On Dec 30, 2003, at 12:07 pm, Daniel Kendell wrote:
I think the hard drive is dying. I don't own one but Phil does and he had a problem with it (nothing on screen at all). AFAIK, the hard drives in slot loader imacs maybe tray loaders too, have a habit of doing this (I think it was a western digital 10Gb branded with the apple logo).
The words 'Western Digital' bring a shiver to the spine of any good Mac engineer/enthusiast.
Best solution, open it up, and chuck a new one in. I don't know how hard or easy this would be but as George said, there are plenty of 'how-to...'s on the interent.
It's not all that hard as I remember. I read up on it as a 'just in case' a bit back.
Alternatively, if you don't want to do that and you have a USB hard drive, put a system on that, (one assumes you have more than one mac), plug it in, insert your system cd, then change the startup disc to the USB one, see if that works. If it does then it should boot no problem and may or may not mount your internal hard disc. - HOWEVER, I suggest that you keep this as a temporary measure because it will probably be slow due to the USB data transfer rate, (Macs _can_ boot off a USB hard disc right?) and I am sure that if you have a USB hard disc then it had a use and should get back to that.
I don't know myself what iMacs can and which can't boot from an external USB source. The ones previous to and contemporary with the B&W G3 (i.e. up to August 1999) can't I know for almost sure as my B&W won't boot off a USB drive and neither would my now deceased 1999 iBook.
If you don't have a USB hard disc, then don't bother too find someone with one or buy one, just get in there and change the internal one.
When choosing a hard disc to go in there, again, AFAIK it has to be 7,200 rpm or less due to heat build up inside.
For cheap and reliable I'd recommend a Seagate U series X, Seagate Barracuda 7200.x, or a Maxtor DiamondMax. Avoid Western Digital. I'd probably take Exelstor or Hiachi/IBM (same drives under different names) as a third if I couldn't get the recommended ones.
As far as how to get it open and change it, ask 'Phil Marlow', he knows, that is, he knows how to get into a slot loader. I will let him know and I am sure he will reply. ;-)
Again, this is all AFAIK. My special area I think is 68k macs, though i do have 2 new world powermacs and an old world one. - I have an external SCSI hard drive so i solve problems that way. ;-)
All fine and good on a 1998 or eariler machine. Ahhh how we miss the ability to lash a SCSI box to a machine and boot it from outside...
I suppose somone is boud to say we have FireWire and USB 2.0 for that now bu there is a big gap in Apple's line from 1999 that can't boot from an external (unless they have a SCSI card). Seems a bit silly to me....
-- Mark Benson
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