It sounds like a hard drive is going out to me. Any flash drive should work. The biggest you can afford is the best in my opinion. I still have the opinion that getting an enclosure with a HD is the cheapest and most efficient way to back up anything and upgrade. They are harder to lose and not as easily stolen. You can get one for a laptop HD for a lower price . If you use a used HD in it, you may need to download the driver but that should'nt be a problem.
On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 9:50 PM, Judith Rosenbaum <[email protected]> wrote: > > The hard drive on my iMac G3 is making ominous noises - an awful "screee" > upon start up. This occurs once or twice until I finally hear the HD start up > and all is well until the poor thing seizes up again. The only way I am able > to un-freeze it is to pull the power cord, wait a few minutes and then > attempt to re-start. I will either get "bad Mac" icon or it will start > normally. At that point I have to re-set the date and time. I haven't been > able to pin down a definitive set of circumstances under which this happens, > except for: 1) randomly when I'm actively using it and 2) when it's been > asleep for a while. Since this is happening more frequently I want to be able > to preserve my files - I have no experience with flash drives and would > appreciate any guidance you can share. > > Here are the specs for my seriously out-of-date machine: 500Mghz, 256 Mg > memory, running OS X.2.8. > I plan to update my Mac and internet service early next year. > > Thanks for your help. > > Judith Rosenbaum > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Low End Mac's iMac List, a group for those using G3, G4, G5, and Intel Core iMacs as well as Apple eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
