I guess this is bad.

[Lacero]

So my PB has been acting very strange lately, well actually, acting strange for the last 2 months. Constant freezes with beachballs, a hard drive that sounds like it is constantly accessing when I'm doing anything. Hard drive buzzes when I tilt my PB.

Over a year old, no Apple Care, so I am probably going to spring for a newer, larger, faster HD. Do I head back to my reseller for a PB compatible HD or can I buy one off a store that sells PC parts? Which hard drives are good?

First time buyer of 2.5" HDs.

I guess this is bad for me. Attachment included.

[joecool85]

So my PB has been acting very strange lately, well actually, acting strange for the last 2 months. Constant freezes with beachballs, a hard drive that sounds like it is constantly accessing when I'm doing anything. Hard drive buzzes when I tilt my PB.

Over a year old, no Apple Care, so I am probably going to spring for a newer, larger, faster HD. Do I head back to my reseller for a PB compatible HD or can I buy one off a store that sells PC parts? Which hard drives are good?

First time buyer of 2.5" HDs.

I guess this is bad for me. Attachment included.

I've yet to do it, but as far as I know any 2.5" laptop drive should be fine.

[edesignuk]

Just to state the blindingly obvious...[b]back that drive up now![b]

It's on it's last legs for sure. I'm fairly certain any 2.5" will do you, but I'd spring for a 7200rpm one ;) Apparently it's a nice little speed boost.

Good luck with it.

[grapes911]

Any notebook drive should work. I'd go with a well known manufacture and you should be fine. I'm personally partial to seagate. Remember, the slower the drive spins the slower things will be loaded, but the faster the drive goes the faster the battery will die. Try to balance that out.

[yellow]

Any 2.5" ATA HD should do. No need to be overcharged for an "Apple" one.

[caveman_uk]

Get at least a 5200rpm drive. The seagate Momentus drives are good. They go up to 7200rpm, some have 8MB caches on them and IIRC upto 100GB in size. They all fit. Taking apart a powerbook is fiddly but pbfixit.com has take apart guides. Just be careful, methodical and be sure to note which screws came from where - there's a lot and they're all different sizes ;)

[EGT]

So disk utility only showed this today after 2 months of odd behaviour?

I hope you get it sorted out soon enough. Let us know what drive you get.

[edesignuk]

but the faster the drive goes the faster the battery will die. Try to balance that out.I have heard that it may not be the case. Because the drive is spinning faster, not only do things load faster, but the drive doesn't need to spin for so long - and so canceling out any extra battery ware.

[emw]

I've always been partial to OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/), although I don't know much about Hitachi HDs. I upgraded my DVD drive when my old one failed, and the instructions from OWC were top notch.

Edit: According to the site, the 7200rpm drives have power requirements "similar" to 5400rpm drives.

Also, I'd recommend Data Rescue II (http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue_info.php?PHPSESSID=3317ed53d082618edddcc1d9f7d72ee6) from Prosoft Engineering. Formerly Data Rescue X, this product saved my bacon twice (two different machines) by pulling data off of failed HDs.

Of course, my failures were catalog headers or something, not hardware-related, so I can't guarantee it will work, but you can demo the product for free before you buy.

[ipacmm]

That same thing happened to me about 2 months ago on my PowerBook, I went to the Apple store and they booted it off of one of their hard drives and they were able to get all of my data off of it onto my external HD. I would get a new hard drive on it...it took Apple 5 weeks to get my PowerBook fixed.

[grapes911]

I have heard that it may not be the case. Because the drive is spinning faster, not only do things load faster, but the drive doesn't need to spin for so long - and so canceling out any extra battery ware.
I have heard that too. But from the tests I've seen it is not the case. A faster hard drive definitely uses more battery even though it has to spin less. The relationship is not linear though. Example. Doubling the RPMs will not use twice as much power. I remember seeing a test on a toshiba laptop with 4 hours of battery life and a 4200 RPM HD. Going to a 5400, the batter dropped to 3.75 hours. Going to a 7200 dropped to like 3.5 hours. (Don't quote me on those times, I'm trying to pull them from memory.) If portability without a power adapter is very important to you, you may want that extra 15-20 minutes. For many or even most people the performance increase (which is pretty noticeable, esp if you use a lot of virtual memory) outweighs the lost of 15 minutes.

