[Lateralus]

Ahhh...

It all started last night when I opened up a video in QuickTime and the computer went into spinning beach ball mode. So, I did a forced restart and watched as my G4 refused to boot into OS X or even find the boot drive. And behind the fan of my G4, I heard little peeps coming every few seconds.

These peeps ended up being from my second 400GB hard drive, the one which held the video that I was attempting to play.

So, I took the drives off of cable select, set one to master and one to slave which allowed the machine to find the boot drive and load up OS X. But it didn't kill the beep of the damaged hard drive, which happens for a few minutes every time the machine is fired up, and then stops completely.

Disk Utility doesn't see the drive and neither does System Profiler. Nor does TechTool or DiskWarrior.

I'm pretty close to trying the freezer trick, since it's worked for me in the past but I figured I'd see if anybody else has a bright idea.

This drive has some pretty crucial stuff. Namely years worth of various video files, totaling nearly 300GBs. None of which I have backup copies of.

Any ideas?

[Kevin]

Isn't this in the wrong forum?

[Lateralus]

Moderator's discretion.

This could go in any number of the hardware forums, since it's not machine specific. And being how it's a general tech question, it could also go here.

[Blasphemy]

Nooooooooooooo

[Kevin]

Sorry, judges say nope.

[ironknee]

man sorry to hear that....where is time machine when you need it?

question, if you had time machine as advertised by apple, could you resore the data with a new drive?...

i've lost many drives...i hope you get to recover it and if so let us know how...

[Weezer]

does this give you anything promising?

Data Rescue II 1.1 - MacUpdate

[Lateralus]

Nope. It doesn't detect the drive either.

[Weezer]

not good...have you tried putting it in a different enclosure?

[Lateralus]

Well, I don't have any enclosures. This is an internal drive. But I have tried running it alone without its master drive plugged in, and on its own using the secondary ATA-66 bus. Nada.

I went ahead and threw it in the freezer. We shall see...

I was listening to the drive and it sounds identical to the other drive for the first few seconds or so in that it sounds like it is trying to power up, but then it fails, beeps and repeats with trying to power up.

If there's something wrong with the electrical operation of the drive, then the drive plates should still have all of my data written to them. This makes me wonder why Seagate and pals never seem to rescue any data when drives are returned to them. Do they even try?

****.

[Salty]

Freezer trick, worked on my PowerBook.

[climber]

I once had a hard drive that stopped working. My solution to retrieve the data was to purchase an identical drive and swap out the main circuit boards. It worked for me.

[forkies]

Originally Posted by climber 

I once had a hard drive that stopped working. My solution to retrieve the data was to purchase an identical drive and swap out the main circuit boards. It worked for me.

i, too, would recommend trying this

[Powerbook]

There are three possible main culprits:

- failing platter/data integrity -> software repair, freezer method (?), transplant platter
- failing motor -> transplant platter, *
- failing board/electronics -> transplant circuit board or just rewrite "ROM"s


* I have an important drive with failing motor. I thought about transplanting the platter, but it's a hell of a job (head aligning etc). Though I noticed the harddisk will be mounted and reads/writes data no matter how slow the motor spins. So my idea will be to mount a "piggyback motor" just to spin the platter including the failed motor. I'm pretty sure this will work.

Regards,
PB

[bstone]

To the OP:

I believe, sir, that this post is most likely in the wrong forum. Instead of posting here, you may find more helpful and immediate information and assistance in one of the specific forums, such as the Power Mac & Mac Pro Forum. To get there, click here: http://forums.macnn.com/power-mac-and-mac-pro/

[Kevin]

Yeah not to bust your balls Lat. But anyone else posting this here would have been chastised by a mod, and had it moved.

[residentEvil]

so good thing you are here to keep everything in order and make sure the mods are told what to do.

[Kevin]

Not trying to do any such thing.

[imitchellg5]

Time Machine doesn't revive a dead drive. It goes back in "time" to when a file was in a certain selected location. If your drive is dead, Time Machine is useless. It sounds like the circuitry may be bad to me.

[Gossamer]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

Time Machine doesn't revive a dead drive. It goes back in "time" to when a file was in a certain selected location. If your drive is dead, Time Machine is useless. It sounds like the circuitry may be bad to me.

Well ideally it backs up everything to a separate hard drive, so it would have saved all of the data. I'd love to try it all out, but there's a developer's copy of Leopard sitting about 10 feet away from me that I'm not allowed to touch

[forkies]

i believe time machine should be able to 100% recover any directory/drive that it has backed up.

[imitchellg5]

Oh yeah right, I thought he was talking about the dead drive which wasn't backed up.

[RAILhead]

Where's tooki when we really need him?

[imitchellg5]

He leaves in our most desperate hour We'll survive though. I miss somebody correcting grammatical errors.

[dawho9]

Put that bad boy in the freezer. It works great. Use a nice external cage so you can pack that into ice also and you are set:

http://www.brynteson.info/images/Apr2005/dcp_1355.jpg
(little pick from when my G4 drive failed long ago)

No joke, it works so well its crazy!

dw9

[Lateralus]

Well, I had mine in the freezer for about 10 hours, wrapped in a sheet so it didn't get covered in ice. I popped it in the Mac about 10 minutes ago, straight out of the freezer.

No help at all. Same periodic beep. Still not recognized.

Crap.

