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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Disk Malfunction

noah.roberts - Aug 26, 2005 - 7:45 pm

After repeated problems with my G4 powerbook running tiger, in the respect that the hard drive will spin endlessly, and after failure to fix it with the disk repair utilty, I enlisted the aid of DiskWarrior.

Upon updating the disk to 3.0.3, and running the disk in the defunked laptop, the rebuilding process ends on step five "Locating directory data" with an error message of (Speed inhibited by disk malfunction)


My god, what do I do now?

DeltaMac - Aug 26, 2005 - 8:09 pm

I think you have a failing (or failed) hard drive.

What do you do next? Get the hard drive replaced...

Is it still in warranty? Apple should replace it.
If not, find a good repair center that knows Macs.

Let me know how it goes.
- Dale

noah.roberts - Aug 27, 2005 - 12:07 pm

well, I let the computer sit over night, and it completed it's process. The only thing now is it gets stuck on the grey startup screen with the spinning thing.

DeltaMac - Aug 27, 2005 - 12:15 pm

Now you can try reinstalling Tiger. I suspect that you may not have much luck with that. You shouldn't trust a failing hard drive to work for very long.

- Dale

noah.roberts - Aug 28, 2005 - 1:22 pm

Now, after reinstalling, i've noticed a few programs are no longer on my harddrive. Is this an indication that those programs or files caused the malfunction?

DeltaMac - Aug 28, 2005 - 2:18 pm

No, the apps will be missing because they are not part of the Tiger install. For example, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD. You will have to reinstall from your original discs that came with your PowerBook.
The only major app that still comes with Tiger is iTunes. If you have iLife '05, you can reinstall that.
I still don't trust your hard drive, but this is the process that I usually use for a clean install.
Boot to your original install disc - the set that shipped with the PowerBook, and erase and reinstall from that disc, then reboot with the Tiger installer, and install that. Now you will have all the original bundled software, and whatever updates that Tiger does. Then you can install any other software that you might have.

- Dale