Dead Powerbook hard drive, help?

[justingakuto]

My aging PowerBook G4's hard drive has finally bitten the dust, I think. It will no longer startup from the internal HD (it gets past the first couple screens and then just seems to spin in circles while the screen is blue).

When I run DiskWarrior, it tells me that the HD's directory cannot be replaced due to disk errors. So for the last few weeks I have been running my laptop from my external HD, but not being able to take my computer away from the external is driving me nuts, as I do a lot of work in cafes where it's not possible to use the external. Is there anything else I could try to resurrect the internal HD? I was able to copy the old files onto my external using DiskWarrior, but that was it. I'm attempting to hold out until the new MacBook Pros are released...

Thanks in advance for reading.

 

[leodavinci0]

My aging PowerBook G4's hard drive has finally bitten the dust, I think. It will no longer startup from the internal HD (it gets past the first couple screens and then just seems to spin in circles while the screen is blue).

When I run DiskWarrior, it tells me that the HD's directory cannot be replaced due to disk errors. So for the last few weeks I have been running my laptop from my external HD, but not being able to take my computer away from the external is driving me nuts, as I do a lot of work in cafes where it's not possible to use the external. Is there anything else I could try to resurrect the internal HD? I was able to copy the old files onto my external using DiskWarrior, but that was it. I'm attempting to hold out until the new MacBook Pros are released...

Thanks in advance for reading.

It doesn't sound like this will work, but it's worth a try. Since the HDD isn't completely dead you may be able to reinstall the OS; you can do this without losing everything in the disk too. I had Finder get corrupted on me once, and the result was similar to what you described, just a blue screen at start-up. I reinstalled the OS, choosing to save everything, and it started fine afterwards. Depending on what directory you are talking about, this may not work though.

 

[stiphone]

get a new faster, higher capacity hard drive and swap out the old one. I just swapped out my old 12" PowerBook HD yesterday and put in a 160GB 5400 Seagate hard disk. Installed Leopard on it and it sure is speedy and makes a lot of difference in speed and performance.

There are very good guides on ifixit.com giving you the step by step procedure in changing it. An it's not too difficult IMHO.

 

[kousuke18]

Have you tried connecting the external drive to your powerbook and use the repair disk option in disk utility to fix the drive?

 

[leodavinci0]

Depending on which PB he has, swapping out the HDD may be no easy task. If it's a 12", then swapping is not fun. If it's the 15" or 17" then swapping is relatively easier. If the OP has a 12" and wants to swap HDD's, let me know, and I'll tell you things to watch out for.