no option to get the original drive back, seems to make already difficult data loss situations even tougher IMO.
If the drive has crashed, it's way beyond any economic sense to try and refurbish it. I would guess that Apple's bulk purchase price on a 5400RPM 160GB drive is probably somewhere in the $50 range. Besides that, I can find several places that sell 160GB for $75-90. When I said that it might cost upwards of $1000+ to recover data if the head has detached, that's because it would have to be taken apart and a new head attached in a "clean room" similar to wafer processing facilities. This wouldn't be the heavily automated procedure (i.e lower cost) used for most production units.
It's just standard operating procedure for the manufacturer/seller to keep warranty replaced parts in exchange for the repair. In many cases, they'll want it to perform failure analysis, especially if it's a warranty replacement from the drive manufacturer.
Even though data recovery costs a lot (and I may not ultimately do it), I am going to get the machine back and replace the dead drive on my own with a new larger one. My original drive was small (160 gigs) and it has been in the back of my mind to upgrade to a larger drive anyway, so after thinking about it, this seems like the best solution. (On that note, if anyone has suggestions for good/affordable internal drives for the MacBook in the 250-320 gig range, please don't hesitate to pass them along.)
Best Buy seems to have a 250GB 5400 RPM Hitachi Travelstar drive on sale this week. I don't know if it would be in stock in a store near you, but you could check.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8699492&type=product&id=1199494484 147
Good luck with the data recovery efforts. Let us know how it turns out.

HT1661 My mid-2009 MacBook Pro has just died via a painful (for me) hard drive failure. I backed up a good percentage of files recently but not enough to keep me happy. I need to access the dead drive on the MBP via a 2008 iMac. Best options?

My mid-2009 MacBook Pro has just died via a painful (for me) hard drive failure. I backed up a good percentage of files recently but not enough to keep me happy. I need to access the dead drive on the MBP via a 2008 iMac. Best options?
I have ordered a 800 firewire to 800 firewire cable and am hoping to use the target mode option to copy files from the MBP.
Is this possible?
Hope so!
Any advice and or help would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
Neil

Thanks Ogelthorpe.
Just bought an enclosure to try that also.
Hoping the MBP isn't really dead but just feigning death
Fingers crossed.

Raid 5 Configuration with Two Dead Drive Modules

I have a xRaid (14-250 drives) configured as a Raid 5 (raid 50). Two drives have failed, one on each side of the xRaid.
The Bad drives were pulled and new modules were installed. The new drives show green light, but when I retrieved data, the information is currupted. The New modules were removed and data was retrieved from the xRaid (missing the two drives) and the data appears to be okay. We are attepting to physically back-up all data on external drives.
What should we do to ensure best data preservation and how do we replace the dead drives. Thank You
xraid Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Thank you for your response.
The ADM are purchased as replacements. The xRaid is not iunder warranty (1.5 years old). They are the same 250 Gig configuration.
We have not tried to re-intall the new ADM's as we were concerned about the data, since they did not appear to be re-bulding them selves and we just 'sitting there'. So we thought that it would be a reasonable idea to performa a data back-up onto external drives...yes all 2+ terabytes. The back-up worked fine for about the first 1.5 Terabytes, but then the server would hang during the file copy process and lock-up the entire system. In looking further it has been determined that the system locks up at the same files (some 65Mb tifs) so I presume that the data is currupt.
The curruption of the data confuses me a little. We do have one dead ADM per controller side (one on the left and one on the right side) but it was my understanding that each controller could in theory loose one ADM without loosing data....
Also, the xRaid does Not have the Latest Firmware. Should we update the firmware while trying to get this system back into a healthy condition or should we wait until we get all ADM's back up an going prior to firmware upgrading?
Thank You

Dead drive or blind tiger?

