Dead drive or logic board?

R

reptar

Registered
Hi all, this is my first post here, hope you can help me out.

My 1.8Ghz 20" imac G5 doesn't recognise it has a drive in it anymore. I've run the hardware test a few times, most of the time I get:

Logic board: error detected
2STH/1/3 Hard drive

But once I got:

Mass storage: error detected
2STF/1/4

with no description of the error.

I've googled both errors and searched this board, and either my drive, drive connector or logic board is screwed. I was going to try the drive out in a firewire enclosure but the only one I've got is ultra ATA not SATA.

I'm looking to rule out a logic board problem cause it'd be cheapest and easiest to just replace the drive, but I don't want to buy a drive only to find out that my drive was fine and it's the logic board that has the problem.

I can hear the hard drive spinning up, could it still be the problem? I'm not really familiar with the symptoms of dead drives but I'm sure some of you guys n gals are.

So can anyone help me out?

Thanks in advance,

morgan
 
Re-install your system or boot from a firewire drive with an OS on it to rule out software fault first.

If you boot off an external disk you should be able to use disk utility, tech tool pro, or diskwarrior to find/repair the disk. If it can't see it at all:

*Pull the drive out and reseat all cables (i.e pull out and put back in) If it still doesn't work...
*Take the drive out and put it in an external firewire caddy and attempt to boot from there - if success then you've either got a cable/connectivity issue or a logic board issue.
*Try find a friend who has a SATA drive handy - doesn't need an OS. Install that and boot from external drive - if you can see the drive and read/write to the drive then your original drive is dead - if you can't see it at all i'd say logic board.

Is your machine under warranty? Even if it is not your nearest apple service centre should be able to diagnose it for you...

But yes, that above is what i would do... I'm an in training apple service tech - thats teh process we'd go through at work! Hope this helps
 
Thanks for the reply, I'd already tried the first couple of things you suggested to no avail, and unfortunately I haven't got a SATA firewire enclosure.

The tech at school is going to check it out next week, we'll try the other couple of things you mentioned. Until then I'm gonna have to run it off a firewire drive.

cheers.
 
can you see the hdd at all booted from the firewire drive? Or, when you boot into the option screen to select which drive can you see the original hard drive?

Reseat the cables - easy as 123
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top