Probably dying HD but something else too...

Question

I have an iBook 300mHz, tangerine, Airport, 288 total RAM and lately it's been slowing way, way, down. Today it started some funky thing where, in order to access the dock, you must click the dock area. Same for menus. The blue bar doesn't follow my cursor, it waits until I click on the option. The noises and such make me think the hard drive is dying (I replaced the original last year with a 30 gig high mileage HD) Also, when I repair my permissions mutiple problems show up repair after repair, even if they're only seconds apart. This presents a few questions: a) Is it worth pouring anymore money into this machine? b) What could be causing the permissions problems? and c) If I replace the drive, can I recover my data? How? Thanks for any help you can give.

Answer 1

Hello Mike
Since noone has taken a shot at this, I will.
OK, first, I agree with your assessment that the HD is probably dying...especially if you are getting clicking or grinding noises from the HD. As to your questions:
a. Only you can determine if it's worth it. If you are truly strapped for cash, you can pick up a NEW 40GB hard drive from Other World Computing for under sixty dollars. I'm sure some searching will return even better prices. Of course, there is the "cool" factor of the Tangerine, which cannot (IMO) be replaced. However, you must figure out what your main use of the machine is and how much money you have to spend. You can pick up the next generation of iBook (the white square one) for only a couple hundred plus change - depending on what speed, options, etc (I've seen them go for around $250 for the 500MHz model). You get a faster processor, faster system bus (depending on model) and 1024x768 screen resolution, and the possibility of a DVD or combo drive. It's your call...
b. Well, a bad HD would cause permissions problems. Another possibility would be to do a total erase and install of the operating system. However, I seem to remember having this problem (running disk utility and getting the same errors constantly) with older versions of OS X. It was normal for me until I upgraded (Tiger has never given me this kind of error). You could check the Apple knowledge base - here's a link to get you started:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106270
c. Well, do you have another Mac? If you could plug the old drive in (you could use an external USB enclosure, but it would be SLOW on your Tangerine, or you could plug it into another Mac via Firewire or USB), then you could transfer files over a network. How important is this data? Data recovery services exist - but they cost $$.
hope this helps
Richard