PowerPC :: IBook G3 Hard Drive Making Noise In Sequence
Apr 22, 2007
I have an iBook G3 700 Combo Drive 648 megs of RAM and a 20 GB hard drive. Every now and then specifically when I'm running high processor tasks, the hard drive makes this wierd noise, which is a sequence that repeats over and over again. I can't tell if it is writing to the disk or reading from the disk. It makes 3 short noises, and then a long noise:
(short - short - short - long)
Try to imaging that noise. It is just the sound of the hard drive working. This will repeat itself over and over. Sometimes If I have lots of tabs open at once in safari and i open them at the same time that will happened. But after like a minute it will stop. But other times it will keep repeating that noise over and over for ever so I have to manually restart the computer forcefully. (Holding down the power button). The computer also freezes and I get that spinning color wheel.
I have an iBook 500Mhtz PPC G3, 384 RAM, 10GB HD, Dual USB. Several months ago, I opened it up and it simply would not start up. No start up sound, no noise from the fans/HD/anything, motionless. Completely dead. I've held (many times) the PMU, and tried almost anything. Is there anything else I can do to get it to AT LEAST turn on? The battery is dead, and the charger is fine, but the battery won't charge. I tested the charger on a PB G4. I'd rather sell the whole computer as a working computer. I figured I'd get more money that way. do I need to sell it for parts?
I am so upset right now, this is my 2nd macbook with this problem. I just got this macbook yesterday and the hard drive is making a clicking noise, but it isn't a click....click...click... like a lot of people have had, it's actually more of a quick series of clicks every few seconds, almost like the hard drive is shaking. It goes away for a bit when I am typing, like right now, but after I stop it comes right back.
Also the fan is pretty loud, considering I haven't put anything on the computer yet.. I've already been to the genius bar and all they did was give me a new, worse macbook, so there is no way I'm going back. Are there any fixes for a noisy hard drive aside from voiding my warranty and putting my own in? If it is normal, I might just invest in a good pair on noise cancelling head phones... Thanks!
I have a student who put most of her project work for the past few semesters on an Western Digital hard drive which was in a I/O Magic shell. It was dropped and immediately started a grinding noise. She took it to the local mac guru who has been unable to recover any of the data. My gut tells me it's a goner but I wanted to run it by the gurus here to see if they might recommend anything that we might try before giving up.
I have a friend with an ibook and it was working fine until one day all the sudden it started making a spinning noise and he restarted it then on startup it beeped.
My brother's iBook G4 (800Mhz, First Rev) has completely splattered itself and we're getting a new Macbook for him under insurance. My iBook G3 (White, 900Mhz G3..the last G3 Rev of the iBook) has a failing hard drive.
Now, could I swap out those two drives, at least to recover stuff? And is there a specific method of opening up the iBook G4 so that I don't break stuff (I've already messed with my G3..and ended up with a dozen extra screws ^_^
Mainly the aim is to salvage the hard drive and swap them out; replacing my faulty iBook G3 one with the iBook G4 one which is perfectly fine.
I want to put my old 15" PowerBook hard drive into an external case. I pulled the hard drive out of the PowerBook. And I purchased a NexStar CS 2.5" SATA to USB 2.0 external case. But the connections don't match. What do I need to do? Do I need to buy some sort of adaptor? Hard drive is a Hitachi 120GB 5400RPM (model # HTS541612J9AT00) 2.5" Sorry, these photos are blurry as hell. Picture of hard drive pins:
Pins are in the following configuration (1's represent pins):...............
My friend gave me his old Apple cube G4 + 15" Cinema display in like 1000 pieces. Its completely teared apart. I tried a lot, but it doesn't work. The original IDE cable wasn't included, so I bought one for 2 cents. It should work or not? Maybe the powersupply. I'm not sure. I don't believe actually that the hardware itself, like the motherboard is broken. When everything is into place and I connect the cube to the powersupply it boots immediately. I don't have to do anything. Harddrive spins and the superdrive makes some noise as well. This repeats itself every 5 seconds. The screen is connected and gets power through DVI, but no display. Both the cube and display have touch enabled buttons to switch it on, but they do not respond (I guess).. Motherboard gives 2 light. DS1 is green, DS2 is red.
