Hard drive crash?

[Gherkin]

My Powerbook was making some funny noises. I thought it was the DVD drive at first, so I put a DVD in and it played fine. Then everything started slowing down and applications wouldn't quit. So I shut the computer down.

When I restart now, it just goes to a blank gray screen for a minute or so, and then a little folder comes up in the middle of screen and it alternates between a "?" and the finder icon.

Does this mean my harddrive crashed? Please say it ain't so.

 

[Gherkin]

A little elaboration on the noise.

It only happened if I tilted the Powerbook up while holding it. The Powerbook has always made some minor, barely audible "churning" noises whenever I tilted the Powerbook like this.

This time though, it was a high pitched, loud noise and I could feel it vibrate.

 

[Gherkin]

Please someone help me.

 

[skamin]

This happened to me about 12 months ago, on an almost identical machine (mine had the superdrive). I'm no expert, but it sounds practically the same, verbatim, as my problem then too, and it was a "harddrive failure." They said that there was a "rut in the drive" when I called them online. Apparently the tell-all sign is if you try to run the disk repair, and it doesn't let you. Again, I'm no expert, but when i called support that's what they had me do, and then they diagnosed it right away. Mine was taken care of swiftly by applecare, but i did lose A LOT of stuff in the process
good luck...

 

[Gherkin]

How do I try to run disk repair if I can't get past the gray screen with the folder? Also, wouldn't it still be possible to get a lot of my data back? I don't see how the whole hard drive would just erase.

 

[eva01]

you boot from the OS X CD and then run Disk Repair

To get things off of the disk if it isn't completely dead boot into firewire disk mode and connect another Mac to it, then just pull your data off.

Or you can pay a company a frack load of money to try and save your data

 

[Gherkin]

How do I boot into Firewire disk mode?

and assuming I do need to get a brand new harddrive, how do I go about this? Is the best bet to do it through the Apple Store? or are they going to charge too much?

 

[eva01]

well if it is under warranty or applecare they will replace it with no charge more than likely.

and i believe firewire disk mode is "T" at startup. just hold it down

 

[Gherkin]

firewire transfer has to be between two Macs? I have a firewire cable, but it's the 4 pin on one end.

As for the warranty, nope. The Powerbook is a year and a half old. Don't have Applecare.

 

[eva01]

i believe it has to be between two Macs...and you can get a 4pin to 6pin adapter.

And you shoulda gotten applecare but oh well

pbfixit.com has manuals on how to replace the HD yourself

 

[Gherkin]

Ok, I have two Macs connected by firewire, and I started up the Powerbook while holding down T. Now the Powerbook screen is light blue and has a yellow firewire symbol moving around. Now what do I do to try and recover some files? Should something pop up on the iBook I have connected?

 

[Gherkin]

Ok, I just read that the Powerbook's HD should show up in Finder of the connected computer as an external HD.

It is not.

Does this mean the HD on my Powerbook is totally screwed?

 

[CanadaRAM]

Ok, I have two Macs connected by firewire, and I started up the Powerbook while holding down T. Now the Powerbook screen is light blue and has a yellow firewire symbol moving around. Now what do I do to try and recover some files? Should something pop up on the iBook I have connected?

You should have an extra hard drive icon on your iBook just like if you had plugged in an external drive. If you do, open that and copy files to your iBook's internal. to back them up.

If you don't see it, and if the Powerbook's "Firewire" drive is not visible when you open Disk Utility, repeat the FW Target Disk mode startup instructions (restart both machines) if it still doesn't appear as an icon (or in the list when you do a Command N ) then your Powerbook drive may be more damaged than you thought.