greetings all,
i hope everyone's celebrations were enjoyable. one of the gifts i recieved was a crash for my external FW drive.
i need some diagnostic help. im pretty sure it's not a software problem but i wanted to be sure...
the enclosure gets power. the image wont mount. the drive is not seen in the system profiler. it IS seen, however in disc utility but all the options for repair and restore are greyed out.
i have tried data rescue II but that just hangs on startup if the FW drive is plugged in or, if i start the app first and then plug in the drive, data rescue just spins.
so i either have a hardware problem (dead drive) or a software problem (the finder is "blind" and cannot see the drive).
the biggest bummer is that this drive is where all of my nearly 2000 cd's have been ripped. im without most of my music until i get this thing fixed. and if the drive is gone then i have to re-rip all my music....ugh.
does anyone have a clue? i'm hoping against hope that it's a quick software fix so that i can just repair the drive and get on with 2006. but i'm pessimistic. any help would be much appriciated. thanks!

My misunderstanding.
no harm, no foul.
Kyle,
In the company I run we have about 15 or so various
different PowerBooks from Pismos to Titaniums to
Aluminum G4s in use currently. Eight of them use the
slot-drive, and of that, seven drives have had to be
replaced within 18 month of service. Two twice by
Apple. I wouldn't call that superior by any means.
The remainder use the more traditional tray style
drives and have NEVER had to be replaced. Those are
the Pismos. The cost of labour alone to replace the
slot drive is astonomical compared to a tray type.
For the record, the little rubber feet on my personal
PowerBook appear to be not quite even, and THAT is
the amount of bending I am referring to. Very very
slight indeed. These recent PowerBooks have proven,
in our experience, to be delicate AND finicky when
they want to be -- and deadly time consuming to
repair.
interesting. my experience, while more limited, is quite different. i had many troubles with tray loading drives on ibooks and imacs. not with the optics inside but the mechanics of the trays. i haven't had these kinds of problems with the slot loading drives ive used except for a powerbook that had ben dropped and indeed was bent. the bottom case was seriously warped and the drive stopped mounting discs. i had to pay for the bottom case replacement but the drive was still under applecare. but that drive failure was my fault not its own.
oh well, thanks again for posting.
i tried discwarrior and got the same results as with data rescue....nothing. i guess i'll get the cd's out of boxes and start ripping again. sheeesh.
grace and peace,
kyle

Dead Drive Bay?

I've got a PBG3/FW 500MHz with a dead drive bay: neither the Apple DVD-ROM module nor my VST Zip100 module are recognized by my 'Book. I don't know what could have caused this failure; both modules worked this weekend, and the 'Book's been sitting on my desk on charge and powered up since then. I've only run the security update that Apple released today, that's the only software change!
Anyone else have this problem or ideas to fix?
Thanks
PowerBook G3/500 FW Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Michael,
Welcome to the Discussions.
I have seen this behavior a few times in earlier versions of OSX and generally one or both of these procedures will solve the issue:
- Run the Repair Disk Permissions in Disk Utility from the HD.
- Flush the caches using a third-party utility like 'Yasu' (freeware) or 'Tiger Cache Cleaner' or 'Onyx', all available from VersionTracker.

HT1420 My hard drive died. My IT guy reloaded stuff. However I needed to authorize this drive to get itunes to work. How do I deauthorize a dead drive?????

My hard drive died. My IT guy reloaded stuff. However I needed to authorize this drive to get it to work. How do I deauthorize a dead drive????? It says I now have 5 authorized devices - but this computer is now counted twice - first old dead hard drive and now this new hard drive. Thanks!

Deauthorize your computer twice, and then authorize it. If that doesn't work, use the Deauthorize All function.
(67912)

Recovery From A Dead Drive!