[Lacero]

Looks like I'll have to do a backup. This is good, I've been wanting to upgrade my HD for a while now. Perfect opportunity. No more begging. :D

[California]

What is weird is that these drives -- Toshiba and Hitachi, don't know about Fujistu, may have independent warranties on them even though they are in Apple machines.

I wonder about that. I know Hitachis, which I love btw, have three year warranties. I don't know if they are voided if they are OEM machines; but would guess NOT. If I'm right, this is a secret Apple may not want to disclose for markup reasons.

Get a 100gig 5400 Hitachi. They seem to be more reliable than Toshiba, though Toshibas have a larger cache size.

[Josh396]

Looks like I'll have to do a backup. This is good, I've been wanting to upgrade my HD for a while now. Perfect opportunity. No more begging. :D
Well same thing kinda happened for me. I wanted to buy a new iPod but I figured mine could hold out for at least another 6 months when it died all of sudden, 2 months after the warranty was up. Now all I have to do is wait a few more hours to see what my future iPod will be.

As for your HD, which one are you going with? If you go with a faster one I'd be interested to see how the results turn out on your battery. Good luck.

[CanadaRAM]

What is weird is that these drives -- Toshiba and Hitachi, don't know about Fujistu, may have independent warranties on them even though they are in Apple machines.

I wonder about that. I know Hitachis, which I love btw, have three year warranties. I don't know if they are voided if they are OEM machines; but would guess NOT. If I'm right, this is a secret Apple may not want to disclose for markup reasons.

Get a 100gig 5400 Hitachi. They seem to be more reliable than Toshiba, though Toshibas have a larger cache size.
When a computer manufacturer buys drives in bulk from Toshiba or Hitachi or whoever, they negotiate a lower price by assuming the warranty obligation themselves; therefore a drive sold by Apple has an Apple 1 year warranty, and no Toshiba or Hitachi warranty at all.

A drive purchased in a retail package will have the full retail warranty from the manufacturer - typically 3 years, except 5 years on Seagate Momentus

What you have to watch out for are 'pulls' -- people selling 'new' drives pulled from machines to upgrade, or new drives that were bulk-purchased by a computer company without warranty. THESE drives often will have neither the manufacturer's warranty nor Apple's (or Dells or anyone's). Anytime you see a 'deal' on a hard drive, always get the full warranty terms in writing from the seller. If you can get the drive's serial number, you can sometimes look up its warranty status with the manufacturer.

[alexstein]

this was one scarry message i believe. i know from myself that a hard disk failure really sucks. at least you still have a chance to get some data off of it. good luck.

any 2.5" drive will work just make sure you get a reliable/well known manufacturer. like seagate/toshiba/hitachi. and like everybody else said get one with a little more bite atlieast 5400rpm personaly i would go for the 7200rpm. but that is just me.

[andiwm2003]

i had also error messages from my pb hd. even the genius said the hd is going belly up. but it turned out to be faulty ram that wrote garbage onte the disk. that then came up as disk errors. fortunately i found out before i replaced the hd.

so check your ram. hardware test showed my ram as good in the beginning, but after a few days it found errors. after replacing my ram i had no problems for 3-4 month now.

so there is no excuse to buy a new pb today after the apple event ;)
there is still hope for your pb :)

[Lacero]

As for your HD, which one are you going with? If you go with a faster one I'd be interested to see how the results turn out on your battery. Good luck.Well, the HD finally died. :( Didn't get a chance to test the battery life with the original Toshiba 60 GB 4200 rpm HD for comparison.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

I'll see what my local supplier has in terms of 5400 and 7200 rpm drives. I'm leaning towards 7200 rpm since 90% of the time, the PB is connected to the power adaptor.

I backed up some data but not all. I've lost all my Safari bookmarks, some contact info and all my emails. So not all is lost. I still have my secret hot-donkey porn stash. :p

[emw]

I backed up some data but not all. I've lost all my Safari bookmarks, some contact info and all my emails. So not all is lost. I still have my secret hot-donkey porn stash. :p
Sorry to hear about the data loss. The e-mails you might be able to retrieve from the mail server if you don't have Mail delete it after downloading it.

As for the porn, well, it's always best to have that backed up. It's a pain to have to re-download all the good stuff. ;)

[gammamonk]

secret hot-donkey porn stash.
-- Whoa --

[Sdashiki]

i do alot of RMA stuff, especially laptop HDs, they break alot.

OEM stuff is near impossible to get RMAed ever.

