Power Mac Scare!

Joined
Feb 12, 2007
Messages
54
Reaction score
2
Points
8
Location
Dallas
Your Mac's Specs
G4 MDD dual 1ghz, 2 gigs RAM; 5.5G iPod, 2G iPod Shuffle
So I've used my old dual 1ghz G4 MDD for a long time to store photos, music, and record music with. I bought all of the Garageband expansion packs, along with some other music software that cost me a decent chunk of money.

Unfortunately between moving a couple times, I have lost the disks to most of the stuff along with the OSX disks.

A couple days ago I went to turn it on, and all I got was a white screen and the sound of the HD clicking away. Not good.

By some stroke of luck I tried it again last night and it turned on, albeit slowly. So I crossed my fingers, went to Fry's electronics and purchased a 320 gig internal drive. Got home, installed it, and turned the computer back on to get the clicking noise and no boot up. Several attempts to boot from the OSX disks that came with my Macbook and I kept receiving messages about Kernal panics. Oh, I was bummed at that point.

Right before unplugging everything a few hours later I tried booting it one last time and it turned on correctly. Mirrored the main drive to the new one, changed the boot disk over and I didn't even lose one file.

Sorry for the long incoherent post, but I'm just happy I learned the easy way why backing up everything on a regular basis is key to trouble free computing. :)
 
Joined
Apr 29, 2006
Messages
4,576
Reaction score
378
Points
83
Location
St. Somewhere
Your Mac's Specs
Mac Studio, M1 Max, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD
Good learning to reinforce with everyone!

....and EXCELLENT luck! Clicking hard drives are usually dead hard drives! I am very glad that you managed to get one or two more runs out of that drive. It is clearly on its last legs and the fact that you got your data off of it is truly outstanding!

...you must live right! :D
 
Joined
Sep 19, 2007
Messages
116
Reaction score
1
Points
18
Location
Sacramento, California
Your Mac's Specs
2.4 ghz "new" 24" iMac
Congratulations! mac57 is right, clicking drives are almost certain death... amazing and great story!
 
OP
D
Joined
Feb 12, 2007
Messages
54
Reaction score
2
Points
8
Location
Dallas
Your Mac's Specs
G4 MDD dual 1ghz, 2 gigs RAM; 5.5G iPod, 2G iPod Shuffle
I've always heard clicking drives are dead drives. I have no idea why it decided to work those last couple of times, but thankfully it did.

After that little learning experience, I bought another 320 gig drive today and mirrored the drive I installed yesterday. So now I have 2 identical drives that I'll keep updated.

Thanks for the support!
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top