Hard drive troubles

[Macaddicttt]

So two days ago, I was listening to music on iTunes, and every once in a while, it'd pause inexplicably for a second or two. I thought it was some sort of software problem, so I fiddled around with that for a while and got nothing. Then my hard drive starts making weird noises. It sounded like it was struggling. So I booted to a CD to run Disk Utility. My drive wasn't even recognized.

So yesterday I went to the Apple Store and the hard drive worked fine. They ran Norton on it, and it caught a few problems, and now it seems to be working fine. But to be sure, today I bought an external HD and backed up all my files.

My question is, is there something wrong with my hard drive? Or was it just a fluke? Or did Norton fix it? I think I'm going to have them replace the HD just in case, since I'm under warranty, but I'd be interested to hear what people have to say on the matter. By the way, I'm using an iBook G4 with OS 10.3.9.

[Rocksaurus]

What's its SMART status?

[Norouzi]

Originally Posted by Macaddicttt

So two days ago, I was listening to music on iTunes, and every once in a while, it'd pause inexplicably for a second or two. I thought it was some sort of software problem, so I fiddled around with that for a while and got nothing. Then my hard drive starts making weird noises. It sounded like it was struggling. So I booted to a CD to run Disk Utility. My drive wasn't even recognized.

So yesterday I went to the Apple Store and the hard drive worked fine. They ran Norton on it, and it caught a few problems, and now it seems to be working fine. But to be sure, today I bought an external HD and backed up all my files.

My question is, is there something wrong with my hard drive? Or was it just a fluke? Or did Norton fix it? I think I'm going to have them replace the HD just in case, since I'm under warranty, but I'd be interested to hear what people have to say on the matter. By the way, I'm using an iBook G4 with OS 10.3.9.

I'm not sure they'll replace the HD without it failing. Even if Norton caught and fixed some problems that's technicly not a hardware issue, but a software issue. Unless the drive is making a physical noise, like a clicking noise I don't think they'll replace it under warranty.

[CanadaRAM]

Disturbed that the Apple Store is using Norton on OSX machines. I have personally experienced data destruction on a large scale directly due to Norton.

Go for the replacement. Once a drive starts having hardware-related problems it is progressive and and cannot be "fixed" by software. (An ATA drive can't be low level formatted to map out errors like SCSI drives used to be)

[Macaddicttt]

Originally Posted by Norouzi

I'm not sure they'll replace the HD without it failing. Even if Norton caught and fixed some problems that's technicly not a hardware issue, but a software issue. Unless the drive is making a physical noise, like a clicking noise I don't think they'll replace it under warranty.

The drive was making a physical noise. It clicked and all that. They said they'd replace it, so I think it's a hardware problem.