Hi.
My Pavilion dv7-6b51ea (QG732EA), Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit), BIOS F.1C started giving me a SMART disk warning this was followed shortly after by a decrease in performance (20-30 min to boot to desktop) and this was shortly followed by a blue screen with failure notifications, in short a dead hard drive.
I took heed of the warnings and manually removed the little data I keep on the C: drive, although I didn't get as far as backing it up as the warnings suggested due to the zx spectrum like performance.
I also acquired a Intel 520 series, 480 GB SSD to replace it's Toshiba HDD with.
My conundrum now is how best to proceed with installing the SSD.
I have somewhere, in a safe place, the recovery discs created on the initial install although at the time of writing I can't remember where the safe place is!.
Option 2 I believe would be to use Intel's data migration software, providing I can get the 1TB Toshiba HDD to come back to life?.
Although would these 2 options not leave me with a OS set up for a HDD on a SSD?.
My other option I believe would be to do a "clean install" from a windows 7 SP1 ISO.
This is the option I leaning towards.
If I understand correctly from the research I was able to do prior to my HDD's demise if I take this route windows will install itself making the necessary settings for use with a SSD, although I can't see a setting in the BIOS to enable AHCI, I believe AHCI is enabled by default in an HP bios?.
Also If I understand correctly I can during the beginning of the install create a D: RECOVERY partition giving me a C: for the OS, the aforementioned D: for recovery and the System Reserved Partition as my dv7 was set up prior to this, it also had HP_TOOLs partition which would be created with the install of HP UEFI Support Environment I believe.
Would this then allow me to use HP Recovery Management as before (ie. via hotkeys etc.)?, if not I think I also have a copy of the SWSetup folder somewhere could I extract the necessary files from there?.
I would like my recovery to contain a copy of windows + updates to this date if this is possiable leaving me to install the HP components I require after, in the case of a windows failiure (I would prefer this option as after 3 years of use I still could not rid the system of some OEM components, Magic Desktop in particular, and a trial version of Norton Internet Security which recently reapeared in place of the Norton subscription after letting Intel's driver update utility update the chipset and network drivers).
Any advice is greatly apreciated.
Many thanks.
Grant.

Thanks for the swift response Huffer.
Sorry mine's delayed, I'm sharing computer time with my nephews on my sisters laptop at the moment.
Also please excuse my ignorance as I've not delt with any hardware issues for over 10 years so this has been a steep relearning curve and I'm new to SSD's and have no experiance of RAID, I think and I've done to much reading in to short a amount of time and confussed myself a bit.
Since my initial post I've cautiously coaxed my dv7 back to life and found the recovery discs although both are probably redundant now as I've also aquired a Windows 7 .iso.
I've been back in the BIOS and can not find any drive mode settings, device manager has the Intel Mobile Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller controlling my HDD & BD ROM and Intel Rapid Storage Technology is installed although I'm unsure if either of these are an indication of whether I'm configured for AHCI or RAID?.
Is there a easy way of telling which it is? as the Intel RAID driver you directed me to says "The driver should be installed after the operating system has been installed. F6 and RAID BIOS configurations need to be performed prior to installation of this driver for proper operation".
Will windows not install basic drivers to get me up and running?
You asked "Do you have an mSSD accelerator cache drive?", I'm presuming you mean on the Toshiba drive, I can find no mention of this in the dv7 specs or on the Toshiba MK1059GSM specs.
I'm half tempted to try a "suck it and see" approach but would prefer to get things right during install if I can!.
To this end would I be better off creating a D: RECOVERY partition during Install or wiil HP software do this for me when added later, I remember reading somewhere systems can sometimes be a bit particular with regards to a recovery partition?.
Once again many thanks.
Grant.

Dead drive, desperately trying to rescue files..

Hi,
The SATA drive on my black Macbook has packed in without me backing up via TimeMachine.. (yes, we all learn from our mistakes the hard way, sooner or later, I guess) I'm desperately trying to retrieve whatever I can from it. There doesn't seem any hope as all I'm getting is that cursed question mark flashing, the machine can't find a drive to boot from. The one thing that slightly confuses me is although I can boot from SL install DVD, I can't do the same from Disk Warrior or Data Recovery DVDs.. Obviously I cannot run disk utility from the install DVD as there doesn't seem to be any drive to run repairs on. I'm thinking of running the OS from a firewire drive but can't even figure how to do that. Terminal commands are a no-go as I can't boot from Single User.
This IS the worst case scenario and I'm wondering whether any of you out there has ever dealt with such a state with success?

