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powerbook HD failure. (fuckshitdamn related)

parenparen 537 Posts
edited January 2006 in Strut Central
~ 70G of data from the past 14 months of my life likely gone... sure, i've backed up a lot of material on my lacie external, but up-to-date versions of design projects for multiple clients, 3 mixes-in-progress, 200+ pages of writing / development work for Simon and Schuster, some production, 1000s of dildo-specific mp3s for diskjocking are gone gone gone and likely unrecoverable.

It's a Sobb Story:

Around 2 pm on Wednesday, I wrapped up a presentation to a client. Secured the project (a lil' web(bie) design work). Shook hands with client and packed up. Arrived home around 2:15 and my 15" 1.Ghz Powerbook G4 was locked up. Performed a hard restart. Flashing questionmark folder icons...ut oh. I then connected to my girl's iBook in target mode. The target was flashing on the screen and connected via firewire, but the iBook failed to recognize the HD. Zapped PRAM and ran the DiskWarrior 3.03 disc... still no HD present. Fuck. On Thursday, I took the unit to the apple store/genius bar. Booting from their external drive yielded the same results.

Bad news: AppleCare expired 2 months ago. Only apple support option: $340-something repair / HD replacement. I declined service and just ordered a larger, faster drive and downloaded the powerbook service source manual. I've disassembled and repaired lots of PCs and thinkpads but never operated on Apple products (with the exception of the matching 4th gen ipods whose hard drives both failed last week!)... I'm moderately concerned but confident that I can make the swap. Wish me luck.

Will be DJing in bklyn heights on Feb 5th and have a lot of records to re-encode. To any fellow dildo'ers who'd like to lend any assistance in rebuilding the digital crates, your assistance is welcome and greatly appreciated. To everyone else, chalk this up as yet another reason to backup everything.

Still considering data recovery service (dispite pricepoint) in order to recover photos and writing from the past year. We'll see...

and when your hard drive is dead and gone, just remember that

I know you and you know me,
I know you and you know me,
I know you and you know me,
I know you and you know me,
It's a sobb story, a sobb story...

  Comments

  • BrianBrian 7,618 Posts
    good luck on that transplant. if you have any specific shit you need, pm me and i'll yousend some shit later on
  • AserAser 2,351 Posts
    sorry man that is terrible.....



    I feel your pain. My powerbook hd died too a few months back but luckily I have a desktop also and files are backed up there.



    Might want to chalk it up as a lesson learned, those data recovery places charge insane $$.



    Also it's good to run periodic repairs on your hd even if nothing is wrong. Fixing those little nagging disk errors will prevent a major failure.
  • ariel_calmerariel_calmer 3,762 Posts
    I had the same thing happen, but substitute your "I did nothing and now it won't work" with "I spilled a rum drink on it and now it won't work".

    You did the right thing. Apple are good if you have applecare, but if not, they are pricey. You can buy a big 5400 RPM drive + have some change and still have change left over for the price they'll charge for a medium 4200 RPM drive.

    The HD installation is pretty easy if you're careful. Just be careful for ESD and keep yourself grounded.

    Look at it this way, you did back up somewhat. You're not totally screwed. Probably doesn't help you when you have to work double time to make up for clients tho... sucks.
  • sneakypsneakyp 202 Posts
    tell me about it. my powerbook crashed after five months. never spilled anything on it, never carried it around with me, it just broke...and i lost all my shit, pictures i can't replace, music i can't replace, everything. i'm all for technology, but i'm starting to come to the realization that the information we all commit to our harddrives isn't permanent at all an in fact quite temporal. i'm currently trying to figure out how to get all my music off of my ipod now that the host harddrive no longer exists. shit is a fucking headache.
    then again, i still have a roof over my head, shoes on my feet, and a record collection to listen to long after my powerbook winds up sitting on my front steps with a best offer sign on a warm sunday afternoon.
  • canonicalcanonical 2,100 Posts
    Also it's good to run periodic repairs on your hd even if nothing is wrong. Fixing those little nagging disk errors will prevent a major failure.
    How does one do this? I have a 15" PB that is 1.5 years old and now I'm paranoid.

    paren, hope everything works out. I'm constantly worried about losing my data. I have to get an external soon.
  • djdepositdjdeposit 224 Posts
    shit
    *Begins slapping everything on the external*
    this happend to my friend just recently and he has a 17" powerbook
    seems to be quite common
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    I've never had the HD fail on me but I've burned out logic boards on two different PB models (old black G3, then a Titanium G4). All things considered, it's not a catastrophic loss since I didn't lose data but it's not like I "did" anything; the problem with laptops is that they're more likely to develop mechanical problems simply by being moved all the time.