[kick52]

Originally Posted by dawho9 

Put that bad boy in the freezer. It works great. Use a nice external cage so you can pack that into ice also and you are set:

http://www.brynteson.info/images/Apr2005/dcp_1355.jpg
(little pick from when my G4 drive failed long ago)

No joke, it works so well its crazy!

dw9

it that pic there..

wouldnt the ice on top start melting, getting water all over your HD, and thus screwing it up?

[Lateralus]

They're air-tight.

[kick52]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

They're air-tight.

yeah, in the frezer you have bags, but in that pic, he has bare ice on top of the bare HD

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by Powerbook 

There are three possible main culprits:

- failing platter/data integrity -> software repair, freezer method (?), transplant platter
- failing motor -> transplant platter, *
- failing board/electronics -> transplant circuit board or just rewrite "ROM"s


* I have an important drive with failing motor. I thought about transplanting the platter, but it's a hell of a job (head aligning etc). Though I noticed the harddisk will be mounted and reads/writes data no matter how slow the motor spins. So my idea will be to mount a "piggyback motor" just to spin the platter including the failed motor. I'm pretty sure this will work.

Regards,
PB

Thanks for the expertise.

I've had it suggested to me that I buy an identical model of the drive and swap circuit boards.

I just got off the phone with Seagate support. I was waiting for 20 mins, finally got through just to be told that I was on the wrong support line. I just hung up after that.

[Gossamer]

Originally Posted by kick52 

yeah, in the frezer you have bags, but in that pic, he has bare ice on top of the bare HD

The problem is that the air around the ice pack will be cooled to below its dew point temperature and cause condensation to form on the pack and hard drive. I'd put a plastic baggie with as little air in it around the hard drive just to be safe.

[dawho9]

Originally Posted by kick52 

yeah, in the frezer you have bags, but in that pic, he has bare ice on top of the bare HD

That pic was mine, not Lateralus. I took that pic on try #4 as I had already gotten most of the info off the drive and was just trying to get the last MP3 off of it before it totally bit the dust.

That's too bad it didn't work though. It sounds as though the circuit board might be the best option, because maybe its not the head crashing into each other but the board.

Good luck!

dw9

[imitchellg5]

Well Mr. Lateralus, I must say that your HD seems very dead. The moral of the story is... make backups ( which I never do )

[Kevin]

Hard Drive Karma

[seanc]

Have you tried it in a different Mac?

My Seagate drive beeps and doesn't work in my external enclosure, I can only assume the PSU in the enclosure is bad and it's not getting enough power. At the time I was ^%@^£$£ but I popped it back into my PowerMac G3, it worked perfectly and still is.

I'd definitely think it's a power issue, either with the circuits on the drive or maybe it's not getting enough power from your Mac.

[Lateralus]

I still haven't done much to take care of the situation, namely because I've been working so much lately.

I've had the drive out of the machine since it died but today I figured I'd plug it in and pray that it worked. It didn't. But I did notice something.

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/5708/picture1cj4.png

Pretty much instantaneously after powering up the machine, the chip I am pointing to with a pen in the picture above becomes so hot that I can't hold my finger on it.

Any idea what this chip is and if this heat may point to the problem definitely being with the board? I'd like to find a way to diagnose it for sure before dropping another $150~ to get another identical drive just for the board.

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

I still haven't done much to take care of the situation, namely because I've been working so much lately.

I've had the drive out of the machine since it died but today I figured I'd plug it in and pray that it worked. It didn't. But I did notice something.

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/5708/picture1cj4.png

Pretty much instantaneously after powering up the machine, the chip I am pointing to with a pen in the picture above becomes so hot that I can't hold my finger on it.

Any idea what this chip is and if this heat may point to the problem definitely being with the board? I'd like to find a way to diagnose it for sure before dropping another $150~ to get another identical drive just for the board.

Please use macro mode so I can read the lettering on the chip.

Or, copy the lettering down into a post or PM for me. I'll tell you what that chip does.

Also, it may be helpful to describe the particular beeps you're getting.

Maxtor drives beep musically when they have the heads crashed on the platters. The beeps are the sound of the heads trying to free themselves.

[imitchellg5]

What is the purple goo? I've never seen that in a HD before ( well I've only taken apart one).

[seanc]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

What is the purple goo? I've never seen that in a HD before ( well I've only taken apart one).

I think it's just used to protect a connector. He's not even taken the HDD apart it's just the underneath.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

Please use macro mode so I can read the lettering on the chip.

Or, copy the lettering down into a post or PM for me. I'll tell you what that chip does.

Also, it may be helpful to describe the particular beeps you're getting.

Maxtor drives beep musically when they have the heads crashed on the platters. The beeps are the sound of the heads trying to free themselves.

The chip is made by TI as far as I can tell. It reads;

980 L
SH69608 E
66EXJFT
GY

My vision isn't as great as it used to be and my camera is too shitty to take a decent picture of the text. So if that doesn't check out, let me know and I'll see if I can read it any better.

The beep is just a periodic beep. It's not particularly loud. I'd say they're somewhere between 3 and 5 seconds apart. And I can feel the drive spinning up with each beep.

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

The chip is made by TI as far as I can tell. It reads;

980 L
SH69608 E
66EXJFT
GY

My vision isn't as great as it used to be and my camera is too shitty to take a decent picture of the text. So if that doesn't check out, let me know and I'll see if I can read it any better.

The beep is just a periodic beep. It's not particularly loud. I'd say they're somewhere between 3 and 5 seconds apart. And I can feel the drive spinning up with each beep.

From what I can tell, that chip is a spindle motor controller. I'm not finding the datasheet on TI's site though.

[Angus_D]

Depending on how important it is and if you can afford it, you could always try Drive Savers