My powerbook is haunted

djmb

i'm laying on my bed watching a video, i put the laptop next to me, and i hear the hard drive going crazy, the movie completely freezes i can't do anything, i reboot. and as soon as i hit the power button i hear the hard drive again going nuts. boot is taking forever, i reboot again this time it finally boots, i turn on the video again. same thing. so i grab the laptop and tilt it forward to put it on my lap.. and immediately the video plays and the hard drive stops whirring. so i'm like wtf? i put it back where it was on the bed, again it goes nuts. tilted it toward me. it's fine, i did this about 10 times. this is insane

kickaha

Is it by any chance one of the *new* PBs with the tilt sensor? That may be out of whack, causing the drive to park its heads even during slow or sustained tilt.

djmb

I'm not sure, it is new. i got it in august from the apple store. 15.2 Al 1.5ghz G4

kickaha

Nope, not one of the new-new ones that just came out then.



Hmm. If you have an Apple Store near you, and can reproduce this, I'd show them. It sounds like the drive isn't able to continue working if off-angle, which isn't right. It's not *great* for them, but they should be able to continue working even at 45deg angle. This may be related to your slow drive, perhaps a case of stiction. (Sticky friction, where the arm gets a bit off canter, and the tiny amount of friction involved locks it into place momentarily.)

djmb

I think it may have something to do with the ball bearings. When lying flat on my desk, i copy and pasted a file, using IPulse I saw it was going at 1-2mb/s, I then tilted the laptop toward me off the desk. the speed increased to 6mb/s



I didn't get applecare, and i bought the powerbook in July. I can go to the applestore and easily reproduce this.. but what can be done?

kickaha

You can buy AppleCare any time before your 1yr warrantee is up. It's still under that warrantee if you bought it last July, so take that puppy in and show them.