rev A dual 2 ghz. running os 10.3.8 (if it were to actually start up..). 1.5 gb ram (512 from apple, 1 gb from... newegg or owc or someone i've used before).
somewhere between 6-12 months ago, i purchased a western digital 250gb sata drive (from owc i'm almost positive) to use for projects/backup inside my g5. i forget the exact circumstances, but initially my thought was to use the drive as my main system drive (it has 8 mb cache, so i figured it'd be better than the original drive in the g5). i installed on it and immediately had enough problems that i decided, no thanks, and used it as my secondary drive... i wrote it off as a one time issue with the drive.
there have been random issues off and on since then (i don't recall specifics) but nothing that i wrote off as a really bum drive.
3 days ago my second drive diappeared randomly from my desktop. after a restart it still wasn't there, so i used diskwarrior on it and it resolved some issues and i was able to salvage most of it (i only specifically know of maybe 10 files on it that were missing). i figured that was the end of that (for now). not so. yesterday my system was acting a bit funny (off my other drive). so i thought, well maybe i'll go ahead and run diskwarrior on that drive too. so i did, and it rebuilt the directory.. upon trying to startup from the drive, it hung. restarted. hung again. refused to start up no matter what i did (unplug all external devices, reset pram, etc - though now that i think of it, i never tried an fsck -y....).
so, my first thought was to do what i could to backup my important data off that drive (email, photos, etc). i tried to install panther on my secondary drive, but it failed to install a few times. at some point, it installed the first disc fine, but then when it restarted to install from the second disc, that drive hung too! try as i might, i couldn't get that drive to start up either. so, i booted from the os disc, and tried to reformat the second drive however it refused to unmount. it failed to erase from disk utility even after multiple restarts from the os disc. eventually, i decided to install on an external drive. it worked. so my first priority was backing up drive 1 onto drive 2. so i could then attempt to reinstall system on drive 1. the drive was probably 75% through cloning when i went to bed. i woke my computer up this morning, and it kernel panicked. believe it or not, this isn't a surprise to me (sadly) because i've almost always had KPs when awaking from a sleep where the hdd spins down. with the fresh system, i hadn't changed the energy settings. anyways, i restarted and guess what... it hung! i tried again, holding option to make sure i was booting from the firewire drive i had installed on... and it hung again! tried a 3rd time with no luck.
so. that's where i'm at now. i sit here at work wanting only to fix my computer, but alas i have to wait. any ideas? my current plan on what to try next is:
1. take out the second internal drive and start up - if that doesn't work...
2. take out the primary drive and try. if that doesn't...
3. take out the extra ram....
i had thought that in general ram didn't fail randomly (ie, if it was bad it'd be bad from the start) but my geeky brother has since told me that it is indeed possible... he also suggested it could be the hard drive controller, or maybe the bus...
obviously i want to avoid paying for service (no apple care anymore- can't buy it after 1 year has passed right?) and i've contacted owc about possibly exchanging the drive since, even though there might be other hardware issues involved, the drive still seems bad. my brother seems pretty sure we can pare down the problem, but does anyone have any ideas of what to try? always helps to have extra input.
thanks for reading this novel and for any ideas you might have.
somewhere between 6-12 months ago, i purchased a western digital 250gb sata drive (from owc i'm almost positive) to use for projects/backup inside my g5. i forget the exact circumstances, but initially my thought was to use the drive as my main system drive (it has 8 mb cache, so i figured it'd be better than the original drive in the g5). i installed on it and immediately had enough problems that i decided, no thanks, and used it as my secondary drive... i wrote it off as a one time issue with the drive.
there have been random issues off and on since then (i don't recall specifics) but nothing that i wrote off as a really bum drive.
3 days ago my second drive diappeared randomly from my desktop. after a restart it still wasn't there, so i used diskwarrior on it and it resolved some issues and i was able to salvage most of it (i only specifically know of maybe 10 files on it that were missing). i figured that was the end of that (for now). not so. yesterday my system was acting a bit funny (off my other drive). so i thought, well maybe i'll go ahead and run diskwarrior on that drive too. so i did, and it rebuilt the directory.. upon trying to startup from the drive, it hung. restarted. hung again. refused to start up no matter what i did (unplug all external devices, reset pram, etc - though now that i think of it, i never tried an fsck -y....).
so, my first thought was to do what i could to backup my important data off that drive (email, photos, etc). i tried to install panther on my secondary drive, but it failed to install a few times. at some point, it installed the first disc fine, but then when it restarted to install from the second disc, that drive hung too! try as i might, i couldn't get that drive to start up either. so, i booted from the os disc, and tried to reformat the second drive however it refused to unmount. it failed to erase from disk utility even after multiple restarts from the os disc. eventually, i decided to install on an external drive. it worked. so my first priority was backing up drive 1 onto drive 2. so i could then attempt to reinstall system on drive 1. the drive was probably 75% through cloning when i went to bed. i woke my computer up this morning, and it kernel panicked. believe it or not, this isn't a surprise to me (sadly) because i've almost always had KPs when awaking from a sleep where the hdd spins down. with the fresh system, i hadn't changed the energy settings. anyways, i restarted and guess what... it hung! i tried again, holding option to make sure i was booting from the firewire drive i had installed on... and it hung again! tried a 3rd time with no luck.
so. that's where i'm at now. i sit here at work wanting only to fix my computer, but alas i have to wait. any ideas? my current plan on what to try next is:
1. take out the second internal drive and start up - if that doesn't work...
2. take out the primary drive and try. if that doesn't...
3. take out the extra ram....
i had thought that in general ram didn't fail randomly (ie, if it was bad it'd be bad from the start) but my geeky brother has since told me that it is indeed possible... he also suggested it could be the hard drive controller, or maybe the bus...
obviously i want to avoid paying for service (no apple care anymore- can't buy it after 1 year has passed right?) and i've contacted owc about possibly exchanging the drive since, even though there might be other hardware issues involved, the drive still seems bad. my brother seems pretty sure we can pare down the problem, but does anyone have any ideas of what to try? always helps to have extra input.
thanks for reading this novel and for any ideas you might have.
