Ugh... This really is pissing me off to no end. A month or two ago, my Aluminum Powerbook's original hard drive started to make a grinding noise. The computer suddenly said that none of your remembered networks are available, and my date was sent to Dec 1 (or 31), 1969. When I checked my Macintosh HD size, it said -- KB. Fastforward to a week or two, or three ago, when I got my replacement hard drive from eBay. I installed the HDD, and installed Leopard. Now, this hard drive seems to show the same symptoms that my last one exuded. I'll try to see what happens if I split the hard drive into two partition (it seems to be able to still make partitions,) CCC the first one onto the second one, then delete the first one. But again, really freaking annoying.
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My PBG4's hard drive has now failed AGAIN.
- Thread starter hellothere231
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Bear in mind that IDE drives have not been made in at least 3 years, and so any drive you buy is at best going to be old stock(even if unused) and probably more likely going to be used. Both the physical age(the manufacture date usually printed on the label-sometimes explicitly, and sometimes in the form of a date code that you look up online as to how to decode) and more so the usage hours(easily readable by a program like SMART Utility) can lead to death of a drive. If you installed a 6-year old drive with 100,000 power on hours(as an example), it's probably not surprising that it failed shortly after installing.
High capacity laptop IDE drives-particularly "low mileage" ones-are getting hard to find and increasingly expensive.
For that reason, my Powerbooks that I actually use have solid state drives. I use mSATA drives, which can be had for $40-50 in 128gb. There are several adapters available on Ebay and elsewhere that will allow you to fit connect an mSATA drive to a 44-pin IDE. I've been buying some for about $10 from China that have the same form factor as a 2.5" laptop hard drive.
These have a lot of advantages-especially on later ATA100 Powerbooks. The adapters I use-at least in sequential read speeds-will nearly saturate the ATA bus(the adapter has an "overhead" of about 8mb/s). This will perk up your computer very nicely, while also helping your battery life, making your computer quieter and cutting down on heat. IMO, they're a win-win-win, especially since it's not that much more expensive than a "low mileage" 100gb 7200rpm drive.
High capacity laptop IDE drives-particularly "low mileage" ones-are getting hard to find and increasingly expensive.
For that reason, my Powerbooks that I actually use have solid state drives. I use mSATA drives, which can be had for $40-50 in 128gb. There are several adapters available on Ebay and elsewhere that will allow you to fit connect an mSATA drive to a 44-pin IDE. I've been buying some for about $10 from China that have the same form factor as a 2.5" laptop hard drive.
These have a lot of advantages-especially on later ATA100 Powerbooks. The adapters I use-at least in sequential read speeds-will nearly saturate the ATA bus(the adapter has an "overhead" of about 8mb/s). This will perk up your computer very nicely, while also helping your battery life, making your computer quieter and cutting down on heat. IMO, they're a win-win-win, especially since it's not that much more expensive than a "low mileage" 100gb 7200rpm drive.
That's caused by a dead PRAM battery. My 12" Powerbook G4 does the same.
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Sorry to hear about the repeated HDD failures. Maybe SSD next?
I'll look into and probably do what bunnspecial's doing with his Powerbook (buying a msata ssd and putting it into a ide 2.5" enclosure). I dunno about that being caused by a dead PRAM battery though, unless the PRAM battery is affected by the HDD not working, because putting in the replacement HDD made the time work again.That's caused by a dead PRAM battery. My 12" Powerbook G4 does the same.
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Sorry to hear about the repeated HDD failures. Maybe SSD next?
Oh, and bunnspecial, where do you buy your SSDs? Is there any good place to, or should I just rely on eBay?
Remember the pram battery in the aluminum powerbooks is a soldered in rechargable cell. It WILL go bad eventually. Either unsolder it and replace it if you can find one thats suitable, or replace the motherboard with another one with a battery thats still good.