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derbs · Apr 1, 2003, 05:26 AM

Hi there
I've had my MDD for about 3 weeks now, and it's already broke. It kernal panicked, and would not boot up again. Well, it would power up, but there was no chime, the power light was off, and the fan was on full-vacuum cleaner power. The screen stayed black.

Anyway, i need to transplant the hard disk into another G4 so i can continue working for the next couple of days. Only problem is i can't get the damn thing out! They used to be mounted horizontally along the bottom of the machine, and were dead simple to get out. Now that they're vertically mounted i don't know where to start. Does anyone know how to get them out?

Cheers

The Placid Casual · Apr 1, 2003, 08:11 AM

Do you have the original manual? If so, it should give detailled instructions...

If you can get inline with another machine, you can get the instructions from the Apple support site, in the 'User Installable parts' section.

Hope this helps,

Marc

P.S. I'm in the same situation... broken MDD.. Makes you wonder about QC these days...

derbs · Apr 2, 2003, 05:14 AM

Yeah three Macs have broken down in the past 6 months, albeit 2 were broken Seagate hard disks.

Anyway i managed to remove the HD after about an hour! There's a screw just above the HD, under the power supply. When that's out, you pull the little plastic lever on the left of the HD, and the whole thing slides up and out.

It's quite an elegant design really, after i figured out how to work it.

Xaositect · Apr 2, 2003, 02:19 PM

I'm seeing a lot more machines (Mac and PC) with hard drives failing in the first 3-4 months. It used to be less than 5% failed in the first 6 months (Apple and IBM both were less than 2%) now everybody is up to around 10%! And hard drive warranties are now one year instead of three (from the manufacturers).

On the bracket, I rather like them.

Akarso · Apr 2, 2003, 02:22 PM

Originally posted by Xaositect:
I'm seeing a lot more machines (Mac and PC) with hard drives failing in the first 3-4 months. It used to be less than 5% failed in the first 6 months (Apple and IBM both were less than 2%) now everybody is up to around 10%! And hard drive warranties are now one year instead of three (from the manufacturers).

On the bracket, I rather like them.

specially the ibm (death)star hard drives. they're notorious for breaking down.

DrBoar · Apr 3, 2003, 05:16 AM

Download the PDF on Apples power supply replacement progam, among the 23 detailed pages there is descrptions on how to remove the hard disks as well as the optical drives and the power supply

More than you need to know put the pictures ar really nice

DrBoar · Apr 3, 2003, 05:26 AM

Download the PDF on Apples power supply replacement progam, among the 23 detailed pages there is descrptions on how to remove the hard disks as well as the optical drives and the power supply

More than you need to know put the pictures ar really nice

derbs · Apr 7, 2003, 12:28 PM

Originally posted by Xaositect:
I'm seeing a lot more machines (Mac and PC) with hard drives failing in the first 3-4 months. It used to be less than 5% failed in the first 6 months (Apple and IBM both were less than 2%) now everybody is up to around 10%! And hard drive warranties are now one year instead of three (from the manufacturers).

On the bracket, I rather like them.

Yeah my IBM Deathstar at home sounds like it's on the way out, after about 18 months, and 2 Seagate barracudas have gone in the office, both were only a couple of months old.

Do you work in the industry? I've just been wondering whether Apple uses reconditioned/returned hard drives in their machines?

Xaositect · Apr 7, 2003, 04:22 PM

Originally posted by derbs:
Yeah my IBM Deathstar at home sounds like it's on the way out, after about 18 months, and 2 Seagate barracudas have gone in the office, both were only a couple of months old.

Do you work in the industry? I've just been wondering whether Apple uses reconditioned/returned hard drives in their machines?

Yes, I work in the industry.

No, I've never seen a reconditioned drive in a new unit, but have recieved reconditioned drives for warranty replacements.

The only drives that seem to be lasting are the higher end server rated drives, and they are not as large as consumer drives, nor have they come down as in price as much as the consumer drives. The consumer drives having the larger capacities is a first for me, and the fact that the server drives are staying proportionately higher in cost than the consumer drives indicates some new method of manufacturing cost cutting is being used that really drops life expectancy. (proportionate, for clarification, is when consumer drives drop 40%, I would expect server drives to drop 35-40%. It has been more like consumer drives dropped 40%, server drives have dropped 20-25%.)

kupan787 · Apr 7, 2003, 06:00 PM

For what it matters, I still have yet to see a HD fail where I am. 6 machines in total, all ranging in age. The oldest being a 20th Anniversary mac, still with original HD running fine. But we have the original HD in the 400MHz sawtooth, original HD in a slotload iMac, original HD in the two towers (first superdrive 733 Model, and a quicksilver 867MHz). The two towers are used for video (iMovie, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro, FCP, After Effects), and all the machines see 8 hours+ of use a day (from reports, to VPC, to web surfing, to email, and evrythign else!)

So I would seriously doubt that 10% of HDs are failing. You usually only hear the bad reports on the net, very few people shout out praises about how long their HD has lasted.

TimmyDee51 · Apr 7, 2003, 10:37 PM

I've already been through an IBM DeskStar once on my MDD 867. They replaced that along with the MLB and now everything runs like a champ.

Akarso · Apr 8, 2003, 11:49 AM

Originally posted by derbs:

Anyway, i need to transplant the hard disk into another G4 so i can continue working for the next couple of days. Only problem is i can't get the damn thing out! They used to be mounted horizontally along the bottom of the machine, and were dead simple to get out. Now that they're vertically mounted i don't know where to start. Does anyone know how to get them out?

it's really easy. there's a single screw holding the main drive cage in place. (the screw is located towards the top of the drive cage assembly) unscrew that and then lift the handle on the left. push in and up on the drive cage and the whole thing should just come out. hope that helps.