Scary and worrying hard drive problem
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.
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
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?
Thanks again.
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!