My drive is dead also, though it is still not showing it clearly!
I still have it and when I run a test on it (Mac or Win), everything look's OK - including SMART.
The most obvious sign was a slow system, showing the umbrella all the time, without an apparent reason. After a hard reset, it did not boot up at all.
I could recover most of my data by booting from an external drive with a clone of the system on it.
I say "most of the data" because, lately, for several months, I was getting "Error - 36" on some files, without being able to find out why. It was happening with photos in iPhoto Library and, now I know that is because I mostly used that library.
When I could not boot anymore, some other files got that error too.
The drive is the 120 GB Fujitsu, Mac Book came with. And, like I said, it is not totally dead: it has moments when it runs like nothing happened.
Message was edited by: getablonda
I would suggest you to buy a new drive, reinstall OSX and try to recover afterwards.

Dead drive...in the middle of the mac (mbp)...li'l he'p please

stuck in china and temporarily using an ancient computer unit due to mbp hd crash and burn...HELP!
tried searching "magic block" and there were 4 matching but none of the links will show onscreen on this ancient piece (can't even read google mail this thing is so old
can't raise anything on my mbp (flashing file with ?)...stone dead
diagnostics suggest that there is a long piece of code missing or inaccessible in "magic block"
is there a way to retrieve data from fried harddrive, or some other known work-around (the issue is apparently known to some)
went to my "gurus" but they are not hip, to this particular issue at least
went to authorized service center
they say they can replace hd but need my old one in exchange...what's up with that
do folks really just send bad harddrives back to apple with personal and sensitive data on them?!!
your thoughts?
this issue is apparently addressed in some form already on this forum; even if you could just provide hotlinks to threads relevant to "magic block," i'd be most appreciative (i just can't get the search to display those links on this lame machine)
my mbp is still under hardware warranty, but no apple care pkg
many thanks in advance

Do you have , or can you obtain, a Tiger (10.4.10 or later) or Leopard DVD, micbojangles?
If so, try booting from that by holding down the C" key while starting up with the disc in the machine.
Run Disk Utility from the menubar and see if it can "see" and "repair" the drive.
If it can "repair" it, you are home. If not, then , as long as the drive can be seen, you should be able to do an "Archive and Install" of your OS from the DVD , using the settings that allow you to keep your data / settings etc. If even this isn't possible then you are going to have to have access to an external drive.
What were you actually using to run these "diagnostics"?
If you can get hold of an external drive, and install OSX 10.4.10 or later on it, there is a good chance that you would be able to recover the contents of your drive using Prosoft's Data Rescue . As long as the drive hasn't suffered a hardware failure it will usually get back most stuff, regardless of how badly corrupted the drive directories etc are.
(One other word of warning - don't trust any diagnostic results obtained while running in FW TD mode from a PPC based mac. Chances are that they will be incorrect. If you are going ton hook up in FW TD mode to another Mac make sure itis an Intel model when doing such things)
Cheers
Rod
Message was edited by: Rod Hagen

XServe RAID - Possible Dead Drive

I'm running a G5 XServe with RAID 5 - I have 3 80 GB drives, and it has slowed significantly recently - when loading some software today, I see that one of the drive lights (power light is on) was not blinking showing activity... I think the drive may be dead. Any software utility that I can use to check on the health of the drives?

Hi randolph,
This forum is about the xserve RAID, aphyiscal box that can contain 14 disks and connects through fibre channel.
I suggest you ask your question in a more apropriate forum, there will be more knowkedge about your question there.
(To get you started: I would check the disk first with disk utility)
Regards
Donald

