[nder]

I own a 12" Aluminum Powerbook (867MHz). I believe the fan is defective, but have not been able to find a replacement. Pbfixit.com stocks them, but is out of stock (been out of stock for a month). The fan is noisy, but just annoying right now. The machine gets a bit warm though, so I do want to repair that, lest there is some damage. Any other suggestions for sourcing this part (besides eBay)?

A second, more worrying problem has developed tonight. My HD is virbating loudly and violently when the machine is moved. When I say the HD is vibrating, I also don't mean lightly. Its doing so very loudly and very violently when the machine is moved. I am currently doing a full backup to an external firewire drive should the worst happen. This machine has not recieved any drops to my knowledge (since I bought it, second hand). I have had it for almost 5 month and the only problem has been the annoying fan.

It sounds as if the HD has become unseated, or is somehow moving about inside of its encasing in the Powerbook. Needless to say, this scares the heck outta me.

Has anyone had such an experience?

For refernce, the HD is a 60GB TOSHIBA MK6021GAS (Revision:GA025B; Serial Number 23CF3254T).

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On another note, I tried searching the forum but this feature is not working (neither from the menu nor the advanced search page). So please forgive me if other posts have discussed this issue, but I could not wait until the search came back to ask about it.

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12" AI Powerbook
876MHz
640MB RAM
60GB TOSHIBA MK6021GAS (Revision:GA025B; Serial Number: 23CF3254T)
Airport Extreme
Bluetooth
1X Superdrive

[Jacob]

Wow. I haven't had such an experience. I DO know, however, that all ibook and Powerbooks have rubber mounted hard drives, so I find it bizzare that it would be dislodged in some way. Perhaps there is simple defective with the drive internally. I have only experienced a virbating when I had a CD-ROM in the slot loading drive. It would often make a loud slicing noise if you tilted the laptop. But that's natural, to a certain extent.

[analogika]

The platters in your hard drive are coming loose (at least that's what the exact same symptoms on my 'book were - also a Toshiba drive, about two years old).

I give your drive another 48 hours before it dies completely.

[nder]

Ok, analogika has scared me. My machine is also about 2 years old (the model that is) I'm preparing for the worst. The backup is in progress. So far so good. I've emailed a service centre about repairs.

Why did you draw that conclusion so easily analogika.

The rubber mouting description seems to fit also. The vibration seems as if it is coming from an encasing, such as a rubber encasing.

[analogika]

Strong vibration is NOT something that should accompany hard drive use, regardless of how it is mounted.

On my 'book, I started noticing heavy vibration one evening. Over a day or so, the vibrating turned into a grinding and finally metallic rattling, by which time I couldn't get anything off the drive anymore.

Luckily, just letting the drive sit for a few months allowed it to recover just long enough to rescue the data I hadn't managed to back up yet (minus one lovely recording that I will really miss, and a couple of non-vital files)...

[nder]

Strong vibration is NOT something that should accompany hard drive use, regardless of how it is mounted.

I know that. What I was saying was that the sound it was making does indeed sound like something vibrating inside a rubber enclosure. And this has me even more worried since a rubber enclosure should help to dampen HD dislodgement/jarring. But the vibrations are causing that to vibrate too. I also felt the rotation of the drive through the case when it happened.

I completed a full backup. I am not hearing the vibrations when I move it now, but I am also very careful when moving it.

Need a way to keep the backup synchronized with my live install. Gonna go dig up some backup scripts I was looking at earlier.

I'm having disk utility repair the permission on the backup now. Permissions were diabled on the external firewire partition. Will test the backup on another machine when its finished.

So I'm probably looking at $150 for a replacement drive, $15 for a replacement fan, and $50 for tools.

[nder]

The noise is still there And something odd happened. This morning when I woke up, I had a message warning that my HD was running out of space. I had 1.8GB free before going to bed, when I woke up I had 37MB free! I had left Disk Utility running overnight repairing permissions on the backup. I had no downloads going. I had a few applications open, but nothing out of the usual, and this had not happened before in any case. I had the Eclipse IDE open, but I do not know if it using page files. And even so, whole of 1.8GB? Now, mysteriously, my space is back.

This can't be good.

[Jacob]

Dude....that hard drive is dyeing. Total symptoms of dyeing hard drive. Back up your stuff quickly!!

[analogika]

Originally Posted by nder

Need a way to keep the backup synchronized with my live install. Gonna go dig up some backup scripts I was looking at earlier.

Now that you've got a back up, kill the original drive and don't touch the back-up.

If anything, make additional copies of your vital files.

Backing up data from a malfunctioning hard drive WILL result in corrupt data at some point.

A number of files from my dying drive ostensibly copied fine but showed empty spaces (blanks in recordings I'd made/mp3s I had, etc.) upon closer inspection.

[nder]

Yeah, backup is done. Not touching it. Going to boot it on a G3 just to make sure its fine.

Is this the point where I start crying? Or should I wait for the hard crash...

Gonna burn some stuff off to be on the safe side.

