Drive nowhere to be found.
 

I want to see if you think that this is the drive itself, some controller or something else.

This morning while typing in TextEdit, everything ground to a halt. After a long delay, some keystrokes registered, and then nothing but mouse movement. In the time between the first stutters and the end, I was able to get a Terminal window and get top -u going long enough to see that it was not due to a renegade application. I restarted and I got a blinking alternation between a blank folder, one with a question mark, and a happy Mac face. Trying to start in Single-User-Mode failed. I restarted with the option key held down (because I have a small partition with another OS X installation on it for emergency repair), and no disks showed up at all. I rebooted from the Panther Installation CD, and it could not find a drive. Similarly with the Disk Warrior CD, and the Apple Care TechTool CD (which did not find any errors with the other tests). I started up from the Apple Hardware Test CD and it passed the Logic Board Test but immediately upon starting the Mass Storage Test it gave me an error: ata1/6/13 HD:2.0

I did not hear any noises while this was happening. The smart drive test was set to notify me in case of problems and I have never been notified by it of anything.

I am typing this from my (t)rusty 6100/60 (March 4, 1994 production date). I am fully backed up, but my wife is not. Our original Maxtor (2-head) drive had a failure (different symptoms) last February and it was replaced under AppleCare (which runs out on December 28th; I never have purchased addition protection packages except for this one time) by a Maxtor (1-head) drive at that time. For those two reasons, she is very annoyed at the computer, Apple, and me (she's convinced that I was overworking the drive; she knows that I have fink installed and ssh enabled, etc.). So, my questions are:

Is this necessarily a catastrophic drive failure?
or
What other things might be wrong?

I opened the case and noted that the cables seemed to be seated appropriately already and restarting again made no difference.

Thank you.

PS: I've called AppleCare and have a case number and permission to take it to the local (one hour away) AppleCare Service Center (or whatever it is called; they did the work last time).

A few random thoughts:

1. I have never had good luck with Maxtor drives. They tend to fail on me too, or at least they used to when I still gave them a chance. I no longer even consider the purchase of anything with a Maxtor drive in it.
2. I have never had anything useful come from S.M.A.R.T. I consider it completely useless. The fact that S.M.A.R.T. didn't warn you means nothing.
3. Neither fink nor ssh will overwork a drive. That is not a possible cause of the problem.
4. No it is not necessarily drive failure, although that is certainly a distinct possibility. Replace things in order of expense: first the cable, then the drive, then the ATA subsystem or card.

Trevor

Hard disk failure
 

Hi,

There are several modes of hard disk failure:

1- main bearing - noisy or will not spin up

2- Arm bearing - miss reads data close to spindle. Can cause OSX hang/panic.

3- Arm conducting strip - heat/work fatigue of contact strips between moving head and drive body. Can cause OSX hang/panic.

4- Head crash or physical damage to drive or platters. Can usually be detected using disk utilities as the drive should be accessable.

5- Blown component on PCB.

Only item 5 can be fixed by by the average user. Buy an indentical drive, either new or on ebay. and switch the PCB over. However it can be difficult to tell if a PCB has failed unless it has exploded a "Chip" (plastic sprayed over PCB and nasty smell!), or one Chip runs hot enough to boil water - or in my case blood - very deep burn!) Of course, removing the PCB from a new HDD voids the guarantee, so do this at your own risk. Is the data worth the chance/risk? Only you can decide.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Nick

I think the problem is that Disk Utility only reports the one pass/fail summary number from SMART. The actual report contains a lot more detail. SMART can report a "pre-fail" value for some parameters and this means that the drive is likely to fail within a day or so. If you didn't check that one pass/fail value in Disk Utility within that period, you wouldn't know that your drive was about to fail.

See this other post regarding SMART for more info:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=27934

Yes, but has S.M.A.R.T. ever given you a pre-fail value personally?

Trevor

Thanks. I was hoping (for the sake of my wife's data) that there might be some chance of recovering at least some data. The data which has not been backed up would take some time to regenerate, but it is not worth going to a drive-recovery business for. Our local Apple repair shop is only open until Monday-Friday, so we probably won't get there until Tuesday.

I knew that the failure was not due to ssh, fink, Folding@Home, or leaving the computer running 24/7, but she was a bit upset and not listening to that for awhile. On a positive note it caused her to say that she wanted her own computer, a Macintosh laptop, so that I wouldn't jeopardize her data again :) .

