Scary and worrying hard drive problem

ukneedsappleukneedsapple
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Hi guys, i have a feeling i can anticipate your answer to my question but here i go anyway. A couple of days ago, in the middle of the night my powerbook started making a really bad noise, imagine the hard drive instead of floating on a bed of air, grinding around like sandpaper against a blackboard. It must have been quite loud to wake me up as it was the last day of term and i was really quite drunk at the time. Anyway, i put it to sleep mode, then next morning woke it up again. The noise gained speed as the hard drive kicked into action, and as soon as i hit an application on the dock it froze. After about 45 mins i gave up, held the power button down for 5secs and rebooted. Of course now i am stuck on the grey Apple boot screen and it won't move off that.

I'm guessing i need a new hard drive right? Everything is backed up to iPod so i'm not that worried about data. Warranty ran out as it is about 2.5 years old and after spending nearly £2k on a laptop i did not have enough left for extended warranty. This is where it gets even better, because ages ago my combo drive sort of broke. only DVDs work it can't handle data cd's or burns, so i'm worried that even if i did replace the hard drive the combo drive won't be able to read the OS disks to install OS X.

Advice would be good, i'm tempted to get my parents to claim it on their insurance, but i'd rather get a whole new p/b than the insurance company patch it up, which they might try and do. Purchase would also co-incide with any possible speed bumps at Macworld SF. Sorry bout long post, messy situation!



Laters.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    jake bulletjake bullet Posts: 49member
    Could you boot from your iPod, or an external firewire hard disc? might be worth checking that everything else is ok before splashing out.



    As for the optical drive, have you tried cleaning the laser? I used to have a problem with my old iMac where it would read dvds quite happily but really struggled with cds, cleaning the laser usually solved the problem for a while.



    If it still won't work then how about getting another mac owner to hook up your new laptop hard disc via a firewire adapter and installing the system for you?
  • Reply 2 of 3
    ukneedsappleukneedsapple Posts: 21member
    Cheers for the suggestions Jake. I tried a laser clean a few weeks back but it didn't work. My housemate runs an iMac so there is always that possibility, we recon that between us we can work out how to replace a hard drive (he's quite clued up with his computers). I guess i was looking for confirmation for someone to say 'nope, get yourself a new powerbook! '.



    Thanks again.
  • Reply 3 of 3
    snofsnof Posts: 98member
    I've actually had two hard drives do that in my 12" PB (purchased about 14 1/2 months ago). The first one was in the warranty. The second one was out of both the one year warranty and the 90 day repair warranty. But Apple agreed to replace it free of charge anyway because it was barely out of warranty.



    Just a random note, I found that by gently rocking the PB by tilting it in a circular motion I could get the drive to stop making the noise and access the drive to get data backed up. When I stop rocking it the noise would start instantly and it would cease to be able to access the drive. Though after a while that stopped working. But you could give that a try if there's anything else you need to retrieve.



    As to your problem of installing the OS, I recently had to install Panther on a TiBook that has a dead CD drive. I put the computer in target disk mode and connected to my desktop. Popped the install CD in the PowerMac, located the installer package and just selected to install on the mounted firewire drive. It worked just fine. The only issue that came up was that I had to manually run the installer package from the second disc as well since I couldn't insert it in the TiBook when it wants it.



    edit: and for info on how to go about actually installing a new HD in there I recommend the guides at pbfixit.com



    Good luck!
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