[punchinface]

System Description:

My 15" G4 powerbook is 14 months old. 1 Gig RAM. 1.5 GHz processor. No extended applecare purchased. no problems until today. lastest os x version updates have been installed. no known issues, save that the battery is growing weaker and weaker every week.

Sequence of events this afternoon:

Met with a client, presented a slide show of design schemas and won the bid. No problems... Closed up the powerbook, put it in my padded case and travelled 5 blocks to my apartment, unpacked the powerbook, which woke from sleep without problems. However, the system was hanging... spinning ball style, so i held down the power button to do a hard restart.

Upon restart, I was met with a lengthy gray screen followed by the "?" and OS Folder icon. Two subsequent restarts yielded the same.

Next, I inserted DiskWarrior 3.03 and it failed to locate the Hard Disk. Ut Oh.

I restarted the powerbook in target mode, after connecting to my g.f.'s g4 iBook. While the Target moved about the screen on the powerbook, the iBook failed to recognize the powerbook HD. Ut oh. Damn...

Subsequent restarts have yielded the same results. Thoughts? Is my HD just shot? There was no system trauma! I am baffled... What can I do...? Advice is appreciated.

[rjt1000]

Hi,

It does indeed sound like your hard drive is toast, and with Disk warrior not finding the disk, it doesnt look good.

The TOSHIBA MK6025GAS 60 gb drive in my 12 inch G4 Powerbook died at 12 months and 2 weeks. Fortunately Apple allowed it under Applecare (they have some discretion when it's close). My sister has the very same Powerbook and its TOSHIBA MK6025GAS died at just under 12 months. Wondering if others have had problems with this drive? Did your 15 inch have this same drive?

Unfortunately hard drives fail, its just a matter of how long until they do. Having lost data on hard drives, I've learned my lesson and try to burn CD or DVD backups. An alternative and fairly painless backup strategy is to regularly clone an image of your hard drive to your external firewire. (relying on the hope that 2 drives wouldnt fail at the same time--although a lightening strike to your cable, telephone or power could indeed fry everything on your desk in one shot)

You can expect a bill about $350 if you have the hard drive replaced at the Apple Store, doing it yourself would save you some money if you are tech savvy, although this isnt easy on the Al-books as it used to be with older Powerbooks. Of course there are fiendishly expensive services that might be able to recover the data on your dead drive, but that would be a matter of how vital it is to retrieve and how deep are your pockets.

Good luck,

Rich

[Karim]

Your hard drive is 99.9% finished. They wear out, and usually quite suddenly. Physical shock can help speed up the process, s.m.a.r.t. detection can give you a short warning, but I would try one final thing: (Even if this does work, you need to backup your files and still get a new HD because it may be a stuck head (to the platter) which will only continue to happen and start sand-blasting the platters/heads and lead to complete failure if that isn't already the case.

Turn off the computer, unplug the power cable, pull the battery pack out and wait an hour then put it all back together and start it up. Do all of this at room temperature (ie not a cold room). Be prepared in advance to backup the data if you get it to boot to either another computer or external drive.

Good luck!