Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Bad news for the geek - G5 HD is toasted

aussie_geek

aussie_geek

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Seems that my G5's hard drive is toast 😡 . It is a Maxtor 160 Gb. I am looking at getting a Seagate one to replace it. Considering I have 3 of them already I think it would be a good choice.

Are there any other brands I should consider?

aussie_geek

ps -see the attached photo of disk utility's conclusion about the drive!!
 

Attachments

  • f@ked HD.jpg
    f@ked HD.jpg
    92.9 KB · Views: 453
i use wd but i havent really had trouble with brands in particular i had my pb hd fail on me and a maxtor at home and a sea gate so i dont really think its quality
 
Are you certain the drive is bad? Strangely, the same thing happened to one of my storage drives. I ran repair in Disk Utility a couple times but that failed to fix it. Then, for whatever reason I tried clicking the other "name" for the drive and ran repair. Amazingly it worked. Possibly coincidence but probably worth the small effort.
 
good suggestion

Sedulous said:
Are you certain the drive is bad? Strangely, the same thing happened to one of my storage drives. I ran repair in Disk Utility a couple times but that failed to fix it. Then, for whatever reason I tried clicking the other "name" for the drive and ran repair. Amazingly it worked. Possibly coincidence but probably worth the small effort.
Click to expand...

Thanx. 🙂
Yeah - I am trying a wipe free space at the moment - it is nearly finished doing that.

My plan is to throw Tiger on it and copy some files onto it, fill the drive up, trash them and then copy them again and trash them a few times 😉. This should work the drive I suppose and test if it stuffs up again 😕. I will keep you posted.

Let's hope it works... 😎

edit: status in erasing free space is estimated at 1193046 hours... 🙁. doesn't look good

aussie_geek
 
aussie_geek said:
Seems that my G5's hard drive is toast 😡 . It is a Maxtor 160 Gb. I am looking at getting a Seagate one to replace it. Considering I have 3 of them already I think it would be a good choice.

Are there any other brands I should consider?

aussie_geek

ps -see the attached photo of disk utility's conclusion about the drive!!
Click to expand...


Have you tried Disk Warrior? I'm guessing simply formating it didn't do the job?
I would also go for Seagate if I were you. I've personally never had a problem with their products and they often seem to be ahead of others.
 
junior said:
Have you tried Disk Warrior? I'm guessing simply formating it didn't do the job?
I would also go for Seagate if I were you. I've personally never had a problem with their products and they often seem to be ahead of others.
Click to expand...


I don't have DiskWarrior - might be a good investment for future problems 😉. Considering I have scrapped the G5's HD, I think it's a bit late for data recovery. Good thing all my crucial work data is on my PowerBook!! 🙂.

If the HD does not survive the test regime I will have to go for a new one. I have been googling specs on the various manufacturers and I think the Hitachi Deskstar comes out on top. Any other users out there with Deskstars in their G5's?


aussie_geek
 
How long have you owned your PM. That is ridiculous that a hard drive would fail on you so soon, I mean you have a G5 so it cant be that old. Were you getting any signs before it went?
 
benwa02 said:
How long have you owned your PM. That is ridiculous that a hard drive would fail on you so soon, I mean you have a G5 so it cant be that old. Were you getting any signs before it went?
Click to expand...

I've only had it for just on 2 weeks - it's one of the old 2.5's I got on sale. I had an inkling that it was going down hill when I came home from work the other day. I had logged out after the previous night's session and when I attempted to log back in the following afternoon, it hanged. After a manual power button shutdown and a paperclip assisted insertion of the Tiger CD, I ran disk utility and it found fatal errors so I re-formatted and installed Tiger. It was OK until this afternoon when I got the BBOD.

I gave up waiting for the system to respond after 5 minutes so I just powered off. I tried to reboot and it wouldn't.

Using the trusty old paper clip 😉 I inserted the Tiger install disk and ran disk utility. The results of the test are in my first post.

I will be calling the store I bought it from tomorrow. Now here comes the complicated bit... I bought the G5 from a department store that I know will say 'contact Apple regarding warranty claims'. I will insist on getting a new one, but considering they only had 3 of them left at the price I paid, the chances of being 1 left for exchange is slim - even if they agree to exchange is another thing...

I know Apple will exchange the drive for a new one but I just can't do without this G5 at the moment. I think I should just bite the bullet and get another drive and then talk to Apple later about getting a replacement for the dead one. Lets hope Apple doesn't require the G5 to be sent to them just for a HD replacement. Maybe they can just send one out to me....


aussie_geek
 
There were claims soon after the G5s came out that the heat sensor in the hard disk compartment is located too far from the drive, which allows the drive to get too hot before the fan speed ramps up. Check out some discussion and tips . I always wondered whether, when I finally get around to buying a G5, I'd bother with the sensor relocaton project described there. The original poster adds a data point in favor, perhaps. Which model G5 do you have? And which OS version, since an update to the article indicates that 10.3.3 introduced changes to the fan control threshold temperature so that now the factory sensor location works well?

Crikey
 
It prolly wouldnt be a bad idea to get another hard drive on your own money and get a replacement for the bad one. That way you can have 2 hard drives and keep some of your stuff seperated or used as a scratch disk AND you will not be out of a hard drive until the replacement comes especially if you need your PM. I wouldnt think they would need your PM to do a switch like that, that would really be dumb.