Yesterday my PB from 2004 started to make a noise like an angry mosquito. Is it the hard drive dying on me? This is just a take-along-when-I-need-to-be-mobile computer, there's nothing there that needs to be backed up. But I wonder what the noise means.
I have a Dual 2GHz PPC G5 2GB SDRAM. I know that these machines will make a 'crunching' noise when processing, etc. but mine won't stop crunching. I recently installed Adobe Creative Suite CS3. Anyone have suggestions of what to try to make this sound stop?
I was using my mom's 500 mhz G3 iBook circa 2k1, running 10.2.0 and it decided to start tweaking out on me. Being a somewhat aware computer person, I thought tat a simple restart would fix all of this. Shows you how much I know. Anyway, the boot-up screen showed the icon of the file with the question mark inside. Find the OS 9 CD that we have and I booted up through the CD. I finish starting up and, to my surprise, the drive appears to be erased- the computer asks me if I want to initialize the disk. I hit cancel and proceed to run the disk repair on the OS 9 CD. After it's done scanning, the the results are: "Missing Thread Record, 62078, 4260". What does it all mean? Will the computer be able to recover? What fate lies in store for the iBook?
I have an ibook g4 1.2 ghz 14 inch model with the 60 gig HD runnig Os X. One day, it start freezing up, and when I restart it, it would be fine. However, after a couple of day, it would not longer boot and I would get the folder with finder and question mark. I ran the hardware test on the CD, and it said I had a mass storage error. So, I went and bought a new hd and put it in. (another hitachi one, exactly the same). So i boot it up, run the hard ware test and it is fine. Then I go about installing os x and stuff, and everything is fine. However, on my first restart a couple of hours later, my computer no longer boots up again. I run disk utility, and it does not see any Hard drives, and when i reattempt to install my os x, it can not find a destination folder. What is going on? Also, I have the old HD from my ibook that I put in my external Hd case. If this thing is not actully broken, can I use it to boot through the usb 2.0 drive on my mac? I tried to plug it in, but for some reason no power goes to it, but if i plug it to my desktop, it powers up. (the light on the case)
My hard drive just died & I have been searching everywhere on what type of hard drive is used in this machine. I want to replace it but I don't know what to replace it with. There seems to be about five different types of hard drives currently out there. So which one does this machine use?
so my boss' ibook g3 just broke, he brought it to apple and they said it needs a new hard drive and were going to charge him something like 400 dollars to replace it. He decided not to do it because it's so old. (not sure how old, but it's a white g3 with a cd tray). Anyway, i told him i should be able to do it. I've found directions online on ifixit and stuff but need a few more questions answered.
1. Will any 2.5 inch hard drive fit? I think i'm going for 5400 rpms because i don't want it to get too hot and he wants 80 gb. how is this one? [URL]
2. How will i run the os once it is installed? Do i need to installl 10.0 first and then move up? Can i install from the cd or do i need to do it from another computer via target disk mode?
3. ifixit suggests i get a "spudger" which i guess it a plastic anti static toothpic type thing to remove hard to get parts. Definitely needed or no? I have a set of small screw drivers that i've used for my powerbook that i thik should be fine.
I just wanted to know if buying an white ibook g3 for 70$ in good working condition is a good deal or not. Here are the specs on it>> The iBook G3/600 (Late 2001 - Translucent White), features a 600 MHz PowerPC 750cx (G3) processor with a 256k "on chip" level 2 cache, 128 MB of RAM, a 20.0 GB Ultra ATA hard drive, a tray-loading DVD-ROM/CD-RW "Combo" drive, 2X AGP ATI Rage Mobility 128 graphics with 8 MB of VRAM, and a compact translucent white case with a 12.1" TFT XGA active matrix display (1024x768 native resolution).
My iBook could be on it's last leg. I have an iBook G4 1.2 Ghz with 512 mb of RAM running 10.3.9. It started about 2 to 5 months ago. When I restart my computer, instead of the white screen with the grey Apple logo that appears during a normal start-up, I get the grey screen with a flashing box with a picture of the world inside the flashing box, then the small flashing folder that flashes the OSX logo, then a question mark (?), then it would go into the normal start-up screen (white w/Apple logo). I thought this was the Safe mode boot.
