my 15" aluminum powerbook's head crash

[r0cky]

I bought my powerbook less than a year ago and it had been working perfectly. I don't carry it around with me anywhere, so it has always resided on the roll-away desk that I sit at almost every day. It has never been dropped, kicked, punched, slapped, shot, hammered, stabbed, or anything involving any amount of jarring. I was using it until 2am for research and then when I woke up around 10am and came back down to check my email, it was still working fine. I surfed around some of the forums I usually check and all of a sudden it starts making a ticking noise. Things get very slow. I can't close Firefox, etc. Everything freezes, the clicking/ticking gets louder. So I shut it down to reboot it, thinking maybe it just needed to be powered off for awhile.

Well, when I go back to it, I boot it, but nothing happens beyond the Apple logo on the startup screen. We turn it off and put in the Apple disk that came with it, to run the diagnostic utility. It boots up fine with that, but we can't do anything further because the hard drive isn't showing up.

We try booting it with the firewire to see if we can access my data and move it to my brother's computer for the time being. It didn't work. Just more ticking.

We tried EVERYTHING and nothing worked.

Luckily, it is under warranty so hopefully Apple will replace the hard drive ... but now I have to decide if I want to spend the money sending the damaged one off to a data recovery place. (Yes, I know, I should have backed it up more recently than this summer. I know it is my fault if I lose everything there.)

My question is -- what in the world could have caused this? There was no change in the environment in which it operates (physically, I mean), I haven't been downloading any programs or anything like that, and it has not moved an inch from when I first bought it and placed it on my desk securely.

And, have any of you ever had this problem? If so, how did things turn out and what did you end up doing?

I can't believe this happened.

 

[sinclair_tm]

hey, its just life. sometimes things just fail. i, on the other hand, have had some hds that have been mishandled really bad, and still work just fine. its just the roll of the dice. nothings perfect, thats why there are warranties. glad it happened before the warranty was up.

 

[r0cky]

hey, its just life. sometimes things just fail. i, on the other hand, have had some hds that have been mishandled really bad, and still work just fine. its just the roll of the dice. nothings perfect, thats why there are warranties. glad it happened before the warranty was up.

Yeah, there are definitely positive things about it - like the warranty being in effect, etc. The hardest thing to deal with though is the loss of all my photographs and all my papers, research, poetry, and letters.

Ah well. I know I could probably send it off to some professional data recovery place, but for so little data (compared to what they probably see) and for so high a cost, I'm just not sure it's worth it.

So this week the hope is that the apple store won't try to tell us that the warranty doesn't apply or something.

 

[fryke]

If you don't know what could've happened (physically) and it actually never fell to the floor from more than a couple of centimeters, you should be just fine. If the store doesn't _want_ to repair (replace) it under warranty, you have to appeal to them. It's your _right_ to have the harddrive replaced if it fails in warranty's time without you damaging it.

 

[r0cky]

If you don't know what could've happened (physically) and it actually never fell to the floor from more than a couple of centimeters, you should be just fine. If the store doesn't _want_ to repair (replace) it under warranty, you have to appeal to them. It's your _right_ to have the harddrive replaced if it fails in warranty's time without you damaging it.

If I had ever dropped it or anything had ever hit it, then I would outright admit that. Part of what has been so shocking about all of this is that absolutely nothing has changed around the computer and it has not moved an inch since the first day I set it up on my desk. Nothing ever goes on top of it. I would understand why this happened if it had fallen or if I had dropped it, but the fact that neither has happened is what confuses me because in reading about this problem, it seems it is almost always caused by the computer being jarred or dropped.

Rarr!

Well, I will update when I find out anything new.

(in the meantime, thanks for all the encouragement!)

 

[pipermalibu]

The thing to remember is its not IF a hard drive will fail its WHEN. They are simple mechanical devices, spinning at high RPM's. Bearings wear out, have small manufacturing defects etc. The real lesson that should be learned here is backup, Backup, BACKUP.
Unlike devices that are pure solid state electronics, such as a calculator, anything with moving mechanical parts are going to break...period. Just when is the question.

 

[tgunr]

I cannot help but emphasize the quote above, backup is the key. After 30 years of working with computers this is as important today as it was in yesteryear. I keep at least 3 copies of all important data and 1 more offsite. Just last week I had my Apple RAID system lose 2 drives in a RAID 5 configuration (you can lose one drive and still be running, but not two!), this was my less important data which gets backed up once a week.

Hard drives will eventually fail, be prepared. What was described sounds like a media failure which cased the heads to continually reseek which would make the clicking sound. Could have also lost its thermal calibration which also cause a reseeking.

You do have candles and flashlights, right? Because you know someday your power will fail and you might need them. Be prepared, put your important data on a rotating daily backup, or even hourly back up. Less important files on a weekly or monthly schedule.