Whether or not the drive is dead, I'm thinking of replacing it with another one. What would be your recommendations for a dependable 60 or 80 GB 7200 rpm drive to replace it? Also, would a 7200 rpm drive run hot enough to cause problems or to cause the fan to run (I have a Summer 2001 iMac that runs without fans unless it warms up [which it currently does only when a CD is being used])?

Thanks again.

Just in case it might make a difference, have you tried booting the Mac with the bad drive in "target disk" mode when attached with firewire to another Mac?

I recall some disk recovery war stories that involved such things as:
- putting the disk in the freezer for a while
- slapping the disk to get it to "unstick"
You could google for other ideas but obviously such things are only to be tried as a last resort.

Another possible recovery step is to put the problem drive in another computer and see if the drive is seen on the bus in the new location.

As far as your questions about a new drive, my strong drive preference is for IBM/Hitachi drives.
80 GB, 7200 rpm, 2 MB buffer, model 7K80: http://eshop.macsales.com/AddToBaske...re&Class=Drive
120 GB, 7200 rpm, 8 MB buffer, model 7K250: http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_It...tem=HIT14R9202

I suspect these drives will run cooler than the Maxtor, although it's hard to predict without the exact models used.

Trevor

Thanks for the idea about Target Disk Mode...I had forgotten all about TDM because I don't usually have access to two Firewire Macs. I can take my iMac up to my office and use my eMac once I get ahold of a 6 pin - 6 pin Firewire cable. The only places open on Sunday (Radio Shack and Office Depot) had only 6 pin - 4 pin FW cables, but the IT people on campus might, or a computer store here in town might. Several of the IT people are very Mac friendly; in fact so that he could use a G4, one of the IT people convinced the Music Department (which uses a G4 as a server) that it would be easiest for him if they kept it in his office. :)

I think I'll go for that 80 GB model. That is quite a buy. Thanks.

PS: While using my old Eudora here in OS 8.1 on my 6100/60, I was reminded of the annoyance of accidentally turning on Balloon Help!!

Thanks again. I'll let you know what happened.

I found a 6 pin to 6 pin FireWire cable at the campus Newspaper office (where they have 79 Macs between the newspaper and the Journalism and Mass Communications department). Unfortunately, the iMac never gets to the Firewire icon on its screen; it shuts back off instead.

I'm following the instructions from Apple to a 'T' (no pun intended).

It's also possiable the IDE controller decided to die. The hard drive should spin up (or you should hear something) when the Mass Storage Test starts. Some harddrivers (I know Maxtor ones will do this) will automatically spin down if not access in x amount of time. If it is your controller, what may be happening is during the time between bootup and the MS test, is that the HD is spinning down, and the computer can't communicate it because of a dead controller. If you can start up Mac OS X in verbose mode, it should print messages about detectign the ATA/IDE controller, so if you can get access to a boot disc, it might be worth trying. I can't remember if the iMac has two IDE controllers, but it might be the case.

I can only start up in verbose or single-user mode if I have a CD or some bootable device for it to find.

When I start up in verbose mode with a bootable CD in the drive, I don't see anything significant. The first time I did, I saw that it said the time or date was PREPROSTEROUS, but subsequent times did not show this. I started up in single-user mode with a bootable CD in the drive and typing in 'date' resulted in Thursday, April 1, 00:27:04 PST 1976. Once when the logic board battern went out, I got a date of 6pm on December 31st. 1969, so this is a different date. I don't know if this date is related to the CD or not.

If I knew that it was I drive issue, I'd get one of the ones Trevor suggested and put it in myself. However, I'm not so sure. Given that it is still under AppleCare for 34 more days, I think I'll be patient and take it to the local authorized technician and ask them to fix it and replace the drive (at my expense) with the one Trevor suggested (if they'll let me dictate the replacement).

Thanks.

I just started up that same bootable CD from my office (working) eMac in Single-user mode. Typing 'date' shows the correct time and date (PST). It was my impression that the time and date were stored in PRAM, and nowhere on the drive. If that is true, then my guess is that my iMac is facing a different issue than a drive issue (although that might also be a problem). I don't think it is the PRAM battery, because when that battery went out, the time and date reset to 6:00 pm December 31st 1969, not April 1st, 12:27 am, 1976.

I also started up from that same bootable CD on the eMac in verbose mode. It showed all mountable volumes, including those on my hard drive. When starting up from that CD in verbose mode on the iMac, it shows a string of zeros for each partition on that drive. Previously, I thought that it was ignorting them because it was not booting from them, but apparently it is saying something else. It would seem that if the drive were not cooperating at all, then the computer would not know how many partitions were on the disk.