Time machine remembers moved or dead drives

Hello. I've been having a hard time wording this in typical searches, to get appropriate answers.
Here goes: I have a older Mac Pro with four internal drives. One drive, my boot drive, failed.
I had been using an external drive for my Time Machine backup. On that backup, I had included a lot from the other internals.
Once I had isolated the problem (the internal was dead or dying) I made room on one of the other internals by moving things around- condensing to allow for a Restore to one of those three remaining drives, temporarily, as I planned to buy a new internal and a larger external.
Suprisingly, it went great! I ended up with a perfectly restored boot drive with all my Apps, etc.
Now the problem:
When I turned Time Machine on, intending to create a newly restored version of my boot drive---to the new drive I just purchased, TM had a stored list of items that were spread out among the other drives, but I had moved these items all around.
I'm afraid to run TM at all now, not knowing how to tell it to ignore items, volumes, even drives; and restore only the boot drive with its applications etc., and not the various other items that were in places that no longer exist.
If this makes sense, and anyone can advise me, I will greatly appreciate it.

David Kerman wrote:
I just restored the first drive. My system drive. I keep all of my work on the other drive except for itunes, iphoto, and iweb. I initially restored from my latest backup. Same OS. No changes.
When you restored the second time, from an earlier backup, was that the same version of OSX?
I didnt do anything about my second internal drive. The mail message was just saying "welcome to mail" and then everything was okay. But this was still a scary sight. I didn't do anything crazy in the terminal, however i did used the CS3 Clean scripts from Adobe and I think that was the real cause of all this misery.
I don't know what that is or does, so can't advise on that.
Should i just restore EVERYTHING on both drives?
If you restored an earlier version of OSX, but had data in a newer format on the other drive, yes.
If the version of your boot drive that you restored has the Adobe applications, and the data was on the second disk, perhaps. Depending on what the "Clean Scripts" thing did, you may now have a similar mismatch.
If you're concerned about Spotlight indexing, don't be. Time Machine automatically omits some things, such as system workfiles, most caches, trash, and Spotlight indexes. So Spotlight will normally re-index a restored drive.
I don't know about the Quickview and Preview problems. What, exactly, is happening there?
OH, and yes. I just read that article. I did everything it said, however I ONLY backed up the first drive. Not the second
Do you mean you don't have backups of the second drive, or didn't restore it?
If you do have mismatches between the two drives, you may need to restore one (or both) again so they're from the same time.
and I was getting a ton of SUID permission errors that couldnt be fixed.
Are the SUID errors the ones shown here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448 If so, you can ignore them.

Dead drive in a Zen Xtra, need help w/ replacem

The dead dri've in my 40Gb Zen Xtra has been removed from the player and its been sitting in pieces for the past week or so. I would like to know what I would need to do to a replacement dri've (have a 40Gb notebook dri've ready to go) in order for the player to A. recognize it and B. be able to put songs on it. Do I have to format it in a certain way before hand or will the firmware update be able to do that? Help is much appreciated.
-Mobious-

I was having similar troubles trying to get a big Maxtor operational. I had to set a jumper on the back of the drive ... then was able to follow the advice given below. (Please see complete text of other item).
I've been successful using Maxtor 60GB IDE drives on Solaris 8 on Sparc by doing the following:
1. Boot the system off System Software 1 of 2 CD, and follow the instructions until you can open a command window.
2. Once in the command window you need to type "format". Choose the hard drive (disk), but then you need to create a new "type" that is compatible with the solaris driver software and uses most of the disk. For large IDE drives, the only thing that matters is the actual number of usable sectors (which are 512 bytes each). You can go to the Maxtor website to get the real number of sectors for your drive. Then you need to make up a set of cyl, head, sectors numbers to enter into the "type". The limits on the Solaris driver (found by hitting enter at the prompts) are: max Cyl: 32767, max heads: 64, max sectors: 256. These are different than the limits for Windows. ATA limits max heads to 16, so I use that to be safe. Therefore I choose to use 256 sectors, 16 heads, and then choose a number of cylinders that will yield a number equal or less than the total number of sectors allowed on the drive (ie: total sectors = cyl*heads*sectors). Then subtract 2 from the cylinders when entering the number of cyl at the prompt, as you'll need them for the following steps where it wants to reserve two cylinders. When you get to the name of the drive, I choose to type the name of the drive with an * appended to the end to signify a difference. Once done defining the "type", write the label.
3. Proceed with installation.
(Again, please see other item in forum (something about installing a bix maxtor).
You can email me at [email protected] if you want more specific advice.
Cheers, John

What's wrong with my drive? Dead Drive? ATA controller? Logic Board?

