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nztarquin

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 31, 2007
5
0
Any advice on the following would be appreciated:

While editing a fairly extensive itunes library, the computer seemed to freeze up. Forced a reboot (with power button at back). Chimes, gets to screen with the apple logo and spinning wheel, where it sits for 5 mins or so, then goes to a light blue blank screen, and no further. Sometimes here it will power itself down after some time.

I can force boot into firewire disk mode (T), but the drive will not be recognised as an external firewire drive on my laptop (tried 2 cables). Also if I boot with the option key and load up the OSX install disc, try to do an install at the point where you are promted to choose a disc to install to, nothing shows up.

I'm presumming that this means a dead HDD.

I'm not too distressed as most of my important data is on other drives, but it would be nice to revive the drive, even if it gets decommisioned to an external case.

Any ideas before I go though the arduous task of dismantling the case.

1st generation Mac Mini 1.42Ghz
512mgb ram
80gb HDD (I think it was a Toshiba)


thanks
 
I have managed to bring up disk repair and the HDD show up in red, saying that the S.M.A.R.T has failed. I cannot do a repair on it in this status. Is this fatial?
 
If you end up replacing the hard drive, get a 7200rpm laptop drive and you should notice faster startup, application load up etc.
 
...I have managed to revive the HDD by putting it in firewire mode onto a laptop (it didnt mount in the OS), but comes up in disc utility. If I do a repair it comes up with an error, however I could access it with Disk Warrior and it then rebuilt the directory and was able to mount in the OS. I most of the data I wanted to save to another HDD, and have reformatted and am reinstalling OS X from CDROM to see what will happen.
Ultimately I think a new HDD needs to go in there pretty soon.
 
So, can I put any 2.5 HDD in the computer as a replacement? the current drive is ATA, so SATA obviously is a no go, but are there any restrictions on size, RPM, etc?
 
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