Mac Mini With PowerPC chip hard drive Issue

[Ram171]

Hello All,

I have an old Mac Mini first gen with a powerpc chip. The HDD was not responding so I had it replaced with a new one. My question is that the repair person told me it would be a high dollar amount to extract the information out of this HDD. Is there any way of doing this myself?

 

[MacForScience]

You would have to give more details as to what the hard drive was doing when it stopped responding. The answer to your question as it stands is yes and no.

Cheers

 

[Ram171]

You would have to give more details as to what the hard drive was doing when it stopped responding. The answer to your question as it stands is yes and no.

Cheers

Two problems...the first was it was insanely slow, the second was it would freeze and shut down on its own.

 

[thorns]

If it's a mechanical issue with the drive, it will in fact be very expensive to restore the data. You should now be aware of backup data solutions

If it's an electrical issue with the drive (not powering up etc) you could try and find an identical working drive and swap the electronics parts. This would be inexpensive and easy to handle if and only if the location of the error was to be found on the hard drive's logic board.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

If it's a mechanical issue with the drive, it will in fact be very expensive to restore the data. You should now be aware of backup data solutions

If it's an electrical issue with the drive (not powering up etc) you could try and find an identical working drive and swap the electronics parts. This would be inexpensive and easy to handle if and only if the location of the error was to be found on the hard drive's logic board.

I would strongly recomend against doing that. Just opening up a hard drive is asking for trouble, and really it should be done in a clean room.

having said that...

As long as the hard drive works "sometimes", you can take it out of the mini and put it into an external enclosure to try to pull everything off of it via USB/SATA/Firewire. If it doesn't work long enough, put it into a plastic bag, remove all the air, and put it in the freezer overnight. Sometimes getting it extremely cold can help. Banging it to dislodge a stuck head can too, but don't do that unless you have to, as it can also further damage the drive...

Of course, the hard drive might not have a problem at all. Those old mini's hard drives have a tendancy to slide off of the connector if they're stored on their front side for a long time. You may find that was what was causing the problem, and just putting it into an external case will fix it.

 

[California]

I would strongly recomend against doing that. Just opening up a hard drive is asking for trouble, and really it should be done in a clean room.

having said that...

As long as the hard drive works "sometimes", you can take it out of the mini and put it into an external enclosure to try to pull everything off of it via USB/SATA/Firewire. If it doesn't work long enough, put it into a plastic bag, remove all the air, and put it in the freezer overnight. Sometimes getting it extremely cold can help. Banging it to dislodge a stuck head can too, but don't do that unless you have to, as it can also further damage the drive...

Of course, the hard drive might not have a problem at all. Those old mini's hard drives have a tendancy to slide off of the connector if they're stored on their front side for a long time. You may find that was what was causing the problem, and just putting it into an external case will fix it.

It would be a PATA drive not SATA drive in a first gen mac mini. Freezer trick works, though. I did it on an old iBook drive and another laptop drive.

----------

Hello All,

I have an old Mac Mini first gen with a powerpc chip. The HDD was not responding so I had it replaced with a new one. My question is that the repair person told me it would be a high dollar amount to extract the information out of this HDD. Is there any way of doing this myself?

P.S. To OP hope you bumped the ram up to 1 gig while they had it open.

 

[thorns]

I would strongly recomend against doing that. Just opening up a hard drive is asking for trouble, and really it should be done in a clean room.

Yes, I did not mean for him to open the drive, just swapping the circuitry on the outside (if the problem is somehow located there). If the motor is blown, he can't do anything anyways.