[TheSpaz]

Check out this phenomenon!

I was chatting with a friend on iChat when all of a sudden I started getting a beachball (wait cursor) and it would go away and come back every few seconds. So I was a bit confused... even typing was painfully slow. So I opened Activity Monitor and noticed that iTunes was taking up 98% of my CPU because it was no responding, so naturally I tried force quitting it. It took forever for iTunes to quit but, it finally did. After all that I decided to restart. Naturally, my desktop icons disappeared and my Dock disappeared and my menu bar disappeared but, my desktop stayed on the screen for like 5 minutes... Finally I got sick of waiting for it to reboot and I held down the Power button for 5 seconds and forced the computer to shut down.

After it was shut down for a minute... I powered it back up. Everything seemed normal except it was taking a really long time on the Apple boot screen, so I went downstairs to have a snack... when I came back upstairs, it was still on the Apple screen... so I went into a different room to use my other computer (iMac G3). After a little while I came back to check on my PowerBook and it was OFF! I thought that was kinda weird, so I rebooted once again and it got to the login screen fianally but, the login window was ON TOP of the Starting Mac OS X window! The login screen was accessable so I tried typing in my password (which it didn't accept) and I also tried the root password (which it also didn't accept)... so I pressed the restart button (the one on the login window. The computer didn't restart... it shut down instead.

Now, I'm all freaked out thinking that I'm gonna lose all my data on my drive if I didn't do something fast. So I grabbed a Firewire cable and I connected my PowerBook to my iMac via Firewire and used it as an external drive to suck the data off of the drive. Well, it didn't work right away... I had to unplug and plug it back in a few times to get it to catch. Finally I got it to show up on the iMac but, the drive was acting very very slow and it was crunching like you wouldn't believe (the ticking noise)... even though I wasn't doing anything to the drive.

So finally I decided to try and reboot the PowerBook one more time and it fianally got to a real login screen and it DID accept my password... only this time... when it got to the desktop... all my Preferences were set to default!!! My Dock was stock... my icons were huge... iChat was set up differently... Safari was changed... it's almost like I had no preferences at all but, a few things stuck like my Desktop picture was untouched.

Now I was really afraid I was gonna lose my Data so I plugged in my external USB drive and started copying my music and photos and all my valuable documents to it. It was really slow but, I didn't care... I just kept copying stuff.

So in the long run, I got all my stuff backed up and I did a Tiger (erase and install) and everything's almost back to normal... although the internal drive is still acting kinda slow... is this a sign that the internal hard drive may be failing or needs to be replaced... or am I just still freaked out by the other events? When I tried to copy my music library onto my freshly installed OS, it said it was going to take 5 hours (for 26GB)... is that normal? It was only transfering 2MB or 3MB at a time... painfully slow. I'll wait it out for now... but, I want to know if it's a Tiger thing or if my internal hard drive is damaged.

Sorry for such a long story... we now return to your regularly scheduled forum.

Oh, and by the way... my hard drive was NOT indexing durning any of this... I know a lot of you are going to bring this up, so I thought I'd bring it up first... no indexing durning any of this.

[Millennium]

If Target Disk Mode wasn't working right then it can't be Tiger (or at least, not entirely Tiger), because TDM is its own thing. OSX doesn't run on a machine while it is in TDM, so the issues there must have been caused by something else. Your theory about the internal hard drive being damaged is a good one.

You should take your machine in for service as soon as possible. Make sure that they test the RAM as well; I don't think this is the problem but it won't hurt to check.

[mdc]

just before my powerbook hard drive died mac os would beachball whenever i did anything in the finder, or tried to quit applications.

i restarted and it got stuck at the loading mac os x screen. i put my tiger install disk in and ran disk utility from it and it said that s.m.a.r.t could not detect the drive. mine would not even get into tiger, no matter how many restarts i tried. thankfully i have a firewire drive that backs up every night.

i have a new hard drive in here now and it works perfectly again.

[TheSpaz]

Can hard drives still work even when they're dying? My hard drive seems to be working... it's just a little slow right now and I don't know if that's how it is supposed to be or if I'm still freaked out from the other events happening.

[TheSpaz]

Originally Posted by mdc

just before my powerbook hard drive died mac os would beachball whenever i did anything in the finder, or tried to quit applications.

i restarted and it got stuck at the loading mac os x screen. i put my tiger install disk in and ran disk utility from it and it said that s.m.a.r.t could not detect the drive. mine would not even get into tiger, no matter how many restarts i tried. thankfully i have a firewire drive that backs up every night.

i have a new hard drive in here now and it works perfectly again.

That's helpful. Thanks. I'll try Disk Utility... I never even thought of that! Duh! I'll get back to you with the results...

By the way... how do I get my music and stuff to automatically back itself up just incase something like this happens and I'm NOT able to get into my drive to back it up manually?

[TheSpaz]

Okay, I'm back from using Disk Utility from the Mac OS X Install Disc. The results are Okay... Everything checked fine. Should I trust this or do I need a higher level Disk Utility App from a 3rd party company?

