Dying Hard Drive... Should I buy an external and swap drives?

[mekkon]

Hi there,
My wife's iBook gave up the ghost last night. I'm pretty sure the hard drive is toast. If I boot it to target disk mode, it only occasionally mounts on my macbook, so I can't salvage any data. It's not mission critical, but it'd be nice to get some stuff off.

My question is this: Rather than buy a new hard drive and an external enclosure to try to fish some stuff off of the old one, would it make more sense to just buy an external hard drive, and then swap the drives? (For instance, I can get a Maxtor (seagate) 120gb 2.5" ext drive for $59 at Staples. If it's an ATA interface (a big "if" I know...) can't I just swap that drive with the iBook and save the purchase of an enclosure?)

My only concern is finding an external hard drive that has an ATA interface inside and not a SATA. Am I missing something here?

Thanks,

 

[Neil321]

Hi there,
My wife's iBook gave up the ghost last night. I'm pretty sure the hard drive is toast. If I boot it to target disk mode, it only occasionally mounts on my macbook, so I can't salvage any data. It's not mission critical, but it'd be nice to get some stuff off.

My question is this: Rather than buy a new hard drive and an external enclosure to try to fish some stuff off of the old one, would it make more sense to just buy an external hard drive, and then swap the drives? (For instance, I can get a Maxtor (seagate) 120gb 2.5" ext drive for $59 at Staples. If it's an ATA interface (a big "if" I know...) can't I just swap that drive with the iBook and save the purchase of an enclosure?)

My only concern is finding an external hard drive that has an ATA interface inside and not a SATA. Am I missing something here?

Thanks,

Never owned a iBook but i don't see why not you can with the MBP & MB for instance,when i upgraded my MBP the last time i bought the drive in an enclosure cloned the old drive to the new & then swapped them ( putting the old drive in the enclosure )

Where have you been since 04 by the way sleeping?

 

[mekkon]

Where have you been since 04 by the way sleeping?

Let's just say that it's been a busy few years...

I'm becoming increasingly concerned about this old iBook. I can't find the install disks to attempt a repair while booting from the CD, and it will not mount on my macbook in target disk mode. It goes into target disk mode, and will show up in Disk Utility, but won't mount on the desktop or access data, and any attempt to repair from the MacBook fails. And, although it shows up in Disk Utility, DU will not let me drag the iBook's HD into the Restore pane in order to try to back it up.

From the look of things at this point, it seems fairly dismal. Argh. Maybe I should go back to bed for the next 4 years...

 

[taoski]

It will be worth risking buying an external drive - and swapping them over (although after you have found the disks).

It does sound like you need a new drive anyway.

You could always get a drive on its own and a cheaper caddy off ebay or something to put the old one in. You will easily get an ATA one from there as most stores have gone SATA crrraaazzzy now!

 

[mekkon]

The worst backup ever.

As the pain sinks in, the real mistake I made here seems to have been due to being too careful...

the last time the iBook booted successfully, I grabbed our external hard drive, fired up SuperDuper and told it to copy the HD. Great right? Well, no. It was the same HD we'd been backing the ibook on to for ages, so, as usual, it wiped the drive clean, then started copying files. Then died. Full on spinning beach ball and then death. Since then it hasn't booted. And the previously backed up info is history, thanks to my brilliant backup plan when the HD started acting up...

 

[Neil321]

Apart from expensive data recovery or finding some prog that does it,i don't think your got no other choice than find a new drive

Good to see you stayed awake long enough to post back