Well, recently, it would just stay on the flashing OSX logo and "?" and nothing would happen. So I would do a forced shut down (holding the power down) and power it back up. Same thing. I'd repeat this for 30 minutes to an hour, restarting anywhere from 15 to 30 times and it would eventually work.
So, the flashing OSX logo and "?" happened again last night, and I could not get it to boot after countless restarts. This morning, I grab my iBook Install disc to do a full restore. I restart and hold the C key to boot from the install disc. I go through the normal steps and when I get to Choose the Drive or Destination tab, my hard drive isn't listed. Nothing is listed. I reboot holding the option key to run the Apple hard ware test. Airport passes, Logic Board passes, then I get an error when the Mass Storage test runs. Reboot and run Test again, same results. I reboot to the install disc again and it still says no drive. I open Disc Utility and the only drive it reads is the iBook Install Disc. I restart normally, and it loads fine, and I instantly come here to seek a diagnostic as to what my problem is.
I don't understand is the strange frequency or my problem. Sometimes it works, sometimes I have to restart it a dozen or so times. How can it not recognize my hard drive [I]some[I] of the time and not all of the time? I don't want to do a full restore just yet. I'd like to know what my problem is before I do anything drastic. I do have my hard drive backed up.
I installed a new hard drive into my wife's older iBook G4 since the HD that came with the machine was only 30GB and was max'ed out shortly after we added some applications and photos. (Never should have bought such a small hard drive in the 1st place!) The new hard drive is an 80GB hard drive I bought online. I turned on the machine and got the question mark (?) blinking with something else on the 1st screen that came up. I proceeded to insert the original iBook OSX install cds. First I cleared the hard drive under disk utility and then the computer recognized the new drive. Then installation began. Got through the first disk no problem. Then it restarted and asked for disk two, which I inserted.
Then, if it decided to start installing from disk 2 (it kept going back and forth before it actually started disk two installation), it would get about 75% through the disk two installation and I keep getting a message saying 'There were errors installing the software'. I have tried to eject and re-insert the cd and I get the same message. I started from scratch by re-booting, wiping the hard drive clean again and started with disk one, only to get to disk two and encounter the same problem. I don't want to take this computer in and pay a service company to get me straight. This is an experiment to see if I could upgrade the hard drive and memory to make a slower/older machine perform better. We really only use it for organizing photos, surfing the net, office applications, etc.
I have a G4 iBook that I use as my play computer and my mod book... I just dyed the top case and the bottom case (also the battery cover) all black and I changed the apple to red! It looks really sweet and it matches my backpack... Ok well I just read about a guy that wants to take out his optical drive out and put another hard drive in.
My question is... Would that be possible with my iBook? It is a early 2004 ibook g4 1.07 GHz, 768 MB RAM, and a small 30 gig hard drive! I would love to add more hard drive space without having to go through the hassle of finding a way to transfer all of my data on this hard drive to another!
I have a Ibook g4 that got trashed the scree stoped working it would flicker on and off so i tryed to fix it and made it worse because I have not skill so I then pulled the HD and put it in a pc laptop I have I am now trying to get files off it through linux i tryed ubuntu because that is the only thing i have used but it is way to slow on my laptop because the cd drive is older then time so I tryed dsl and puppy linux but don't know how to mount the drive it shows up in the bios but not when i try to use the simple mount tool in puppy or dsl I know this is a mac fourm but I am hoping someone has done this before
I had to replace the hard drive on my daughter's iBook G4. I replaced the original Toshiba with a seagate 160gb ATA drive. When using the original install disk, the installer cannot find the hard drive to install the OS on. I was told the problem could only be the cable or a DOA drive; so I got another new hard drive and replaced the replacement, being sure that the cable was connected properly. In the past, I've replaced hard drives several times in various machines I've owned.
