Travel Technology - Ack... my powerbook hard drive crashed...

Turned on my powerbook today, got NOTHING... have spent the past few hours trying to resurrect it... it's a goner....

Limited warranty covers me for another 4 months, so guess I'll head to my local Apple Store and see what they say...

Anyone know if they just replace the HD there or do they ship it out?

RIP Powerbook HD... lasted only 9 months? hmmmm

AFAIK all PowerBook repairs are shipped out, but all the shipping is overnight. You don't have to go to the store; you can arrange shipping over the phone. But going to the store will save you waiting for the initial box. (Process is they overnight you a box, then you put it in there and overnight it to the repair depot, then they overnight it back to you after typically just 1-2 day stay.) Most PowerBooks have a design that makes the hard drive somewhat difficult to reach, so it isn't likely they have changed the policy of sending them all out. (Desktops are usually worked on in-store.)

Of course, it's possible they may fire up some kind of software to make sure it's not simply a software issue rather than hardware failure. What did you try already? I assume it boots from the system CD/DVD? Did you confirm that the drive isn't seen at all with Disk Utility? If it can be seen by Disk Utility but not repaired, then you can try a heavier duty disk repair software.

If the machine instead doesn't turn on at all it's a totally different problem and often one easily fixed. Search for "resetting power manager" on Apple.com support site.

Forgive me if I'm being too detailed and you're sure of your diagnosis. You say the HD is dead, but you also say "Turned on my PowerBook today, got nothing", which could be taken differently.

If you turned it on and heard a clicking sound from the region of the hard drive, then DO NOTHING but turn it off. That could be a hardware failure where your drive heads are hitting the platters and your data could be destroyed forever.

fuzz

See if they can diagnose the problem before they ship it out. If it's anything except the drive mechanism, they can remove the drive and put it in an external enclosure. That will let you start up any loaner Mac you can find from the external drive, giving it in effect a "brain transplant" from your old one. You may have to pay for the enclosure, but it's worth it.

That also protects you against the remote possibility that your drive, with all your information on it, will end up being installed into someone else's machine. I am told that Apple doesn't do this, but there have been a few horror stories recently about this happening to people who gave their computers to the repair departments of large electronics stores. It's bad enough to get a call from someone you don't know saying "I think I got your hard drive in the computer I just got back from ..." Imagine if it went to someone who, instead of calling you, used the information.

yeah, I would go to the store. they can hookup an external device to see if they can get data. Or buy one yourself and have it for future backups.

I would NOT try it the first time myself.

the store and genius bar might try to access, and then get data off. As well, they DO offer a data recovery option which i think is 25-30 $$. Apple will offer this as well when sending it in. If this is a complete drive failure, then they MIGHT do it for free, but I would rather get it off BEFORE sending it in.

You might give Firewire Target Disk Mode a go if you haven't already.

We've been able to recover data this way before when it wasn't accessible natively.

Hook your sickbook up to a wellmac with a firewire cable. As you're booting up sickbook, hold down T. Eventually a firewire icon will be displayed on the screen, and then you can stop holding down the T. The disk should mount on your wellmac's desktop. You can then pull stuff off of sickbook's drive onto wellmac, or any other drive connected to wellmac.

If you tried target disk mode already, then yeah, I'd take it to the genius bar.

good luck.