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MrForgetable · Jun 12, 2006, 02:23 AM

Just listening to some music and deleting photographs when I heard a noise coming from the computer. At first it sounded like a fan was going weird, but then when I took off my headphones, I was almost sure it was the hard drive.

Everything was frozen except the mouse, and I think the music was actually still playing but I wasn't really paying attention to that.

So I couldn't shut down via menus or anything so I held the power button and it turned off, and by the sound of the spinning down I am positive it is the hard drive making the noise.

I tried turning it on again but it'd make the same noise and it'd get to the grey Apple logo screen with the thing that goes around in a circle and it'd never get past that. The loud noise from the HD can actually be felt when I touch the keyboard area.

I tried booting from the original DVDs that came with the Powerbook (10.3 restore), and it worked but when I went into Disk Utility, it would stay on "Getting Disk Information..." and it would not change. So I gave up after trying twice getting disk information via DVD and failing both times.

However, I am running 10.4 on the Powerbook and at time when I am supposed to sleep, can't think of where I put the 10.4 disk. I will try that when I find it, but for some reason, I doubt it will work.

And now I am here. Completely helpless, I think. What I am hoping for is at least getting my pictures back (I was just about to back them up on my iPod, what a coincidence, yeah?) and my resume as well, actually.

What is there I can do? I'll probably call Apple tomorrow and run firewire drive mode with another Mac to see if it can read it from another computer.

Some background information:
I was running 10.4.6... 15" 1.33GHz G4... 512 MB RAM.
I had about 700MB (admittedly, it has been running on less than 1GB of memory in the past 2 days) left on the harddrive with about 2gb of RAW photos (13.5mb each) in the trash and counting (still deleting) when the drive went kaput.
Running Safari and iTunes at the time.
I haven't fixed permissions in a while, and I haven't used the late night cron scripts in a while.

Anyway, ANY help is greatly appreciated. The resume is due on Tuesday (just finished yesterday.). Thanks

MrForgetable · Jun 12, 2006, 02:32 AM

Thought I'd describe the sound... it's a low pitched-medium pitched crackling sound.. sounds a little forced, kind of like it is being grinded.

It makes me not want to try and boot up the computer.

iMacfan · Jun 12, 2006, 11:57 AM

Find another Mac, connect them together with FW400, and turn on your powerbook, holding down "T". This will boot into firewire disk mode, where hopefully you'll be able to salvage your data.

If this does not work, your drive is probably hosed or well on its way to being hosed. One option is putting it in a freezer (better out of the PB!) - and then using an external enclosure. This has rescued some drives for a short while. Otherwise, it's a very expensive trip to a data recovery service...

David

8minute · Jun 12, 2006, 07:50 PM

My hdd on my powerbook did the same thing ... initially started making weird buzzing sounds if I tilted the powerbook (sounds like the sound of a lightsaber).

Then a few months later it started making the grinding sounds you described. Not long after that it died (in the same manner as yours) the day I bought myself a new hdd to replace it with. Talk about timing ...

Haven't had a chance to put the old drive in an external exclosure to see if I can salvage anything ... in no rush as I had stuff backed up anyways.

MrForgetable · Jun 12, 2006, 11:30 PM

Target Disk Mode does not work. The drive is fried. I am positive.

lexon · Jun 14, 2006, 11:01 AM

damn. the same thing is happening to me right now. weird. i just posted to see if anyone knew how much a hard drive was as i was thinking it was gonna die...well, i guess i'm right. sucks ass.

genericlusters · Jul 1, 2006, 06:48 PM

If you want your data back, contact a data recovery company. I at work had lost a Microstation .dgn fils with images in excess of 120Gb that we've worked on for at least 14 months. We tried this firm on http://www.unirecovery.co.uk, they were swift with recovering everything.

chipchen · Jul 1, 2006, 08:41 PM

Your guess is probably right. Sounds like your hard drive is toast. Hard drives cost between $50 - $300... probably $80 - $120 on average for drive similar to what you have in terms of speed and size.

If you've opened up PowerBooks before, it's not too much a deal.. but to warn you, there are clips above the optical drive that are tricky, and people almost always mess up the first one they open up.

The Apple Store will charge you $324 to replace the drive, but they don't give the drive back to you... and they send the PowerBook in (takes about a week).

If you need it done faster (and/or need to keep your hard drive in case you want to send it to a data recovery service in the future).. I'm in your area (kind of)... PM me if you're interested... I'm Apple Certified and on their consultants network (consultants.apple.com). Lemme know.