Well, I'll let you know in a week or so what the failure was.

If you have pressed the reset switch that will cause the clock to be reset. If I remember AppleCare, it's only 50 dollars for a data trasnfer; they replace the HD for free

Oh yeah. I did reset the PRAM. I also reset the nvram via open firmware. I forgot about that. I know I've read that these two do the same thing, but I tried both anyway.

Did you use reset-nvram, or reset-all. Futuremore, did you boot into OS 9 or OS X. Sometimes, I find that booting into 9 can change settings to a working point (like when my moniter on my powermac was stuck on a bad refresh rate, using an OS 9 CD fixed it)

I did 'reset-nvram' the 'reset-all'.

I've started from both an OS X CD, and then an OS 9 CD (because with an OS 9 CD, you're really fully booted and mounted volumes can show up on the desktop).

I'm going to see if I can talk my wife into going to the big city (60,000 people) an hour away from our city (17,000 people) to the Apple Authorized Technician.

Thanks.

Should be easy to convince her if there is a shoe store in the vicinity. :)

Luckily, she did not need to be enticed in any way to go. That is not to say that we did not have to do some shopping. :) Fortunately I had our 5 and 7 year old for company.

By the time we got there, only the service manager was left. He was very nice but very vague about making any promises, as I expect all service managers are. I gently said that I did not want Apple's replacement drive installed, but another drive of my choosing. Also I was very clear that I expected to have to pay the full cost of the new drive without getting any credit for the Apple supplied drive which I was refusing. He said "I'll see what I can do." I said I did not figure that they would mind since they weren't out any money but he said "I'll see what I can do. If they won't listen to me, I'll refer them to you. You can get more out of them than I can."

He did not care for IBM/Hitachi, finding them only a little better than Maxtor. He liked Western Digital 7200 rpm drives (which they carried) to be better. I figured that there was some self-interest in that statement, but I told him I'd go with his Western Digital 80 GB 7200 rpm drive. I thought (a) I would not bring my own tires into a Tire Store and ask them to install them, (b) I could not remember anyone saying anything bad about Western Digital whereas I had heard some bad things about Maxtor, (c) the price was not that much more since I'd have to pay shipping on the IBM/Hitachi, (d) maybe that would be more enticement for him to 'see what he could do.'

Anyway, it'll probably be next week before I find out anything. I'll write back when I find out something.

Here is a link to the recommended drive: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/pro...asp?DriveID=10

It says on that page: "Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) technology – improves hard drive reliability; reduces heat , vibration, and noise." The bolding is mine. It seems like a nice drive. I tried to find the specs on the IBM, but their website wasn't nearly as easy to navigate as was Western Digital's web site.

I hope that means that it will run cool enough for a Summer 2001 iMac. I've put in a question to Western Digital (from their website) on this point, but I doubt I hear back from them in time. I'm sure it will work out.

The drive was found to be the culprit. The platter is still spinning, but for some reason cannot be read from or written to.

Alas! They said they cannot do the repair under AppleCare unless they install whatever Apple sends them. If they installed another drive for me, they'd have to charge $80 because it would have to be done outside of AppleCare. So, I guess I'll be getting another refurbished Maxtor. At least that is what it will have when I get it home. When it comes out from under AppleCare on December 28th, I'll see how difficult it is to replace the drive myself and then put in that IBM/Hitatchi that Trevor directed me to above. Then, maybe I'll get an external enclosure and get an external drive out of the affair.

Thanks for your assistance.

Following the instructions on this page I installed the new drive (the one Trevor suggested) today. It wasn't hard at all, and with the magnetized philips screwdriver (suggested by another poster here) it did not feel too risky either.

I just had one mishap. Someone came in and interrupted me about halfway through. Finally they left and I installed the drive, put everything back together and turned it on. I got out the Panther installation disk so I could pop it in to set up the fresh drive when the gray apple showed up and then my desktop came up. I can't believe I re-installed my old drive. Anyway, I went through it all again and although it was harder to be careful the second time, I got the new one installed without any further mishaps.

I also bought a 512 MB DIMM to raise me to 768 MB (from 512 MB). Between the two of them, it is feeling a lot more spry tonight. Yeah, I know that the bill was about 1/3 the cost of a Mac Mini, but this machine is still quite usable for me.

Thank you for all your help.