    Obviously, it really pays to back-up as often as possible and hell, I don't do it often enough even though I have an external HD and an iPod that I use for back-up.

    I can never tell if data recovery costs are legit or just a scam b/c they know dudes are desparate.

    Good luck though man - hope you can recover as much as possible.

  • AserAser 2,351 Posts
    Also it's good to run periodic repairs on your hd even if nothing is wrong. Fixing those little nagging disk errors will prevent a major failure.
    How does one do this?

    Run your install boot disc, boot up from it by holding down "C" at startup. It'll lead you to the install OS X screen, but obviously you won't be doing that. After the language screen, you'll see a 2nd screen w/ pull down menus up top. Select "disk utility", then run a disk repair......Repair your permissions too while you're at it.
  • crazypoprockcrazypoprock 1,037 Posts
    go buy diskwarrior ASAP and run it off your girlfriends computer and see what they can save!!! do it now before your harddrive gets worse! if it's not making a clicking sound yet you should be able to save a lot of your data.

    and then all you gotta do is buy a new HD and install it.

    i went through the same thing over the summer. now my 3 year old ibook is fine.
  • DubiousDubious 1,865 Posts
    my old imac g3 had this problem last summer.. hardrive was six years old though so really what can you say... bought a new one and slapped it in... discwarrior wasnt savin nothin

  • crazypoprockcrazypoprock 1,037 Posts
    i still recommend buying discwarrior because it's really a good idea to run it periodically when your HD is healthy...keeps it running smooth and probably extends it's life. but for me it helped me save everything so if his HD isn't quite dead yet it will probably help too. i basically saved everything to my IPOD!
  • crazypoprockcrazypoprock 1,037 Posts
    um...ok, just saw that he already ran diskwarrior...so scratch that!
  • parenparen 537 Posts
    yeah, diskwarrior is a great program. i swear by it, but frankly... the lesson is just to double back up your important files. hell, i know this all to well, i used to be a manager of a risk management department. lesson re-learned.



    the new 100G 5400 rpm 16meg cache drive should arrive early in the week and thank god for MSJ. data recovery service is still a consideration for photo and writing / design work recovery; i'm going to wait to see what the replacement and examination shows me.



    dudes who have pm'd me: a list is forthcoming. thanks in advance. much appreciated.



    seriously though, 3 HD failures in apple products just over a year old all less than a week's time is just weak. Sure, coinciding the targeted failures with the release of the macbook pro was cute and all, but dudes need to stagger their self-destruct sequences a bit. Sobbstorysobbstory.
  • AserAser 2,351 Posts
    you might want to give Drive Genius a shot too. Quite useful....
  • dCastillodCastillo 1,963 Posts
    damn man. macs really suck don't they?

    $340 is cheap considering that you have irreplacable information on that drive, if not information that's worth more than $340 of your time. Take it to a data recovery specialist.

    Best of luck. And if you need anything, let me know. I might be able to help with some mp3s.
  • ariel_calmerariel_calmer 3,762 Posts
    I've never had the HD fail on me but I've burned out logic boards on two different PB models

    You really need to tone down the academic writing style if you're burning out logic boards!
  • ariel_calmerariel_calmer 3,762 Posts
    Oh and get a copy of retrospect... comes with most external HDs... then it's just a matter of pressing a button once a week instead of dragging all these files around.



    Data loss = super
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    damn man. macs really suck don't they?

    I can't tell if you're being sarcastic here but Macs are no more likely to fail than any other computer; at least not from any reliability charts I've seen. It just happens that the first poster was talking abouit a Mac and so all the other Mac users are chiming in. But dude, shit fails on computers all the time; there's no such thing as a 100% failsafe piece of electronic equipment. I've burned through two logic boards on two generations of laptops and I'd never consider switching over to a PC b/c I'd think a Dell would be more reliable.

    This said: AppleCare =
  • SPlDEYSPlDEY Vegas 3,375 Posts
    I used to do Data recovery, but only recently got rid of my equipment for laptop hard drives. When I worked at best buy we used to notice really lame apple only hardware failures. That were a pain in the ass to fix. From my experience with it Apple's support has always been pretty shady. Then to have to go to them for help with major repairs. That's how come I've never bought a mac. A tip though, even @ best buy I was doing data recovery so I'd check with your local one. @BestBuy I'd only charge $60 which to me is over-inflated.