[Footy]

Sounds like your HD to me too. Had some of the same symptoms when my HD was going out back in January. Would work fine for a while, then beach ball, then fine. Finally I could hear sounds from my HD that were not normal. Managed to get my important items pulled over to my 2nd internal HD. Don't think I'll ever have a Power Mac without a second drive in it ever again, was nice having it there when I needed it. New HD fixed me up.

I see those PowerBook hard drives are pretty expensive compared to the regular desktop models. Ouch! Do you have some sort of extended care? If it was me I'd replace it myself but use your best judgment. Here's a link I found if you decide that it is in fact the hard drive.

HD Replacement How To

[Footy]

Originally Posted by TheSpaz

Okay, I'm back from using Disk Utility from the Mac OS X Install Disc. The results are Okay... Everything checked fine. Should I trust this or do I need a higher level Disk Utility App from a 3rd party company?

When I was having issues with my Mac it was checking out ok as far as the disk utility went. Took my HD months to finally be bad enough that I figured out what it was. Finally the grinding sound gave it away.

My issues only seemed to surface sporadically at first and be ok for days (maybe weeks) at a time.

I'm no expert on HD failures though. Maybe that's not your issue?

[TheSpaz]

Originally Posted by Footy

When I was having issues with my Mac it was checking out ok as far as the disk utility went. Took my HD months to finally be bad enough that I figured out what it was. Finally the grinding sound gave it away.

My issues only seemed to surface sporadically at first and be ok for days (maybe weeks) at a time.

I'm no expert on HD failures though. Maybe that's not your issue?

Thanks Footy... one thing I did notice in my PowerBook is that if I lift it off the table and rock it slightly back and forth I can hear a hum (only when I'm moving it) if I let it stay still it goes away... it sounds almost like a CD spinning gyro type thing. Is that normal? There's no CD in the CD drive. The sound is coming from the hard drive. It's definately not the fan... but, it could be.

I don't care if this hard drive fails cause I have all my stuff backed up... so that's good.

Can anyone else with a PowerBook confirm the humming noise like I mentioned above?

[analogika]

My last one started doing that about three weeks before the hard drive went down, and it went down furiously, lemme tell you, with screeching and rattling noises.

This one hums as well when it's moved (only when it's been on for a couple of hours), and I don't trust it.

[analogika]

Also, might I suggest that that may be the cause of your general dissatisfaction with Tiger?

[CharlesS]

It does sound like your hard disk is putting its affairs in order. Fortunately, it sounds like you've backed it up. Still, I'd replace it ASAP so you don't have it die before you get the chance to back up something you just saved recently.

[Ji Eun]

i had very similar experiences with my failing iBook HD. google SMART Reporter or check version tracker for this handy HD health-checker.
anyway, for a hundred dollars i'd go buy an external FIREWIRE HD and install OS X onto that and start booting from there while you sort out your problems with the internal. i ran my iBook off of firewire for a month and it was a dream... when i saw the performance difference under Tiger i was just floored.

[TheSpaz]

SMART Reporter says my drive is fine... I'll keep an eye on it before I consider a new drive. Thanks for the info guys... you all rock!

Even if my drive is fine, I may consider getting a new one just for the speed of a new drive... I'm not sure how fast the drive in this is... but, the drives at work read and write data a lot faster for some reason.

[Matt OS X]

Wow. At first, I thought it could be TIGER but I realized it might has to do with your HD.. Why dont you bring it to the nearest Apple store and have one of the Mac Genuis check it out? So that way it'd save your time, stuggling, trying to find an answer for this problem.

Hope everything'll be fine. Keep us posted.

[chris v]

DiskWarrior

/broken record

[fisherKing]

i just had the HD replaced in my powerbook;
was having problems, where everything was crawling...
progress bars, opening windows, etc.

i was able to back up to an external fw drive, but would have taken days...had i not been there to shake (gently) and tilt my pb to get things to work (as opposed to stalling)

so, yeah, sounds like the drive!

[TheSpaz]

Sorry to bring this thread back up but, I have an update for you all.

Last night I took my PowerBook downstairs to show my Dad a website I found and I was having major slowness trying to do anything. I would get the beachball cursor and Safari would completely lock up... and then after like 20 seconds of that... everything would un-freeze again and by now everything that I had clicked on while it was hanging.. is now showing up. This was very very frusterating for me and my Dad kept bugging me about what it was doing (he doesn't know anything about computers). I was getting really angry and I wanted to go back upstairs so I closed the lid on the PowerBook. JUST as soon as I closed the lid... I heard a very loud grinding/spinning sound coming from the hard drive (not the fan). It finally calmed down and went to sleep.

I think my hard drive may be a bit flaky... not only that but, I timed my computer startup and it took 5 minutes to start up after a normal shutdown. I'm taking my computer in for service today. I'm gonna get
a new drive and hopefully everything will run nice and fast again. Maybe this is why I'm having trouble with Tiger but, some glitches have nothing to do with the drive.

Thank you all for your support!