[Axel]

Hi everyone !

My Powerbook (800/40GB/512MB) just had a very weird week, and I'm looking for some advice. About a week ago, I noticed the hard drive made some weird noises : when I was browsing through folders, I could hear a sound of something "bouncing" inside the hard drive. It didn't happen all the time though. I even heard the drive making 0.5 second-long pitched sounds like "beeps". Of course I decided to make a complete backup of my data on a friend's iPod.

Later, I noticed that one of my partitions wouldn't mount in OS X (I got errors like disk0s11 : UNDEFINED in the system log), and the Disk Utility couldn't repair the volume : it just failed saying there was an error (something like -9972). Weirdly enough, the volume was recognized when I booted on OS 9.

I tried booting with Diskwarrior, but it wouldn't work : after a few minutes of the Apple startup screen, all I got was a blue screen. I think it may have something to do with the fact that it's not an original CD, but a CD-R copy. So I tried to repair the volume by just launching the app in OS X, but the process was taking ages, and the log was full of "couldn't read block range xxxxxx to yyyyyy".

Then I tried Tech Tool Pro 3. For some reason, it woulnd't boot in OS 9.2 from the CD : I got a bomb error saying "bus error". Then I tried fixing the disk by launching the TechTool app, which found a Volume header error on the faulty partition, and fixed it (erasing a lot of files from the partition in the process).

So since this morning, I have all my partitions back, and I can't hear any clicking sounds from my HD anymore. This is annoying, as I was about to buy a new HD as I thought mine was dying. Now I can't tell if it was just a partition problem or a real hardware issue.

Is there anyway I could know wether or not I have a faulty HD ? Do you think it's normal that fixing a drive with Tech Tool would stop it from clicking ?

Thanks in advance for your answers

[Axel]

I should have said that, all the time when my partition couldn't mount, the whole system would occasionally hang, with the HD spinning all the time. I had to force reboot quite a few times during the week.
Sometimes, the computer wouldn't even find the hard disk at startup (even the Disk Utility from 0S 10.3 Install CD couldn't see anything), but zapping the PRAM and resetting the NVRAM solved the problem.

[Voch]

I think if you don't trust the drive anymore and you have the money it's worth just replacing the drive now. You can always turn the old drive into a backup drive or something...

Voch

[Axel]

I think that's the best thing to do. I'm considering buying a Toshiba 60GB 5400 rpm with 16MB of cache. I think I'll buy a cheap Firewire enclosure (Titanium Jr) for the original drive.

[webb3201]

yep, do it before the drive fails. After the new one is in place, you can format the old and hit it with all of the utilities you can and see if you can make it better.

k

[Axel]

What keeps me from going straight to the store and buying a new HD is the possibility that the problem might come from somewhere else in my computer.
When I got back in my room 15 minutes ago, the system had frozen and I had to force restart. On reboot, the computer was apparently unable to see the HD, as it just showed a greey screen. I tried resetting the NVRAM and rebooting a few times, when it suddenly came back to life.
I'd really like to be sure that it's my HD that is responsible for all this.

[siflippant]

Originally posted by Axel:

I'd really like to be sure that it's my HD that is responsible for all this.

I had a very similar thing happen to me with an old 2001 dual usb iBook... I really would recommend getting that new drive asap... best of luck!

[cal6n]

Originally posted by Axel:

I'd really like to be sure that it's my HD that is responsible for all this.

The sound you're describing sounds the same as my old Ti 550 made. The drive was dying. They do that, I'm afraid, and often earlier in lappys than desktops.

Try opening disk utility and selecting the the drive, not any volumes that may be on it. Now check the SMART status at the bottom of the window. If it says "failing" then a new drive is in order and your idea to go for a large cache and 5400 RPM is a good one.

I put my old drive in a firewire case and use it as a scratch disk, but only for non-critical stuff. I certainly wouldn't trust it further than that.

[Axel]

Last time I checked, the SMART status was OK. Currently, I can't even boot the computer (grey screen at startup). Last time that happened, a few PRAM and NVRAM resets made it work again. Anyway, I should receive the new drive shortly.