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I posted the following thread the other day...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/170522/

After reading these posts, I'm beginning to think even more that my pb drive died on its own after two years.

Moral (one of) the story, postpone Applecare purchase until the 1 year warranty is due to expire, lest any cosmetic issues make the warranty and Applecare worthless anyway.
 
5 years?

My 1st PowerBook, a G3 500 Pismo is still running on it's original hard drive.

My 2nd PowerBook, a G4 400 Titanium is also still running on it's original hard drive, although it could use a new battery to get me to next release...
 
My iBook G4: As long as I've had it...~4-5 months?
My iBook G3 500mhz (sold it a while ago): was over 4 years old...maybe 5...had original 10GB HD never with any errors.
 
My G3 iBook was three years old when I replaced it, and the original hard drive was still running fine. I'm currently using a two month old G4 iBook - does anyone know what brand of hard drive this machine would have?
 
OnceUGoMac said:
I've had 5 hard drive replacements in as many years and 1 optical drive replaced for my 2 iBooks.

Mmmm...Based on the rated MTBF, failures within one or even a few years of usage should be relatively rare. If you're experiencing this, then there is something very wrong...either with your supply of power, with the environment, or with your usage of these drives...there's no reason for them to be failing that rapidly.
 
My first one died after 14 months. I had outside warranty coverage at the time and had my HD replaced. From that point forward I was using a crappy Toshiba MK-GAP drive with the rusty ball bearing--and it was loud while spinning!

I replaced that with a Seagate Momentus 20 gig 5400 rpm drive. I've got 5 yr warranty on that, so it's some reassurance if you know what I mean.

;)
 
my 5 year old ibook is putting along(the hard drive is starting to make clicking noises:()

I like western digital hard drives also.... never had one die!
 
All of you who had hard drive failures...did you experience any warning signs, either in terms of SMART failure status or noises, etc? Were you able to save your data?
 
calyxman said:
From that point forward I was using a crappy Toshiba MK-GAP drive with the rusty ball bearing--and it was loud while spinning!

I replaced that with a Seagate Momentus 20 gig 5400 rpm drive. I've got 5 yr warranty on that, so it's some reassurance if you know what I mean.

The Toshiba drive in my Powerbook that came with it (the one that died) was awfully loud compared to the Seagate Momentus I have in it now. Even the first few weeks of use I noticed it would spin loudly and I could hear clicking every few minutes. I thought nothing of it but maybe it was defective from the start? Hence the early death.

mkrishnan said:
All of you who had hard drive failures...did you experience any warning signs, either in terms of SMART failure status or noises, etc? Were you able to save your data?

The smart status showed "failing" once I had booted from my external to inspect what was going on. It was "verified" 10 minutes before when I was booted on the internal. The computer just really started to slow with continuous beach balling and that was the last time I was able to boot from it.

It had been acting strange for weeks but I thought it was software related. I think I was slightly in denial that the drive was dying.

When I was booted from the external, I could access the contents of the internal. Would it be safe enough transferring a lot of stuff like iTunes library and your iPhoto library from a near enough dead drive? I just left everything as it was on the external incase I backed up a load of mush. :p
 
I have a Fujitsu HDD in my iBook that I purchased 17 months ago, it's still working fine no sign of failure so far.(if you can say so)

..'knocks on wood'...
 
SMART is your friend. Check it often with Disk Utility, and every now and agin run a SMART test (you can find utilities like SMARTdrv that will let you do this) to make sure there isn't too much wear. Mine lasted a year, and my replacement ($150 for an 80gig WD at 7200) has been running strong for over a year, minimal wear according to my most recent SMART test. Good luck!
 
disconap said:
SMART is your friend. Check it often with Disk Utility, and every now and agin run a SMART test (you can find utilities like SMARTdrv that will let you do this) to make sure there isn't too much wear. Mine lasted a year, and my replacement ($150 for an 80gig WD at 7200) has been running strong for over a year, minimal wear according to my most recent SMART test. Good luck!

Know where I can find a program that tests Smart on Mac OS X? All i can seem to find is .exe programs and programs for Windows.
 
maya said:
I have a Toshiba in mine and its running strong after a year plus. :)


From Profiler:

FUJITSU MHS2040AT D:

Capacity: 37.26 GB
Model: FUJITSU MHS2040AT D
Revision: 8105

29 months and going strong

Ed
 
going on 3 years with my used ibook 700 g3
no problems yet (knock on wood)
 
maverick808 said:
Yes except PowerBooks usually have higher capacities. But they are the same physical size and made by the same manufacturers and you can take the hard-drive out of an iBook and swap it with one from a PowerBook no problem.

So yes, they are the same.

No they aren't. They all run at completely different speeds, yeah they may be by the same OEM manufacturers but they aren't the same drives. Apple use a bunch of OEMs for their hardware, and the drives in the iBooks / PowerBooks are completely different.
 
so how do you know when your hd is about to die on you? does it just suddenly stop working? I have a rev c 12in pb with a Toshiba hd, and the only think I've noticed with my hd is that once in a while when burning cd's through iTunes it decides to go really really slow. Sometimes it takes ~3 min, and something ~9.
 
mkrishnan said:
All of you who had hard drive failures...did you experience any warning signs, either in terms of SMART failure status or noises, etc? Were you able to save your data?
Ticking, grinding and regular system freezes forewarned of my disk's impending failure rushed out and bought an external Maxtor for my data but it took 8 attempts to back everything up, the first seven failed 'cause the hard drive froze *sweaty palms*
 
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