Dead iBook

ben huebscherben huebscher
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
i was given an iBook that wouldn't boot up. She said it hangs forever on the grey Apple screen wih the wheel spinning. I tried booting verbosly and into single-user mode ... both hang right after the line:



"BSD root: disk0s2, major 14, minor 2"



any idea how to fix this?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    ben huebscherben huebscher Posts: 43member
    well i finally got it to boot into the MacOS Tiger CD ... and ... drum roll please ...



    Disk Utility:



    The drive has reported a fatal hardware error to Disk Utilitiy



    If the drive has not failed completely, back up as much data as you can and then replace it with a working drive.



    S.M.A.R.T. Status: Failing





    am I as Fuçked as i think i am?
  • Reply 2 of 6
    tchwojkotchwojko Posts: 139member
    I have a similar problem/question:



    I have an old 466 Clamshell iBook that was running Panther just fine, until it started randomly panicking (Please hold down power button in a dozen languages.) By random, I mean anywhere from booting up, browsing in Safari, System Preferences, Terminal, etc. Totally random.



    My first thought was the hard drive, so I tried to boot in target disk mode and have another Mac's Disk Utility check it out. I haven't been able to get any other Mac to see this iBook as a drive. Running Disk Utility from the Panther install disk showed errors. I wiped the drive clean and reinstalled Panther. Worked fine for several hours and then started getting panics again.



    So searching around, it looks like I can get a new 40GB drive for about $120. pbfixit.com will buy this (currently) iDoorstop for $250 (they resell parts at a markup).



    The thing that gave me pause about thinking it's the hard drive is that it panicked once when I booted from the Panther Install DVD and tried to run Disk Utility to securely wipe the drive (in case I sell it).



    My question is: Does that eliminate the hard drive as the cause of the problem? The two choices I can think of is that it either had to use the disk for virtual memory and failed, or something else is wrong.



    Any ideas on how to further diagnose, before deciding whether to spend $120 or get $250?
  • Reply 3 of 6
    randycat99randycat99 Posts: 1,919member
    Yes, I would say an access to VM on a failing disk could become pretty catastrophic (kernel panic level). Wouldn't it appear to the kernel as essentially a memory access failure? I guess you cannot really determine if there is a real hardware problem there or not, until you slap in a healthy HD and do some stress testing, eh? Maybe that Mac hardware test CD could clear your suspicions for hardware issue?
  • Reply 4 of 6
    randycat99randycat99 Posts: 1,919member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ben Huebscher

    well i finally got it to boot into the MacOS Tiger CD ... and ... drum roll please ...



    Disk Utility:



    The drive has reported a fatal hardware error to Disk Utilitiy



    If the drive has not failed completely, back up as much data as you can and then replace it with a working drive.



    S.M.A.R.T. Status: Failing





    am I as Fuçked as i think i am?



    Yes, that is pretty damning. Evacuate that ship (your data) as soon as possible.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    yup, S.M.A.R.T telling you "failing" means your hard disk is gonna bite major dust soon if it hasn't.



    the good news is that it may be mainly or only "just" a hard disk problem...
  • Reply 6 of 6
    tchwojkotchwojko Posts: 139member
    Quote:

    Maybe that Mac hardware test CD could clear your suspicions for hardware issue?



    Yes, a hardware test CD for a very old iBook would be very useful.



    But I don't have one.



    I'll probably give a new hard drive a try, and see what happens.
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