Author Topic: Cascading Powerbook failure? (Read 2705 times)

zodraz · « **on:** October 17, 2006, 09:48:23 AM »

The end of this story is yet to be as my wife is taking it to the Apple store today.

My daughter left her 12" PB 875 mhz, combo drive in sleep mode when she left for class.

When she returned it was making a loud mechanical noise and would not wake up.

Her roomate said that it was making the noise all day

She was able to run the hardware check disc which gave two errors, one seems to be the HD and/or ATA failure and another that had the word "fan" in it.

I think the fan died and the computer overheated to the point of failure.

I can get the computer to get to firmware "select boot drive" when I have a good external firewire drive attached, but it stays stuck there.

And there is a mechanical whirring/grinding/scrapping that starts and stops, which sounds more like a fan than a bad HD.

This computer has been used but NOT abused, and was running fine until this.

So my questions are:

1. Was this failure widespread, any class action suites? Any Apple support on this? The Applecare ended in August.

2. Replacing the HD and fan doesn't scare me as I've torn apart laptops before and also found a great site called ifixit that has photo diagramed step-by-step instructions. My concern is if it's the ATA that is hosed, then I would probably need a new logicboard? Suposedly the computer is worth only $950, so I maybe stuck between repair/replace.

Any advice would be appreciated.

zodraz · « **Reply #1 on:** October 17, 2006, 11:50:12 AM »

Hurray Hurray!

They will honor the AppleCare warranty so no charge!

They'll also upgrade the service to ProCare for $100 which means they will attempt to restore all the data on the dead drive.

This is good since she never backed it up. Even though I told her!

(Luckily I DID a backup in January).

A lessoned learned.

Xairbusdriver · « **Reply #2 on:** October 17, 2006, 11:58:09 AM »

I would suppose you could feel air movement if the fan were running?

If you can start up in Firewire Target mode you might be able to 'see' the drive from a Firewire-connected Mac and run some utilities on the hard drive. ( Turn the PB off, connect it to the other computer with a Firewire cable, start the PB while holding the "t" key down. It should now appear on the other computer as an external drive, if the drive is usable, anyway... ) If this works, immediately transfer any important files to the other computer.

Sometimes Apple is rather lenient on providing repair/support for items just beyond the warranty. But they should be able to ell if the motherboard is shot or just the drive/fan for a nominal fee.

zodraz · « **Reply #3 on:** October 18, 2006, 11:17:52 AM »

Thanks airbusdriver,

I could not feel any air moving out of the cooling slot. And if you heard the noise you'd agree it was a mechanical scrapping. Probably the bearing failed and/or dropped out of place.

Since the computer would not recognize (see) the internal drive when I was in firmware Idoubt target mode would work, but that's moot.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed on the data recovery.

PS, my neighbor had an HD drive at work taht was revived by a Tech that put it in the freezer.

Xairbusdriver · « **Reply #4 on:** October 18, 2006, 11:57:30 AM »

I think the $100 might be a good deal if there is very important, non-backed up data. You might survey other data recovery firms to see if that fee is reasonable.

Here are some I've heard of ( in no particular order ):
<Data Recovery Corp>
<Disk Doctors>
<Drive Savers>

The last two had Mac-specific info.

Paddy · « **Reply #5 on:** October 18, 2006, 02:13:23 PM »

If the drive is hosed, $100 is a BARGAIN of the first order. Hard drive recovery is very, very, very expensive and usually only done if the information is absolutely irreplaceable and mission-critical.

Drive recovery can easily cost thousands, not hundreds of dollars.

See: http://www.datarecoverynet.com/ ($750 for a 20GB drive - and that was in 2004) There are other, cheaper services, but I find it fascinating that they then wiggle out of things by saying things like having to dissassemble a drive in a clean room will add $300 to the cost etc. The essential problem is that data recovery is time consuming and that costs money.

Parker · « **Reply #6 on:** October 22, 2006, 03:23:35 PM »

QUOTE

PS, my neighbor had an HD drive at work taht was revived by a Tech that put it in the freezer.

grammar check please

Xairbusdriver · « **Reply #7 on:** October 23, 2006, 09:48:22 PM »

Grammar or information?

The reason the drive worked, for a short time, no doubt, is that the cold temps probably tightened up the lose bearings enough for the mechanics of the drive to stay within the required tolerances to operate ( read the data ). It's easier ( not to mention cheaper ) than removing the cylinder.

As for 'grammar', please explain what I usually hear among the young people at the mall.

How/why are they allowed to completely disregard the basic rules of grammar?!

For most forums, we tend to write similarly to the way we might speak to each other, face-to-face. Hopefully, we don't have any grammar police lurking. We do, however, have a couple of spellen polisen!

krissel · « **Reply #8 on:** October 23, 2006, 09:54:46 PM »

QUOTE(airbusdriver @ Oct 23 2006, 10:48 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hopefully, we don't have any grammar police lurking.

Don't let kbear hear you...

Parker · « **Reply #9 on:** October 24, 2006, 08:39:57 PM »

QUOTE

As for 'grammar', please explain what I usually hear among the young people at the mall. How/why are they allowed to completely disregard the basic rules of grammar?!

i'm OCD about grammar jim
:-)

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Author Topic: Cascading Powerbook failure? (Read 2705 times)