So I say the best thing to do, after backing up, is goto the manuf. website, and see if the serial is under warranty. If not, yer SOL. Begging and yelling dont help, ever, Ive tried. OEM = not the makers problem.

RMA = return merchandise authorization

[wongulous]

The porn is safe!? Whew. :) I'm glad to hear you're doing okay, Lacero. Losing an HD can be a stressful event. I'd get the biggest 5200/5400 drive you can afford.

[mpqtpie]

Not to mention that Seagate offers a 5-year warranty on its internal harddrives (most manufacturers offer only 1-year). I bought one for my 12" PB and it ran beautifully. Also cost me $215 from Best Buy! Maybe you'll get lucky and you can find a better deal than me...

Also, make sure it's just the HD that's the problem. I thought I just needed a new HD (old one was clanking) but then I kept getting kernel panics everyday anyway. The HD was fine after that but I had problems with the computer itself (might have been the logic board?). So then I had to sell it anyway and was out $215. Sigh...

Good luck! :)

[Metatron]

Well, the HD finally died. :( Didn't get a chance to test the battery life with the original Toshiba 60 GB 4200 rpm HD for comparison.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

I'll see what my local supplier has in terms of 5400 and 7200 rpm drives. I'm leaning towards 7200 rpm since 90% of the time, the PB is connected to the power adaptor.

I backed up some data but not all. I've lost all my Safari bookmarks, some contact info and all my emails. So not all is lost. I still have my secret hot-donkey porn stash. :p

let me know what you get and how it performs...I am thinking of putting a 7200 in my powerbook.

[eva01]

Sorry to hear about the data loss. The e-mails you might be able to retrieve from the mail server if you don't have Mail delete it after downloading it.

As for the porn, well, it's always best to have that backed up. It's a pain to have to re-download all the good stuff. ;)

thats why the porn for me is on external HD ^_~

[Lacero]

I went to my local OEM shop, they don't even carry any 7200 rpm drives, and the man behind the counter said they were low on stock. I asked about the 7200 rpm HDs and he basically said he doesn't recommend them because, as he said, they tend to fail more often, puts out too much heat and uses too much battery life.

I worry mostly about the heat. He suggested I go with an 80 GB 5400 rpm drive. So that's what I ended up buying. A Toshiba 5400 rpm 80 GH HD with 16MB cache. They didn't have any 100GB in stock, and I hate waiting.

It's still sitting in the wrapper. I have to go out now to buy a set of screwdrivers to crack open the PB with. I'll report back once I have it installed and loaded up.

[mpqtpie]

Just curious...have you installed a HD before? I thought it was as simple as putting in new RAM but then I watched a friend of mine install it. You literally gotta take the entire computer apart. It's not intuitive. Seems kinda complicated. Even when you open the HD box they say to let a pro do it.

[mkrishnan]

thats why the porn for me is on external HD ^_~

God bless those 300+ GB SATA drives! :D

[Lacero]

Just curious...have you installed a HD before? I thought it was as simple as putting in new RAM but then I watched a friend of mine install it. You literally gotta take the entire computer apart. It's not intuitive. Seems kinda complicated. Even when you open the HD box they say to let a pro do it.

First time. Yeah, it's complicated. I would not want to do it again for a while. However, it was fun taking a peek inside the Apple magic. The hardest parts for me was taking off the top cover. It seemed to get stuck near the HD corner. The second hardest part trying to put back the F1 - F12 keys.

It's pretty complex. Something like 35 screws in all. Make sure you have the right tools or else you'll be fracked. :( pbfixit.com was a tremendous help.

[im_to_hyper]

-- Whoa --

You're from Japan -- that shouldn't be too weird :D

[mpqtpie]

First time. Yeah, it's complicated. I would not want to do it again for a while. However, it was fun taking a peek inside the Apple magic. The hardest parts for me was taking off the top cover. It seemed to get stuck near the HD corner. The second hardest part trying to put back the F1 - F12 keys.

It's pretty complex. Something like 35 screws in all. Make sure you have the right tools or else you'll be fracked. :( pbfixit.com was a tremendous help.

Cool site. I bookmarked it in case I ever have to replace anything in my new ibook.

Glad to hear that the installation was successful. Yeah there are really a crazy number of screws and for some reason when we opened my old pb there was a ton of tape too.

One of my friends installed a HD in a PB and when he was finished and had put the top back on and everything, he found a single screw hiding in the carpet. :eek:

[brap]

Never mind, then.