Hi!
I have had a problem with my iBook G4 1.33GHz for a while now. I've tried a few times to fix it and then have given up thinking replacement was the best option. I'll try to be brief but this saga has actually been going on for over 2 years.
The basic problem is that the computer finds the HD intermittently. The problem used to occur after the computer had booted and was on for maybe an hour. A friend of mine removed the drive and had it running in a separate enclosure for a few days. It seemed fine-all disk checkers like Disk Warrior checked it out just fine. He reinstalled the drive and gave me back the computer. Within a few days, it froze like before. Upon restart I just get the question mark folder.
That was almost 2 years ago. I've tried a few different things to see what was the problem but to no avail. Here's what I have tried:
-Booting into target disk mode-the disk does not mount.
-Booting from a CD-even if I hold down the C key, it prompts that this is going to be a new install and when I get to the screen to pick the volume, the HD does not appear.
-Tried the shim trick as indicated at:
http://coreyarnold.org/ibook/?p=20
Some earlier symptoms included video issues so this made sense.
-Took apart yesterday to make sure the drive connected well. It didn't work at first but later booted from hard drive.
-Since it booted, I restarted in Target Disk mode and ran Disk Utility from my iMac. There were some errors but DU was able to fix them all. Restarted iBook no problem.
-Ran Apple Hardware Test overnight in loop mode. After 18 rounds, nothing came up.
-Ran SMART Reporter and got green.
-Thought everything was ok so I ran Software Update. First round went fine. I ran it a second time knowing that some updates can be incremental. Upon downloading, computer froze and since then I am back to square one-no booting.
-Took apart today to see if there was any corrosion on the ATA chip as mentioned in this article:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2310290&tstart=0
as the thread mentioned a lot of stuff I was experiencing.
-Reassembled after finding nothing.
-Now the computer does not boot whatsoever-it tries to eject disk in optical drive and then nothing else-no sounds, no video, etc.
So what does all of this mean? I thought the earlier indicators were a dying drive but when my friend checked it out and found nothing, we were stumped. He actually suggested the ATA controller. The not wanting to boot from a CD really bothers me. What does that mean? I have never seen that in 20 years of using Macs.
Oh and if it matters, this computer was formerly fixed as it did have the dreaded logic board problem.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!
Brian

Hi again!
So this is with the new board? Was there sectoring of the lines?
If so that's the graphics chip most likely.
Yes. However, since this has gone on for a while and I never finished taking care of it, I can't remember all the details like sectoring of the lines.
The problem used to occur after the computer had booted and was on for maybe an hour.
So it freezes? That does sound like a GPU problem esp as it happens after an hour or so. (thermal flex causing separation of BGA)
Normally, yes. I have also gotten the kernel panic screen (You must restart your computer now). When it froze this morning, I had started to download a System Update. The clock ran, but I couldn't force-quit anything. What about the fact that the drive doesn't mount in Target Disk Mode?
You could pull the board and send it for reball.
I've also found a few boards on eBay that so far are less than the reball, but unless it was already reballed, then I run the risk of this happening again in the future, right?
Thanks again for your help!
Brian

My iMac crashed, how to backup my files from a dead drive

Hi, I need to backup my files, I haven't made any backup before, not even a time machine. I started up using the CD that came with it but DU isn't able to repair my disk. I know I made a mistake by not making any backup before but please help if you have any clue on how to retrieve my files. Thanks.
Fami

The DiskWarrior DVD has an OS X System Folder on so it will boot most Macs (I believe there are some exceptions, so it's worth checking out the Alsoft site for info). Put the DW disk in the drive and boot up holding down the C key.
http://www.alsoft.com/

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