I seem to remember that on one occasion I had the same problem, and found the unmounted drive with Tech Tool Deluxe that I had gotten with an old AppleCare purchase. On this iBook G4, however, the Tech Tools disk won't boot the machine. Perhaps I am mis-remembering that incident, but I'm pretty sure that I was able to mount a hard disk in the past using some sort of software. Problem is that this iBookG4 won't boot off of ANY of my older system disks I own.
I have g4 ibook 14" 1.33. I spent 2 hours unscrewing at least a hundred screws and trying to pry the white shell open. Finally I was able to locate the HD and replaced it with a new one. Screwed everything back in, crossed my fingers, and the thing booted up--hurray! Unfortunately, now the battery says 97% but it is not charging. The cord light is ever green and when I pulled the plug, it shuts down. So much for 97%. I tried all the pmu, reset-all, taking it in and out a dozen times (5-12seconds intervals), etc. Did I screw up something during the disassembly/reassembly?
Ive searched all over, and cant find a solution. I put in a new HD for the 1.2ghz iBook 12", and it wont be recognized by the computer. I tried resetting the Vram/Pram, with no success. I also made sure the hd connector is connected. When I hold down "C" to the install disc, it reads the disc, but does not detect the HD. When I do not hold down c, it takes me to a question mark/folder icon.
I do not think its the new hard disk or connector or logic board, because I have read others having the problem...some say it is the firmware, and that its the OS/Installer disc that has the error...but I have no clue how to fix it.
after 4 years my ibook g4 14" has a problem. my hard drive needs to be replaced. i took it to the genius bar yesterday and they gave me a referal to a store in my area that is certified to work on macs... but they don't sell hard drives in-house since they just started up a few weeks ago. does anyone have a suggestion for a decent replacement internal hard drive? i'm not looking for anything high-end. i just need a cheap, reliable drive to get me through about another year when i can get a new mac. if this matters much... i do use my ibook for a small amount of video editing, graphic design, etc... but only when work has to come home w/ me.
*the guys at the repair place did suggest a few... but they were all in the $250-$350 range... i was hoping to keep it around $150 or lower since i've been doing fine w/ my 40gb for 4 years now and i have 2 externals that total 1.75 tb. they said i could find some for that price elsewhere... but they only ordered from one place when they needed to... and none were available (in my $ range) there*
i just bought a clamshell ibook on ebay for $90, quite a bargain i think. its 366mhz, 320mb ram, only problem is the 10gb hard drive. i know its upgradable. the 9.5mm UltraATA-66 hard drive which is what i read it has,dont really go over 10gb, or at least i cant find any that do. the ones i find are very expensive. i see some clamshells on ebay upgraded to 20 or 30gb, what kind of hard drives do those people use? i know it takes a lot of disassembly to do it too, if someone could point me to a guide to doing that it would be most good.
I'm on an iBook G4 running OS X 10.4.11. It comes with about 50GB of hard drive space and 512MB of RAM. I bought it around 2006 or so. Also, I have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, so I hope you'll be patient with me.
1) It's been running extremely slowly, especially when Firefox is running. Rainbow pinwheels when switching between programs, when switching between tabs in Firefox, when opening new windows in Firefox or typing search terms into Google, etc. It runs faster immediately after I restart, but then will slow down after a few days of running the machine. (It also runs a little faster when my external drive (which holds my 19GB iTunes library) is disconnected.)..................
i just ripped my old ibook up, salvaged a harddrive and my lcd screen. I have no idea if the lcd is anygood still, but i was wondering if there was any way I could connect things to it. I only has 2 cords left, i ripped out what i think was the airport and the microphone. The 2 that are left seem to be for power and video.
once I get my hard drive replaced, how do I go about installing OSX on the new HD? I mean, the HD won't have an OS at all, so do I just insert my install disks, boot off them, and then install OSX on the new HD? Or will the computer boot up all? I will transfer everything over from my USD backup drive- yes, I know that will take more than a little while... (coincidentally, the Seagate Barracuda is LOUD). I'm only asking because the place where I want to get the replacement itself done charges like 30 bucks to do it, but ONLY for the physical replacement and no data transfer. Hopefully the software side I'll be able to handle...
