Hi everyone, i've had my powerbook now for around two weeks with no problems. Then last night it decides to freeze while using msn. Thinking it just may have been faulty microsoft programming i thought nothing of it. But now the comp will turn on and stay running for about 5 min. After this the hard drive sounds like its going on a recuring loop and everthing freezes. The cursor still moves but nothing will respond. Im wondering if anyone has run into this before? If it was a pc i would know what to do for diagnostics and such but im a little new to the mac game. Any hints/advice would be great. Also if you think its a HD crash does anyone know where the best place to get one repaired is? (not under applecare)

Im running 10.4.2, Powerbook Aluminum 12 inch, 1.33ghz processor, 512 mb ram, 60 gig hd, combo drive. Ummm not sure what else you need to know!

I have experienced the same thing on my 12" 1.5.
In my case it usually happens when it awakes from sleep - never when in use. It has happened about 4 times. The only way to continue was a hard restart.

Hasn't happened in a while.

So I pop'ed in my tiger disk and ran the Disk Repair. Apperently I have a huge number of errors! I'm running the repair utility right now but does anyone know how this happend? :confused:

Update: Drive Cannot be repaired! what the devil does this mean!

Could be ram - the symptoms sound like overlapped files - did you transfer in from another machine??
Is the drive really full???

You need Disc Warrior to sort it out thos you could try a clone to an external backup via SuperDuper - that CAN fix it.
You DO have a backup of course ;)

Haha, well no i dont have a backup, but since i just got it two weeks ago there are really no files on it that im going to die without and i have all the program disks ;) After finishing with the "repair disk" and it telling me that it cannot be repaired i've decided to seek professional help. The disk isnt even identifed when you pop in the tiger DVD and it hangs when you try to load up the repair disk again.

Anyways thanks for the quick reply's, i'll let you know what the tech's say it is.

Yeah sounds like it needs to be replaced - better now than later...... and about that backup :D

what kind of hdd is it? toshiba by chance?

Fujitsu in my case


I have Disk Warriored my HD etc.

Must admit it hasn't happened in a while.

I dont actualy know what make of drive I have... Guess I will have to wait till they take it out! Any recomendations on a new one? I'm thinking 80 gigs but is the trade of in heat/noise worth it compared to the speed increase in a 5400rpm vs. 4200?

Get a 16 meg cache 5400 - will work very well - no heat or noise issues