So recently within the past week, usually it only happens when browsing random itunes songs. I have about 26gb of music. Very randomly about 6 seconds into the song, playback will stop and the computer will stall... when i put my ear up to the hard drive... its not sort of failure "clank clank clank" that you usually hear from a failing drive, it sounds more like "chatter chatter chatter" as if its reading something over and over and over... it will do this for about 2 minutes, then the song will be skipped and will resume playback on a different song and my computer will begin responding again. Sometimes this happens also when loading certain apps or pictures in iphoto. It's very random when it does this. I have restarted to the os/x disk and ran disk utilitty for permissions and tried the drive repair over and over and over, with no errors found every time. Right now, it's running perfect. An hour ago it did it... but for now it's okay. I have all my pictures back up (24,000 or so) but not my music, so i need to hurry up. What other things can i do to make sure my drive may be failing? I have all sofware updates, my drive has about 10gb of 80gb available... Disk utility runs smooth every single time... I have tried "repair disk" over 6 times...
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Odd hard drive problem with my 12" powerbook
- Thread starter stevey500
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From what you've described, it sounds like there may be some areas on the drive that have either failed or become unreadable somehow. Repair Disk probably won't find this because I don't believe it performs a thorough surface scan, which would make the scanner hit the defective areas of the drive. From prior experience with desktop drives having the same problem, you're probably not going to be able to fix the drive if it's developing those bad sectors. Some googling seems to indicate that TechTool Pro does surface scans and can even recovers files from damaged drives, so you might try that one out.
My roommate's 12" PowerBook Rev. C just died yesterday. It was fine when she left in the morning and when she got back it was dead as can be. I thought it was just the hard drive from the sound it made, but she took it to the Apple store and it would not boot off an external drive either. Given the sound coming from the hard drive area the genius decided the hard drive and logic board both died out. Came out of nowhere too!
THere is a known problem with OEM Toshiba hard drives on 12" PBs. The breather holes on the hard drives are covered up by the Toshiba label itself, when it should be punched open when placed in the powerbook. I believe that is what is causing a lot of 12" overheating hard drive failures.
Chrispy said:
Guess she's getting a new Macbook....if she has the money, tell her to get the Pro.
it does seem to act like it is overheating, it doesnt usually happen until about 3 hours of running time... hrmmmmmm. maybe i should run to the apple store. 3 hour drive
Okay maybe i don't have an overheating problem... i have many bad blocks on the drive. Certain files are only partially playable in my itunes library. Let's say i am trying to listen to "smooth criminal by alien ant farm" ... itunes stalls 16 seconds into playing. When my powerbook begins to responde again, i tried going to my itunes music folder, went to the exactly Smooth criminal.mp3 and tried to copy it to my desktop... copying failed with an error that the source file could not be read.
My only solution for the moment that i can think of... is to back my drive up using disk utility to an external drive, zero-data format the drive, and restore...
but I am unknown if the backup will work completely without the drive stalling... I'm gonna call up my friend to see if i can borrow his external drive. I'm in a panic! My fault for not backup up i guess. I have my pictures backed up and thats's what i am mostly worried about.
My only solution for the moment that i can think of... is to back my drive up using disk utility to an external drive, zero-data format the drive, and restore...
but I am unknown if the backup will work completely without the drive stalling... I'm gonna call up my friend to see if i can borrow his external drive. I'm in a panic! My fault for not backup up i guess. I have my pictures backed up and thats's what i am mostly worried about.
stevey500 said:
I have your same computer btw and I'm having the drive checked out this weekend. What I would do is take some "blue ice" or even some regular crushed ice, safely wrapped in plastic, and place the computer on top of it -- the hd is on the lower left corner of the 12" pb I believe. Cool it down and then do the transfer. The heat really does mess up the hds. Just don't get any condensation or water on things. I do this all the time to my Tibook when she overheats. I've got a new 100gb hd in there and I don't want to age things with excess heat if I can stop it with an ice pack.
Sounds primitive but then again, saving our work and our files is important.
I just replaced the hard drive in my 12" PowerBook yesterday. I had the same clicking noise as you, then eventually it was making this noise that sounded like a light saber or some kind of electricky sounding noise, then failed completely. I had enough warning with the clicking to do a complete backup though.
I had no idea so many other people were having problems with their 12" PB hard drives
I had no idea so many other people were having problems with their 12" PB hard drives
I tried the crushed ice earlier today... i got the temperature to drop to 92F and it still did the same things... so tomorrow im gonna back up to an external drive. Zero the drive, restore and see if the problem continues, if it does... trip to the apple store it is. Will this be covered in the warrenty?