tried to boot up my cube this morning. running 10.4.11. got the usual apple and the spinning wheel underneath it but it stayed like that for 5 minutes. powered down. tried again, got a dark grey box with the spinning wheel underneath it. again powered down. tried one more time and nothing on the screen. any ideas?
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cube problems
- Thread starter gooser
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Try the standard suite of diagnostics-first a PMU and PRAM reset.
If this doesn't get you anywhere, you may have a corrupt OS install. Try booting into Singe User Mode(command+S) then type /sbin/fsck -fy when the command prompt appears. This will take a few minutes but will either say "The Disk appears OK" or "FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED." Keep running fsck until it no longer returns the "file system was modified" message.
If this doesn't do anything, boot off an OS X install disk(same version as what you're running) or boot the computer in target disk mode(hold down T) and connect it via a Firewire cable to another computer running the same version of OS X. In either case, use Disk Utility to repair permissions on the drive.
If this still fails, try an archive and install on OS X.
If this doesn't get you anywhere, you may have a corrupt OS install. Try booting into Singe User Mode(command+S) then type /sbin/fsck -fy when the command prompt appears. This will take a few minutes but will either say "The Disk appears OK" or "FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED." Keep running fsck until it no longer returns the "file system was modified" message.
If this doesn't do anything, boot off an OS X install disk(same version as what you're running) or boot the computer in target disk mode(hold down T) and connect it via a Firewire cable to another computer running the same version of OS X. In either case, use Disk Utility to repair permissions on the drive.
If this still fails, try an archive and install on OS X.
I'd strongly suggest backing up all data off the disk or clone / image it using either Disk Utility or CCC.
As for the replacement: Your cube takes an IDE hard drive with a max capacity of 128 GB. There are workarounds for larger drives but if you want to keep it simple I suggest going for a 120gb drive.
As for the replacement: Your cube takes an IDE hard drive with a max capacity of 128 GB. There are workarounds for larger drives but if you want to keep it simple I suggest going for a 120gb drive.
I actually hoard 120gb IDE drives for this very reason. In my experience, this actually isn't a super common size, but I'd rather give up a 160 or 250gb from my "stash" in preference to a 120gb(although I'm pretty protective of all of them
). I also hold onto 80gb drives, although these fortunately are easier to find that 120s. The reason why I like 120gb drives so much is that they are the largest size that can be used in many Macs without additional work-arounds or having to give up space on the drive.
Granted, since going a bit nuts and building up a stash of Sonnet Tempo ATA-133 cards(which are bootable and don't have the 128gb limit) along with a couple of SATA cards I've had a few more options in pre-QS2002 towers as far as drives, but still like the 120gb drives for things like iMacs and Cubes.
fortunately i don't have any data on this machine nor any desire to put any on there. 107 gb free so i probably have a 120 gb drive in it. i've had the machine for a year and i doubt if i've turned it on more than a dozen times. when i move back into that house i'll use it frequently to watch ripped movies on but those are stored on an external firewire. i'll be keeping an eye on it more closely though. all of the extra software on it is already backed up.
It is very easy to enable LBA-48 support on a Cube to enable it to see and use a drive that is bigger than 128GB. The only down side is OS 9 must all be on a partition that is within the first 128GB and Tiger/Leopard must have their BootX files within the first 128GB of the drive or OpenFirmware won't be able to boot into OS X. Panther and below have the same restrictions as OS 9.