Weird hard drive problem??

it happens all the time on my 867 g4... i've used several different hard drives and i still experience similar problems

when i replace the ide cable the problem went away for awhile. now it's back.

i think it's a problem with my ata controller on the mobo... i'll be calling apple care soon...

 

it usually only gives the weird clicking noise when starting up, or coming out of sleep

it has happened in the middle of transferring files though

when it occurs during startup the computer just sits at the gray apple screen forever, and i do mean forever

 

If by "Odd clicking noise" U mean

like the noise oldschool turn-signals make (tink-bonk, tink-bonk,tink-bonk,etc.) than you have a HD where the head is going off the edge of the platters and that's REALLY BAD. If that's the case BACK IT ALL UP RIGHT NOW because it may go off the edge for good at any moment.

I've seen this happen with a couple drives (mainly in powerbooks) and it gets to a point where it's physically impossible to recover the data without REALLY expensive help involving a cleanroom and taking the drive platter-assembly out.

If you have Antivirus and Drive Utlity software I suggest you use both AFTER you back everything up IMMEDIATELY.

 

my sound is more like a click followed by a short high pitched grinding noise

and it's happened to every drive i put in the tower

 

yup that's it... sucks, huh? i really hope when i call applecare they know what's wrong

 

That sounds like my Maxtor external FireWire drive when I was using it constantly. It apparently just got tired and decided not to run sometimes.

In any case, back up the important stuff yesterday.

 

It could be a number of things.

It doesn't sound like a critical drive failure....

I'd get a copy of Norton Utilities or Tech Tool Pro and examine/optimize/fix that sucka. It sounds at the very least as if you have a major problem with your Header Block/ File Tree, which is usually easily fixed by either of the above tools. Just be sure you're using a current version of either one and that U boot from another drive (from the Utility CD is best).

If you're on either a beige G3 or a Blue and white G3 I'd readily believe it's a bad IDE controller. If you're using a 3rd party Host Card like a Sonnet ATA133 or SCSI 160 I'd check and assure that U have a current driver: many older ones don't support sleep reliably. Most likely it's a fixable problem with what's on the disks not the disks themselves. Run a good Disk Utility (The Apple one is too simple to count) to determine HW vs. SW.