stuff falls apart II

[kip_w]

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Something I forgot to mention yesterday is that partway through the morning, the computer I generally use, the Powerbook, had a message that it needed to be rebooted. That's a new one. I rebooted it, but it wouldn't go beyond a gray screen. I zapped the PRAM, and that got it up to a static gray apple screen. A search through boxes turned up the system disks, so I booted from an install disk and used Disk Tools to verify permissions, repair permissions, verify the hard drive, and repair the hard drive. After that, it let me boot. Oh yeah, the hard drive made noises like it had sand in it, or like a cocktail shaker with some rocks inside. Anyway, not nice noises. They settled down, and I got my 8GB thumb drive out and backed everything I could think of onto it.

Once in a while, I heard the noises again. At the end of the day it was becoming quite voluble, so I shut it down. This morning, it gives me the static gray screen.

I'm wondering. If I get one of those portable hard drives and manage to get everything onto that, could I run the computer from it and leave the internal drive out of things altogether? I kind of suspect this would cost less than fixing the thing just now. That's if and if, of course.

Now I wait for the phone repair to come within 24 hours of my call.
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Comments

[daystreet.livejournal.com]

I'm using an Intel MacBook so I don't know if this helps you, but under System Prefs there is a Startup Disk option where maybe you can select an external HD as boot disk. I, frankly, don't see how it could work since I'm not convinced you're going to get the USB ports working if you aren't getting anything from the internal disk... but it seems it *might* be worth looking into... Certainly you can set up your User Accounts on external HDs, but as you know a core function like booting the machine is a way different kettle of MacFish.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Ah, well. To the shop I go. Thanks for the info!

[webbob.livejournal.com]

Michael is correct, a Firewire external enclosure will allow your PowerBook to use an external disk as a System Disk, will allow your laptop to boot.

Hard drives

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Laptop hard drives have come waay down in price, and they're pretty easy to replace in the IBM side of the world. Oops, I just googled "powerbook replace hard drive" and it looks a wee bit more complicated. Still, prices are way cheaper than they ustta be on the drive itself.

Re: Hard drives

[webbob.livejournal.com]

Powerbook hard drive replacement is a little tedious (requires Phillips plus I think two sizes of Torx screwdrivers) but in my experience not really very difficult. Getting the Torx screws that hold an original drive bracket to the laptop, in particular, took a lot of torque. I used the right sized Torx driver and a pair of ViceGrips to back the screws out about a turn, then it was easy.

Unfortunately, Kip, I think you've missed a recent really good eBay sale by one seller of used but probably working 80 GB laptop disks. They were going cheap because they'd been returned by their original buyers as non-functional, but that can happen when you try to upgrade a Wintel laptop with a Mac disk.

Right now, 80 GB disks start at about $10 on Ebay auctions, typically sell for $50 and up with immediate purchase. Most Powerbook models only support disk capacity up to 120 GB, so there's no point to going for a really large disk (unless it's dirt cheap, in which case the disk would work but a bunch of it would be inaccessible).

All disk speeds (3800, 4200, 5400 RPM, I think) will work, though faster is better at the same price.

Remember that you cannot use a SATA disk: look for keywords PATA, ATA, IDE, EIDE.

Good luck, Mr Phelps.

Btw, I think I'll be in your neck of the woods late next week, will look you up if possible and would be available to assist with disk upgrade. If you need a Torx set or anything, let me know.

Re: Hard drives

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Here in the Evile Empire, it's about removing two screws to pop out the drive on a lotta laptops.

Re: Hard drives

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Great! I hope I'll see you. I don't have anything like a Torx, but I don't know if we are ready to upgrade the disk or not. Bring the set, though, and we can look into the drive and see if there's a dead ferret inside or something.

[ckd]

You should be able to run everything from an external drive as long as it supports FireWire. (I don't think the older PowerPC machines can boot from a USB drive.)

[whl.livejournal.com]

That's correct, except supposedly Leopard fixes this. I have not, however, tested that assertion.

Also, be wary; not all FireWire drives are, in fact, bootable. I have several here which are not.

A question: Was the machine set up to automatically install updates? There have been a couple that required a reboot, then a longish wait and would then reboot a second time.

Or was the message about needing to reboot your computer given over a black background, in 3 or 4 languages? If so, that is the dreaded "kernel panic" screen. See this (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1392) to see what it would have looked like.

Apple had a bad run of hard drives in PowerBooks (or possibly MacBooks) awhile ago; I remember looking at the brand and checking and finding that mine was not one of them.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Kernel panic it is! We'll see about the drive. I'll be at the Genius Bar in an hour, and if I'm really, really lucky, they'll tell me there's just something stuck in the fan and they'll blow it out and wish me a nice day.

I don't feel that lucky.

If I need a new hard drive, though, maybe I can get one that's big enough that I don't have to keep looking for things to delete every couple of weeks.

Thanks for the data point. The more pessimistic I can be before I find out the truth, the more chances I might be pleasantly surprised. At the very least, I'm more prepared when I go in.

[daystreet.livejournal.com]

I love going to the Genius Bar. If I was older and lonelier, I'd probably make up excuses to go there. "Yeah, uh, I forgot where the Enter key is..."

I'm sure you are intending to do this anyway, but please post how it went for you.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

It's three years old, which means there's a crank on the side and everything is displayed in that made-up computer font from 70s SF movies. I'm not running Leopard because we were reluctant to cough up for it at any given moment in time. The drive I was contemplating was USB, so never mind that, anyway.