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Sluggish 12" PB

C

Cypher3

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 13, 2004
110
0
My 12" Rev B PB has been sluggish lately, with unexpected program quits etc. Sometimes the spinning ball will come up and the hard drive will jsut click for 2 minutes straight. Is a reformat worth it, or are there other options I can explore speed it up a bit. I have 768 mb of ram, so I think that should suffice. Ive had it for awhile, and just recently has it gotten a little bit sluggish and gets really hot more often now. Any Suggestions?

Thanks
 
StarbucksSam said:
It might actually be your battery. I know that sounds silly, but it would explain the heat. Check your model number against Apple's Battery Recalls.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the quick reply. But that site says 15 inch powerbooks, and I have a 12".
 
If the hard drive "just clicks" for 2 minutes straight and the system is unresponsive during this time, it could be a dying hard drive.
Open Disk Utility, located in Applications > Utilities, and then click on the uppermost hard drive icon on the left.
Then, near the bottom, look at "S.M.A.R.T. Status". Does it say "Verified"?

Lee Tom
 
LeeTom said:
If the hard drive "just clicks" for 2 minutes straight and the system is unresponsive during this time, it could be a dying hard drive.
Open Disk Utility, located in Applications > Utilities, and then click on the uppermost hard drive icon on the left.
Then, near the bottom, look at "S.M.A.R.T. Status". Does it say "Verified"?

Lee Tom
Click to expand...
It says "Failing"
 
There you go. Backup your data and get a new hard drive as soon as possible. It might be a pain, but it happens. If you still have AppleCare, it may be covered.

Lee Tom
 
Damn, reformatting wont do anything? How much do new HDs for 12" pbs go?
 
Are these simple to install? Or does it need to be done by an apple tech? Would this cause battery problems by any chance?
 
I recommend having an Apple Authorized tech do it. I did it in my Powerbook, and I would probably go the other route if I had to do it again. Call your local Apple shop and they'll quote you on it. They might even be able to pull all your data off the old one onto the new while they put it in.

Lee Tom
 
Hey, I just did the Apple hardware test and it said everything is ok. Is this normal? Is it definitely a physical problem and not a software problem?
 
I agreed with LeeTom and would recommend that you get a new harddisk. Previously, I was fixing my friend powerbook as well with almost the same problems, slow boot up, crashes, unresponsive programs. An utility check shows that the hardware is still working fine but when I start it up in verbose mode, the system keeps on logging problems with reading the harddisk. After i replace the harddisk, everything was running smoothly again.
 
Your hard drive is certainly about to fail if the SMART status reports failing. If you are still under warranty, then just call Apple and explain the problem and they will take care of it. If not, then you'll have to get it repaired at your own expense.
 
Im going to take it to apple tomorrow. I was wondering though, you said its a physical problem. Could it be related to heat? Its pretty warm in my room and I keep the PB on for hours at a time, could that have ruined the HD? If so, should i buy an iCurve or some sor of laptop stand with fans, etc?
 
Cypher3 said:
Im going to take it to apple tomorrow. I was wondering though, you said its a physical problem. Could it be related to heat? Its pretty warm in my room and I keep the PB on for hours at a time, could that have ruined the HD? If so, should i buy an iCurve or some sor of laptop stand with fans, etc?
Click to expand...

Hard drives normally give off a good bit of heat, so its doubtful that the ambient temperature in your room could have caused it to fail.

The biggest destroyers of HDD's are constant spin up/down cycles. The "put hard disk to sleep" option under the energy saver menu can actually do more harm that good by causing unnecessary spin up/downs. When I turned it on in my old iMac, it would spin my hard drive down and then back up again in 5 minute intervals, all throughout the night. A few months of this torture would be enough to kill any drive.
 
hey before you go do anything back up your data

try to get your cmputer in firewire target mode and make a disk image of the drive that way when u replace the drive you can just load up the disk image and you will be good as new without skipping a beat and having to do yucky installs and fixing prefs
 
Not too thrilled with Apple service so far. Dropped off my PB on Sunday evening, and was told that he would need to run some hardware tests and that hed give me a call with the results. So its tuesday evening and still no call. They said they would call with a quote for the repair and if I agreed they would send it out (if its broken) but they havent even called PERIOD. Is it normal for this slow service? My PB is my only computer so its pretty tough without it. Is it worth just going to pick it up, buying a laptop hard drive and installing it myself because Apple is taking forever just to diagnose that the hard drive is failing!

Cypher
 
Just picked up my PB from Apple and brought it home. They said they found nothing wrong with it, after running extensive tests. The S.M.A.R.T status still says failing. What do I do?
 
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