Imac G3 hard drive 'clicks'...

[Morgenster]

Hi,

I'm the proud owner of an orange Imac G3 (slot-loading, 350 Mhz, 128MB RAM, 7GB drive, OS X 10.2). Yesterday evening I came home to find my Imac in a bad state. The screen displayed a text message saying that I should reboot (in about 7 or 8 languages). I heard that the hard drive was not humming as it usually does. When I rebooted (by pressing and holding the power button, and then pressing it again, as instructed) the hard drive started spinning and then just made a ticking noise and stopped. This morning I tried starting my Imac and it worked! For about 10 minutes, that is...
The drive went dead again with the same ticking noise, even though booting up went easy and I got my desktop. I was even browsing my E-mail when the thing just died.

So, I'm planning on taking a look at the drive through a bootable CD-ROM this evening with disk repair, but I'm wondering if this is a physical problem.
More specifically, I'm entertaining the hypothesis that the drive is shutting down because of overheating. And if so maybe not all is lost, and cleaning the Imac should do the trick.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,

Mark

 

[cubist]

Cleaning may help, but more likely the drive is dying. And rapidly. Anything you haven't backed up, do so as soon as possible.

Hard drives have finite life. They usually last one to five years under normal use. That is why you must make backups.

 

[sonofslim]

clicking is usually a bad sign. back up before doing anything else.

 

[chv400]

One of the iMacs at my school did that exact same thing a while ago and it turned out the drive was dying It would constantly make a clicking noise and the comp would not start up, If you can still start up your comp i'd say start making copies of everything you can.

 

[nargot]

clicking is usually a bad sign. back up before doing anything else.

"The click of death" had this happen to some old hard drives, back in the day... a 20 mb SCSI, LC HD etc

 

[Morgenster]

Well, it's definitely not getting better, so I'm out to save every last scrap of data.
I was wondering what specs a replacement drive would have to comply to.
Would a WD Protégé at 20GB (5400 RPM) E-IDE suffice?
Thanks a lot already,

Mark

 

[mcdermd]

HDD's are so cheap these days. Give yourself some room and buy a bigger drive. I have an 80gb (Maxtor, IIRC) in my Indigo iMac DV.

 

[chv400]

If you're swapping out the HD why not go ahead and replace the optical drive while you're at it with a Combo drive or something.

 

[thejazzman10]

for future reference, that screen with 7 or 8 languages is a kernal panic.
sorry, but that's all that I can diagnose.

 

[Ambie]

a kernel panic is almost always related to some piece of add-on hardware / detach everything that didn't come with Apple / restore those components to the Mac one at a time till u find out which one is giving u the problem

if u find out which one / go to its manufacturer's website & download an updated driver for it

also repair your Mac hard disk's "disk permissions" with disk utility

also clicking noises from hard drives may mean you need to optimize the disk

 

[elmimmo]

If you're swapping out the HD why not go ahead and replace the optical drive while you're at it with a Combo drive or something.

I also have an iMac DV 400 and would indeed like to swap its nowsomewhat buggy DVD drive, by a new combo or superdrive. I cannot find any info on compatible models, though. Any hint?

 

[chv400]

Small dog electronics looks like they have a combo drive for imacs
http://www.smalldog.com/product/43284

 

[sonofslim]

OWC (http://www.macsales.com) has combo drives at decent prices. i've bought hardware from them in the past and i've always been pleased.

and to morgenster: skip Western Digital. do a search on these forums and you'll see a lot of complaints about their quality. i'd recommend seagate, samsung, or hitachi.

 

[chv400]

OWC (http://www.macsales.com) has combo drives at decent prices. i've bought hardware from them in the past and i've always been pleased.

and to morgenster: skip Western Digital. do a search on these forums and you'll see a lot of complaints about their quality. i'd recommend seagate, samsung, or hitachi.

It's hard to find slot loading ones for imacs i already checked OWC and they didn't have one that would work.

 

[elmimmo]

Small dog electronics looks like they have a combo drive for imacs
http://www.smalldog.com/product/43284

I consider $289.00 for a cd-writer/dvd-reader a rip-off, considering you can easily find standard size DVD-+R (not suitable for slot loading iMac DVs) for about $125.

 

[chv400]

I consider $289.00 for a cd-writer/dvd-reader a rip-off, considering you can easily find standard size DVD-+R (not suitable for slot loading iMac DVs) for about $125.

I found the manufacturer site of the drive but i only found the superdrive version.
http://www.mcetech.com/dvdrwimacsl.html
I never really thought it would be that hard to find a slot loading drive I just thought there would be alot more out there.

Does any one have a system profiler pic of a B&W g3 with the upgrade so i can see that the bus speed actually does get bumped down. (I really want a faster G4 mostly so i can do MPEG-4 stuff since right now it takes me 16 hours to do a 2 hour video and so i can do video stuff in iChat)

 

[Morgenster]

Well, I turned to a 40 gig Maxtor.
It was recommended to me by a mac fanatic running a local used mac store.
I'm installing Panther as I write, and I'm curious.
It's the first time I swapped a hard drive all by myself .
Anyway, I appreciate the advice and quick responses in these trying times.
I was able to save my 500 pictures and my thesis project so all is well.
Thanks,

Mark

 

[fBaran]

I just got my G4 iBook two weeks ago, and sometimes when I wake it up, my hard drive clicks real loud. Does that mean my HD could be dying already?

 

[nargot]

I just got my G4 iBook two weeks ago, and sometimes when I wake it up, my hard drive clicks real loud. Does that mean my HD could be dying already?

Hmm that doesn't sound good. See you apple dealer while you have warranty!

 

[fBaran]

Hmm that doesn't sound good. See you apple dealer while you have warranty!

What bugs me now that you said that is what do I do about all my stuff! I have everything perfectly set up! Is there anyway I can make an ghost image of it, and then ghost is onto the new HD, IF it gets replaced?

 

[26139]

Yep

What bugs me now that you said that is what do I do about all my stuff! I have everything perfectly set up! Is there anyway I can make an ghost image of it, and then ghost is onto the new HD, IF it gets replaced?

yep, carbon copy cloner from versiontracker.com can create an exact copy of your hard drive.

 

[elmimmo]

I found the manufacturer site of the drive but i only found the superdrive version.
http://www.mcetech.com/dvdrwimacsl.html
I never really thought it would be that hard to find a slot loading drive I just thought there would be alot more out there.

If $290 for a cd writer is a rip-off, $449 for an internal dvd writer is simply insane. I wonder how many people are giving up and going for an external drive once their internal ones in iMacs have died.

 

[Jo-Kun]

when I bought my PowerBook G4 second hand, it allso made a clicking noise and slowed down at that point, but then I reformatted it when installing Panther on it and the click has gone...

maybe the reformatting helped the OS to find the bad sectors or maybe something else I don't know, but now it works fine, no strange sounds anymore, maybe this is something you can try before throuwing out the hard drive??

I don't know but it helped me into not buying a replacement harddrive for this one...

 

[chv400]

If $290 for a cd writer is a rip-off, $449 for an internal dvd writer is simply insane. I wonder how many people are giving up and going for an external drive once their internal ones in iMacs have died.

Do you happen to know why slot drives seem to be so expensive?

 

[elmimmo]

Do you happen to know why slot drives seem to be so expensive?

No, I was making those considerations only on why I consider justifiable or not. It would be nice to know the price of OEM drives for PC laptops, which would be pretty similar to what an iMac G3 uses.