Ibook G4 hard drive dead?

R

Riikkap

Registered
After freezing tried to restart my mac but I get only to the grey screen with an apple sign. Ran apple harddrive test and got 2STF/8/3: ATA-100 ata-6 - Master error message.


WHen tryin to boot pressing Options key, the hardrive icon appears but will not allow me to boot using it, again I only get the grey screen with the apple logo on it.


Apple replaced my logic board few months ago and I replaced the harddrive about 2 years ago (5 year warranty so 3 years left of it).

I haven't got the disk utility cd 1 (lost it), I do not knwo anyone who has got apple to try firewire connection or Diskwarrior etc.


Is it the harddrive? WOuld diskwarrior help? I do not want to waste my money with apple technicians.


thank you!
 
Disk Warrior could help.

But first, run in Single User Mode to do a repair permissions: Restart, hold command + S down till you see black screen with white text, type fsck -fy. Type reboot when process finishes.

If that doesn't work, I'd say use a system disk but you don't have one, so go down to your nearest Apple store for a diagnostic.

If you have another computer, you could try running your computer in Target mode to get all your files off of it before you do anything (even the steps above): Restart and hold T key till the yellow firewire symbol comes up.
 
If you do not have access to another computer/external drive, you should exercise your warranty to get a new HD. Consider getting an external drive. Then, with DW, you can try to "take a picture" of your failing drive and send that to your external HD. The thing is, if your drive is FAIL, it is FAIL. If it is FAILing, it will FAIL . . . soon.

"Back up your data" was a painful question in the age of floppy disks. Now with DVDs burning and cheaper external HD, people really need to have one.

--J.D.
 
Diskwarrior will check and display the S.M.A.R.T. (diagnostics) status of the hard drive. The other major drive utilities also check S.M.A.R.T. You might want to invest in one of them. If the drive utility indicates the drive is failing, you'll have to get your data off as soon as possible.

fsck is a drive utility built into OS X, but it's not as capable as Diskwarrior et al. It's okay for minor file errors.

Bot
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top