Powerbook malfunction

[rot@ti.org]

My 1.25ghz aluminum PowerBook is having problems. Last week the hard drive had errors; Disk Utility reported they could not be repaired and I had to erase the drive. Fortunately, I could read the drive when booting from an external disk so i was able to back it up.

Then, a week later, I am again having booting problems. I can usually boot from my external drive, but when I do I usually can't find the internal drive. On top of that, it sometimes reports that it can't find the Airport card and, though it can find the optical drive, it usually reports no disk in that drive even if one is there.

I ran a hardware test and everything passed, even the internal drive. Disk Utility says the drive is fine.

I upgraded the external drive to system 10.4.7 and it now has no problem finding the Airport card or disks in the optical drive. But on the rare occasions that the internal drive shows up on the desktop, the computer crashes if I try to access it.

Will replacing the drive solve these problems -- even though it reports no hardware problems with the drive?

 

[mad jew]

Disk Utility says the drive is fine.

Which aspect of Disk Utility? Did you verify the disk or are you talking about the SMART status?

Will replacing the drive solve these problems -- even though it reports no hardware problems with the drive?

If it's only crashing when you're doing anything related to the internal drive, then the internal drive is probably your problem. Alternatively, the connection to the internal drive may be faulty. Perhaps take it to a certified technician because the bundled Hardware Test discs aren't brilliant at finding faults.

 

[Cross]

It def sounds like more then a HD error

 

[OutThere]

If it's a pain to get to a technician and you want to be absolutely sure hardware test isn't turning anything up, run it 2 or 3 more times. I've heard of it catching problems on the second or third run that it didn't the first time. Kind of poor software, IMO.

 

[rot@ti.org]

Current status

I've decided it is the internal drive even though it passes the hardware test. Everything else is now working as long as I boot from the external drive. When I boot from a DVD, I can sometimes read the internal drive but I can't do much with it. I am going to send it to PowerBookResq to get the drive replaced. I needed a bigger one anyway.

Thanks for your help.