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Dave Hagan · 10:30 PM

I have a 1.5GHz Rev. C 17-inch PowerBook. Occasionally the hard drive has given off a loud click. It seems to have become only slightly more frequent. It prompted me to back everything up. Over the weekend I zeroed the hard drive and reformatted for a fresh copy of Tiger (I previously did a Panther upgrade and wanted that so-called extra zip with a clean Tiger). But I have heard the hard drive click two or three times since then. The hardware test disc comes back with no errors. Cause for concern?

f1000 · May 23, 2005, 10:28 PM

You're probably just hearing the sound of the R/W heads parking. Try running DiskWarrior instead of the Hardware Test or Disk Utility. In my experience, DiskWarrior caught drive errors well before any of Apple's utilities did.

I was David B. · May 24, 2005, 04:05 AM

Originally Posted by f1000

You're probably just hearing the sound of the R/W heads parking. Try running DiskWarrior instead of the Hardware Test or Disk Utility. In my experience, DiskWarrior caught drive errors well before any of Apple's utilities did.

This is a good advice.
And check the smart status in disk utility.

Dave Hagan · May 29, 2005, 10:38 PM

It was suggested that I run Disk Warrior to check out the drive. So I did and it came back with some directory issues, and I elected to have DW fix them, and it stopped the kernel panicking. To make a long story short, things still seemed a little funky, and I thought since it was the long weekend and I have some time to kill, I will back up the new data, scrap it and try again.

So I zeroed out the drive and installed a fresh copy of Tiger. This time, instead of installing all my apps from their individual discs, I hooked it up to my G4 933 Quicksilver and suck them over with a firewire cable and the migration assistant. Well for the last hour and half it has been sitting at 17 minutes remaining, and hasn't moved since.

Do I dare disconnect the target drive computer from the PowerBook? Will this corrupt the data on my G4 tower?

Dave Hagan · May 30, 2005, 01:21 PM

Well I tried the migration assistant again today, and it's stuck again. Should I call Apple?

Dave Hagan · May 30, 2005, 08:01 PM

Third time wasn't the charm.

I am getting very frustrated with this computer. It has already been out to Apple for repair three times, and it is the replacement model for my first 17" PowerBook that Apple could not fix.

f1000 · May 30, 2005, 08:45 PM

Originally Posted by Dave Hagan

Third time wasn't the charm.

I am getting very frustrated with this computer. It has already been out to Apple for repair three times, and it is the replacement model for my first 17" PowerBook that Apple could not fix.

I prefer doing a clean install whenever I get a new boot drive, or at least whenever I initialize one. Sure it's tedious, but it gives me piece of mind.

Dave Hagan · May 30, 2005, 09:05 PM

Originally Posted by f1000

I prefer doing a clean install whenever I get a new boot drive, or at least whenever I initialize one. Sure it's tedious, but it gives me piece of mind.

I thought the same thing, but I did that and got funky performance and at least two kernel panics everyday.

osxisfun · May 30, 2005, 09:18 PM

apple store visit time?

sorry to hear about your problems.

Dave Hagan · May 30, 2005, 10:51 PM

Naw, another fun and exciting call to Apple.

I tried to use the Disk Utilities "Restore" feature with my Quicksilver tower and it came back with an error saying it failed. When I am at work tomorrow, I'll have more tools and resources available to tinker with it, and if all else fails, I'll be making a call tomorrow.

ccsccs7 · Jun 3, 2005, 10:44 PM

I was doing the migration thing from my iBook to my Powerbook. It did take a long time and I thought it had gotten stuck. No errors though, so that's probably not it.