    - spidey
  • dCastillodCastillo 1,963 Posts
    damn man. macs really suck don't they?

    I can't tell if you're being sarcastic here but Macs are no more likely to fail than any other computer; at least not from any reliability charts I've seen. It just happens that the first poster was talking abouit a Mac and so all the other Mac users are chiming in. But dude, shit fails on computers all the time; there's no such thing as a 100% failsafe piece of electronic equipment. I've burned through two logic boards on two generations of laptops and I'd never consider switching over to a PC b/c I'd think a Dell would be more reliable.

    This said: AppleCare =

    You Mac people act like you're part of a cult I swear. I know more people with failed powerbooks than I know people with failed PCs--desktops and notebooks combined. And I know about 4x as many people with PCs. The best part about this is you Mac people pay twice as much for your shit!

    Putting all that aside, I use both. I have a G5 iMac at my job. It handles my stuff ok. And no virses or malware to worry about. I'm certainly not mad. But I have a PC system that's even more powerful at home, and it cost about 3 times less.

    Ha. It's all good. I was just being playful with my comment anyhow. I'm not trying to win anyone over. I know how loyal you dudes are, and that's a battle that I don't care to spend my energy on.
  • ariel_calmerariel_calmer 3,762 Posts
    You Mac people act like you're part of a cult I swear. I know more people with failed powerbooks than I know people with failed PCs--desktops and notebooks combined. And I know about 4x as many people with PCs. The best part about this is you Mac people pay twice as much for your shit!

    Putting all that aside, I use both. I have a G5 iMac at my job. It handles my stuff ok. And no virses or malware to worry about. I'm certainly not mad. But I have a PC system that's even more powerful at home, and it cost about 3 times less.

    Ha. It's all good. I was just being playful with my comment anyhow. I'm not trying to win anyone over. I know how loyal you dudes are, and that's a battle that I don't care to spend my energy on.

    Cool, then I don't have to explain how apple's at the top of user satisfaction surveys (even by PCworld) and how shitty an OS windows XP is....





















  • AserAser 2,351 Posts
  • dCastillodCastillo 1,963 Posts
    You Mac people act like you're part of a cult I swear. I know more people with failed powerbooks than I know people with failed PCs--desktops and notebooks combined. And I know about 4x as many people with PCs. The best part about this is you Mac people pay twice as much for your shit!

    Putting all that aside, I use both. I have a G5 iMac at my job. It handles my stuff ok. And no virses or malware to worry about. I'm certainly not mad. But I have a PC system that's even more powerful at home, and it cost about 3 times less.

    Ha. It's all good. I was just being playful with my comment anyhow. I'm not trying to win anyone over. I know how loyal you dudes are, and that's a battle that I don't care to spend my energy on.

    Cool, then I don't have to explain how apple's at the top of user satisfaction surveys (even by PCworld) and how shitty an OS windows XP is....






















    hahahaha. I'm leaving this alone.
  • slushslush 691 Posts
    dammn dude. sucks. if you need any help getting songs back im sure me and kream can help out. page me
  • CortezTheKillerCortezTheKiller 169 Posts
    Sorry Odub,

    Bought a new Dell Latitude 610 about 7 months ago and within the first 2 months the internal network card kicked. Luckily I had the full repair package and they were on site the next day for a complete overhaul.

    The moral of the story is, laptops are no matter who manufactures them.

    Peace,
    Cortez
  • LooksLikeSinbadLooksLikeSinbad 187 Posts
    I have a new powerbook. Sounds like purchasing Applecare is a good idea, yeah?
  • ariel_calmerariel_calmer 3,762 Posts
    I have a new powerbook. Sounds like purchasing Applecare is a good idea, yeah?

    For powerbooks it's a good idea. Failure rates on portables (mac & PC) are universally high. If anything goes wrong it's "no questions asked", even if it's your fault, they just fix it.
  • parenparen 537 Posts
    in the mix/mess..









    fuck applecare. 100% of data recovered / hd upgraded for a fraction of the cost.
  • BrianBrian 7,618 Posts
    I have a new powerbook. Sounds like purchasing Applecare is a good idea, yeah?

    For powerbooks it's a good idea. Failure rates on portables (mac & PC) are universally high. If anything goes wrong it's "no questions asked", even if it's your fault, they just fix it.
    Also, if I remember correctly, you can purchase Applecare within the first year of purchase.
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