I dont know how much you would plan on spending for a new drive, I say either get a cheap 40gig or so just for seperation/scratch disk OR go and get the WD 10,000 RPM drive (Raptor?) which will boost your speed to and from the hard drive.
 
Sorry to hear about that.... I dont want to start any fight or anything, but I have NEVER had luck with maxtor drives... we have had over 4 fail on us in the last 5 years in our two PCs and my one mac... I have a 60GB Maxtor in my mac that I throw useless files on every once in a while, and I use my Western digital as my main drive... because I just simply dont trust the maxtor... My buddy just got a new HP desktop with a 160GB Maxtor drive... dead the 3rd he had it set up... So I dunno, I havent ever used seagate, but I always stick with western digital.
 
First of a way to check if is the drive. Go into disk utility and click the top level drive. Look at the bottom where is says the stats. Look at S.M.A.R.T status, does it say Verified? if so i don't think it you drive. This is the thing on the drive that tell if it is dying.

I have a program in the menu bar the check this every little bit and displays a warning if it is dying.

Hope this helps.
 
if your getting a replacement 160 drive check newegg and samsung drives. i have had great results with them.so far maxtor and western digital sucks. have many failures wuth them seagate i am on the fench. check the user reviews too
 
Thanks for the reassurance people. It's good to know that I am not alone here 🙁

The SMART status failed on the disk utility check I did before the last wipe of the hard drive. Seeing this has happened, I am inclined to buy a new HD. I have found a good deal on a 250 gig Western Digital so I might go with that one.

I am re-installing Tiger now and will do the copy-trash experiment as I said above. I will keep you posted.

aussie_geek
 
My TiBook did something like that a few months ago.
I woke it from sleep one day and I got the lollipop of death. I rebooted and it took like 2 minutes to come up, then 5 minutes to log in. Even then the Finder didn't display and icons and the taskbar was blank 😱
I ran the disk utility and it spurted out all kinds of junk. DiskWarrior didn't help either, so I ended up buying a new drive.

I hope your situation works out.
 
I think you'd be wise to get a Seagate drive. They offer 5 year warranties on some of them. I'm eyeing one myself.
 
I've got the rev A dual 2 G5, and have no hard drive problems... The Rev A's did have an issue in the beginning with heat sensor input, but it was fixed in a firmware update, so that couldn't be it. If you had a faulty sensor altogether, your g5 would sound as if it were going to take off. Have you ever tried taking off the clear air deflector when it's on? The fans are LOUDER than that when you have a faulty sensor.
Sounds just like a nasty HD to me. I'd highly suggest getting a 250gb drive. There's no reason not to have a second drive in there (If you do get the 160gb replaced), and you'll be losing no money. Buy it! Buy it! If you ever upgrade to a new PM in the future, you'll be able to take it with you, as well.... it's a win-win-win-win-win situation!
 
I just got a Samsung after having many Maxtor drives and have found the samsungs to be soo much more quiet its amazing, anyhow i would reccomend samsung or seagate,

Peace

SHadowM
 
All is good

I ended up getting a 250Gb Seagate for $200 au! 🙂 A real bargain. I will be ringing Apple tomorrow and asking for a replacement for the FUBAR'D one.

aussie_geek
 
aussie_geek said:
Are there any other brands I should consider?
aussie_geek
ps -see the attached photo of disk utility's conclusion about the drive!!
Click to expand...
It seems you have already bought a drive, but anyway.

Seagate 7200.8 for their 5 year warranty.
WD 74GB 10krpm raptor for speed.
Samsung Spinpoint P120 for best desktop 7200rpm performance drive.
WD 3200JB might have better overall performance and Hitachi 7k400 might still have the highest IO/s (except the 10krpm drive of course).
 
aussie_geek said:
Thanks for the reassurance people. It's good to know that I am not alone here 🙁

The SMART status failed on the disk utility check I did before the last wipe of the hard drive. Seeing this has happened, I am inclined to buy a new HD. I have found a good deal on a 250 gig Western Digital so I might go with that one.

I am re-installing Tiger now and will do the copy-trash experiment as I said above. I will keep you posted.

aussie_geek
Click to expand...

This is the first time i have heard of this failing. I have known for awhile it if fails this is really bad. But this is a first failing.
 
------UPDATE------

I phoned Apple today and informed them of what happened.

I was rather shocked when they insisted I take the G5 - that's right the whole computer to an AppleCentre where they will assess the problem and expect the computer to be returned in about 2 weeks!! 😱 😱

All of this for a Hd that went belly up?? WTF Apple, are you on crack or something??

I insisted rather forcefully that the I needed the computer and I would not be parting with it so easily - I only got it the other week. I suggested I should post the drive to them or just take the drive to an AppleCentre for testing. Apparently this was not acceptable. The Apple Rep sensed I was getting rather flustered and gave me a case number. He then attempted to transfer me to customer support. After being on hold for about 5 minutes, they hung up!!

I made the call just after I finished work and had to get home so I thought I would tackle it then. When I got home, I called Apple again - about 15 mins before Tech support closed for the day and the phone just rang out.. NOT GOOD APPLE!! - The geek was furious.

So, I will be ringing tomorrow to give them a real serve. Pitty help the service tech I talk to tomorrow.... 😛


aussie_geek
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back