[egutin]

My iBok right now is alternately giving me a blinking "?", a blank grey screen, an apple with no spinny thing, and a spinny thing that just keeps going.

I will outline the steps that have led me to this point:

FIrst - this is the Oct. 2003 edition of the iBook G4. In September I had to take apart and put back the computer on my own in order to repair a broken hinge. It has worked flawlessly since then with the exception of an overly-sensitive reed switch.

1 - The finder started restarting every time I attempted to key in a command. THis stopped after a restart. I think this was symptom A

2 - Everything started giving me the spinning beach ball a few minutes into use. Symptom B

3 - Mail gave me a "Home Directory Full" error. Symptom C

4 - The ultimate doom - I got the blinking question mark on restart.

5 - Put in the Tiger Install DVD - it could not see my HD

6 - God the iBook to start up, and it verified the HD as OK - it did not detect any problems

7 - Got blinking question mark again.

8 - I loaded Tiger onto an external HD, started up form it. iBook would not mount the internal HD

9 - Hardware profiler says everything checks out OK.

10 - Ran DIsk Warrior three times now, all with the same result. It sees the disc, says it is ready for rebuilding. Then, during creation of the new set of directories, it tells me that the process is slow due to disc errors. Then, when I choose to replace the old directory with the new, it stops in the middle because of a mechanical error and has to restart. BTW, the SMART function of the drive is not reporting anything.

So, the tests say that everything is mechanically fine as far as the HD's own diagnostics can tell me, yet it is experiencing mechanical errors. I know my data is on there, and as far as I can tell it is intact, but Disk Utility wont see the disc, and warrior wont repair it. SHould I try another repair utility? Spend the $$ on data recpvery? Could it just be a bad internal cable? I have no clue where to go from here.

thanks,

Eitan

[Mojo]

The fact that Disk Warrior is exhibiting that behavior points to a bad drive.

Do you have the option of using Firewire Disk Mode so you can try mounting the iBook volume on another Mac? I doubt that it will be successful, but if it were me I would give a try. If you can mount the drive, the first thing to do is get the data off there ASAP. Forget anything that can be replaced via CD/DVD.

Disk Recovery can be very expensive. Hopefully it doesn't come to that or your data isn't really that valuable...

Moral of the Story: Have at least one external drive backup (two is better.) Or burn CDs/DVDs. Just Backup. It's like flossing: it's a LOT cheaper to do than visiting a dentist.

[Mojo]

The fact that Disk Warrior is exhibiting that behavior points to a bad drive.

Do you have the option of using Firewire Disk Mode so you can try mounting the iBook volume on another Mac? I doubt that it will be successful, but if it were me I would give a try. If you can mount the drive, the first thing to do is get the data off there ASAP. Forget anything that can be replaced via CD/DVD.

Disk Recovery can be very expensive. Hopefully it doesn't come to that or your data isn't really that valuable...

Moral of the Story: Have at least one external drive backup (two is better.) You can put together a nice external drive for less than $100. Or burn CDs/DVDs. Just Backup. It's like flossing: it's a LOT cheaper to do than visiting a dentist.

[egutin]

I have not been able to load the drive in target disc mode - that was the last thing I tried last night. My final attempt will be to remove the drive and place it in an external enclosure, in order to test if there is a cable or logic board problem. I found a post somewhere describing similar behavior in a powerbook, and attributing it to a loose cable. I had a problem with my CD drive, and it was the same thing. So, final attempt before mourning the drive.

YEah, definitely time to start backing up.