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Stange Hard Drive Problems (it suddenly loses all information)

B

brsboarder

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 16, 2004
763
15
So, I have a ibook g4, 60gb HD, three days ago, I was using my computer as normal, got a beach ball, on restart, it wouldn't boot OS, and I had the flashing question mark. Brought it to the apple store, because it was under warranty.
Before I did this though, I tried to repair with a tiger disk. When the CD loaded, it showed the HD as unformatted, and having no information on it.

So, the store thought that the HD was fried, and they replaced it for me. Yestarday when I picked it up, I loaded all my programs again, today, beach ball, same thing on boot. Therefore, I thought something else was wrong

Brought it to the apple store, they saw that the drive showed unformatted, reformatted it, and reloaded tiger. However, there is no way I simply erased all the information from the drive. He said it if it happens again then they will look harder, but that they couldn't think of anything. I'm afraid to spend hours reloading everything and have it crash again, but I guess there is no other choice. But, I have no choice. I'm wondering what could totally erase a hard drive, while I'm normally using it??????

Also, when they reformatted etc, I noticed that to start i have about 40.5gb free out of 55.8, is that normal fresh out of the box? 15gb of OS???? I think this somehow is tied to the HD problems
 
To answer the space problem, its not a 15GB OS.
The installed languages can be removed using a program called monolingual to free up lots of gigs.
You can remove garage band loops to save 3 gigs.

And sometimes hard drives just fail.

Work on it now, and dont worry.

IF it DOES fail, THEN you can stress.

Dont worry. Freak accidents happen
 
but, the second drive didn't "fail" everything just magically got erased, he was able to reinstall the operating system, so for two drives to have this problem is kinda weird
 
no, its still the second drive, the drive that suddenly lost all information, partitions etc
 
so, it happened once more this past week, drive totally lost all partitions. Apple store was able to repartition etc, but again, I lost all my information (I am backing up though) So, now this is the 4th time that this has happened. Apple says they ran stress tests for a long time and nothing came up wrong. So, I come to you for help, what could possibly be wrong, I don't feel like playing this game with apple forever.
 
does anyone have a customer service, or customer relations phone number for apple, or email address, I'd like to write them a letter or talk with them about this, not just apple care
 
We just don't have enough information to help you.

Magic is not involved.

It may be a fault on the logic board. It's unlikely to be the hard drive if this has happened on 2 or more drives, but still barely possible you got 2 drives that intermittantly fail in the same way. It may be something procedurally that you, or a piece of software, is doing.

Luckily you're still under Applecare, right? Take it back, ask for a new logic board and a 3 rd hard drive. You're going to have to convince them it's not your little brother reformatting your hard drive while you are at work. You will also have to show them that you are not experimenting with other OS's on the drive, or radical software.

Once they have repaired it three times for the same problem (I don't think reformatting counts), THEN you can talk about asking Apple to replace the machine.
 
problem for me is that they refuse to acknowledge anything else being wrong and therefore won't swap mine out or anything, and I don't want to send it away because that would take approximately a week to get back and I need my computer. If I bring it to an apple store, turn around is 3 days because they do all their own repairs
 
Its funny how all of us (me included) rely on our computers so much! And when we have to be without them, we feel lost. I know, I've been there done that myself.

But there comes a time when you need to let it go. It needs to get repaired no matter how long it will take. This is a problem that isn't going to fix itself. It does sound like a faulty logicboard. I would take it back to the Apple Store and see what they can do for you. Tell them that simply re-doing the OS isn't doing the trick. Its ok for a little bit, but then starts doing it again. I would just leave it with the store and let them do some testing and replace what needs to be replaced. It make take a few days, especially if they need to order a part. Also, Apple Stores don't always fix the notebooks in the store. If they have to, they'll ship it to California to their notebook repair center to get it fixed. This isn't always the case, I but I was just telling you.

Hope everything works out ok for you.

BTW...This is most times useless, but have you tried running the hardware test CD or DVD that came with your iBook if you still have it? If you do, write down any error codes it comes up with and try to make a note, what test was running when the error code came up. This will be handy if you do take it back and you can give them that error code for that specific test that was ran.
 
its been at the apple store, had tests run on it for several days, no errors show up, thats the problem, the times it has happened, I haven't been doing anything random, one time it happened while i was in iphoto, another word and another adium, no other random programs at the same time
 
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