Odd iBook hard drive problem

June 4, 2006 4:35 PM

I've got an intermittent iBook hard drive problem that has me stumped. The computer works fine for a short period of time, then completely freezes. The "good" period of time has gotten shorter and shorter.

At first I just assumed it was a big software crash that locked up the entire system, - everything worked fine after a hard restart. Then the freezing started getting more and more common. The problem seemed to occur more after waking from sleep. Then it would work for shorter periods, maybe ten minutes rather than an hour. It's now working for around 1-2 minutes, and occasionally not at all.

I ran Disk Utility "Verify Disk" on the hard drive and sometimes it would show no problems and other times it would be "not able to unmount the drive" (that's not the exact phrase, but something similar). Once or twice a long list of "I/O errors" would interrupt the startup routine. About half the time now the drive will not even show up in the list of drives in Disk Utility, or will show up for only a short period of time.

So basically, it looks like the hard drive is available for few minutes, then just sort of goes away. A few more details: after the crashes, things I had done in iPhoto (rotations, etc.) were not saved. It was dropped about 9 inches a couple of weeks before the problems started. The drive is a replacement Seagate 100GB that I installed a little over a year ago.

I have a complete backup, so there is no problem with lost data. The drive is still under warranty. I just want to know if there is something else I should test or try before replacing the drive (a near-complete disassembly on this model).

posted by letitrain to computers & internet (9 comments total)

i/o errors are a sure sign of imminent doom. Backup the drive and replace it.
posted by nathan_teske at 4:47 PM on June 4, 2006

Ah, I forgot one more detail: the SMART status is verified (no problems according to SMART).

What does "I/O Error" mean?
posted by letitrain at 4:49 PM on June 4, 2006

SMART is full of shit. I had an IBM DeathStar that failed, resurrected itself, failed with scraping noises, resurrected itself AGAIN, and this Friday finally died for good. Never were there any SMART errors.

SMART? More like retarded.

(And no, I wasn't storing anything important there. I was using it as higher speed cache for things I have on DVDs)
posted by NucleophilicAttack at 5:14 PM on June 4, 2006

Might be the motherboard as well. I recently had to replace the board in my machine, which cost me $400 at the Apple Store. On my laptop, I experienced the same diminishing uptime, only instead of locking up, the screen would simply wink out all together.

In any case, you definitely want to back up all of your data and get it checked out. Nothing worse than losing work - especially when you saw it coming . . .
posted by aladfar at 6:18 PM on June 4, 2006

I assume you have checked, but is this a G3 iBook that might be eligible for repair via the logic board repair extension program? I had an ibook that I had to send back three times because of faulty logic boards and Apple repaired it each time and eventually replaced with with a G4 iBook. There is a list of applicable serial numbers and your symptoms don't quite fit, but check that out as you're troubleshooting.
posted by jessamyn at 6:32 PM on June 4, 2006

I should have mentioned it - it's an iBook G4 800. I hadn't even considered motherboard problems.

Yet another detail I should have mentioned: I've started it off the OS X 10.4 DVD and the hard drive doesn't always show up the the drive list there, either.
posted by letitrain at 6:53 PM on June 4, 2006

I had a problem with my comp crashing intermittently after a move. I thought it was the HD or memory and did all sorts of tests that found nothing. Eventually I opened the thing and found the processor was slightly unseated (this was a desktop PC). It seems that you've definitely narrowed the source of the problem to your HD, and though my experience with HD's has been that they're often annoyingly snug, you might want to rip the thing open to make sure everything's tightly in place.

Beyond that, if you have an extra drive, I'd look first at aladfar's suggestion: try hooking it up and see if you have the same problems. If not, take nathan_teske's advice. If it does work, or if you don't have another drive, send the thing in for replacement. If the new one doesn't work, you've narrowed your problem to the motherboard, and hopefully your iBook is still under warranty as well.
posted by dsword at 9:29 PM on June 4, 2006

Is your HD making any kind of buzzing or whirring sounds when it freezes. If it is, then it's acting very much like what my iBook started doing a few weeks ago.

I had to get my drive (a Toshiba) replaced. I've had the iBook back from the repair shop a few days now and it's back to normal (plus I've got double the drive space, which is nice).

Not that I'm an expert or anything, but from my experience it looks like you might have to replace yours too.
posted by macdara at 12:16 AM on June 5, 2006

Here's a followup one month later:

I replaced the drive and still have the exact same problem. I think the next thing I'll have to replace is the motherboard. There are many others with this same problem. Too bad I bought this second-hand - the repairs will probably cost more than the thing is worth.
posted by letitrain at 5:31 PM on July 1, 2006