[nder]

Going on 48 hours. HD not dead yet.

Ran some read/write and surface scan tests. Didnt find any errors. Can anyone suggest a comprehensive tool to test for possibility of failure? I ran all the HD tests in TechTool Deluxe.

[mad cow disease]

Originally Posted by nder

Going on 48 hours. HD not dead yet.

Ran some read/write and surface scan tests. Didnt find any errors. Can anyone suggest a comprehensive tool to test for possibility of failure? I ran all the HD tests in TechTool Deluxe.

EVERYTHING you've mentioned so far points to a dying drive - I just started reading the thread five minutes ago - and there's very little you can test to do so - sometimes hardware scans will come up short and report no anomalies, but BAM - the drive dies. It happened to me on more than one occasion.

Replace the drive with a good Seagate, pop the old one into a $15 2.5" USB enclosure for kicks, and watch it die. If it doesn't, at the worst you'll have another, more portable external hard drive. Looks like a 100GB internal at 5400RPM will set you back around $180, which isn't too damn bad...I fail to see where you came up with $50 for "tools"...

[analogika]

Originally Posted by nder

Going on 48 hours. HD not dead yet.

Ran some read/write and surface scan tests. Didnt find any errors. Can anyone suggest a comprehensive tool to test for possibility of failure? I ran all the HD tests in TechTool Deluxe.

Okay, I'm off on the timing.

I'm sticking with the diagnosis, though.

[MallyMal]

I agree with the HDD failure conclusion. I have a 12" PB 867 Mhz too. My HDD failed like a year ago. When moved, it would make a sorta lightsaber sound. It made this sound for months before it failed. Then it got louder and finally just totally failed on me.

[nder]

I fail to see where you came up with $50 for "tools"...

For tools to dismantle the Powerbook. Getting them from PBFixit.com

I am prepared for the worst. Im partial to Segate also, but the Toshiba drives have 16MB cache buffer, so thats tempting.

[nder]

So it finally died. Had a complete backup The backup died So I'm trying to recover my data now. The HD is still mountable when I boot from a Linux live CD. But I dont have anything big enough to hold 60GB of data. Why not? Cuz my 160GB backup drive died too, in a seperate incident.

[analogika]

Ouch.

BTW and FWIW, my new Powerbook's hard drive (also a Toshiba, like my last one) exhibited the exact same lightsaber-noise symptom (except only after running for a while), so I kept meticulous backups and pushed the hard drive to the limits, keeping it running for two or three weeks on end with only brief pauses in between. It finally died one night, and I could get it replaced under warranty.

The new one's a Hitachi. We'll see how it holds up. It's quieter than my Toshibas have been.

[nder]

Thanks for the heads up. Unfortunately the Powerbook isn't under warranty. Looking at replacement HD now. Kissed the 160GB goodbye. Its definately dead.

So now I'm banking on recovering from the not quite dead laptop HD.

[analogika]

Also, FWIW, the old Toshiba lay around for about three months while I was fighting Apple for a replacement 'book, and after that, it had recovered just enough to barely get all my data off it. Unfortunately, one fairly precious recording had been irrevocably damaged due to head contact with the platter.

[dreamBweaver]

nder, my 867 mhz 12" PowerBook G4 also makes a buzzing sound when the fan is on.

I am sorry to hear about your HD dying and the backup dying as well. Once every month or two you can burn DVD's, and every week you should do a firewire backup, of course with a new drive.

That's what I do, except I never burn the DVD's. Now I will.

Also, I e-mailed pbfixit and they don't expect the fan in soon. Messages below, along with an alternative site to order a more expensive fan. It looks like you'll have to use PBFixIt.com's guide to install that fan.

Our is just the fan, while they're selling the fan along with the
heatsink. Either one would do the same thing for you.

Luke Soules
PB FixIt


>How does your PB 12" Fan compare to:
>
>http://www.powerbookmedic.com/Fan--T...nk-Assembly---
>Aluminum-12-p-16622.html
>
>I put myself on Notification.
>
>Bryan
>
>On Sep 17, 2005, at 1:53 PM, PB FixIt Support wrote:
>
>
>> Sorry but we don't have a way we can order a fan for you. I don't show
>> that we have any coming in within the next week or so, but beyond
>> that I
>> don't really know. If you'd like to be notified via email when we
>> replenish our stock you can go to the product detail page on our
>> website. Click on the button on the left side labeled "Notify Me."
>> We'll
>> then send you an email as soon as the product is back in stock.
>> We don't currently accept backorders and only take orders for an
>> item if
>> it is in stock and ready to ship.
>>
>> Luke Soules
>> PB FixIt

Keep in touch.

[TheMosco]

Same thing happened to me. When ever I moved the computer when it was on, it sounded like the platters were hitting something. One morning when I woke it from sleep I tried to open an application and it would just bounce. Nothing opened at all. When I restarted it couldn't find a boot disk. It ended up dying and i had to replace the drive. I inadvertently replaced it with the same drive. (new one is made the in a different country though).