Mini Goes South

[cinemafia]

So, I got a copy of Leopard and I was planning to install it on my Mini (1.42Ghz G4), but first I was going to back everything up so I could wipe the drive and do a clean install. But, first, I wanted to try MacFUSE and NTFS-3g because both of my external hard drives (that I would backing up to) are NTFS format. While I was installing MacFUSE, a software update was in prgress. I considered cancelling it, since I was going to be putting Leopard on soon anyway, but since I had to reboot after installing MacFUSE anyway, I went ahead and let it run.

Upon reboot, she's dead to the world. Grey screen. No apple logo. Nada. Tried zapping the PRAM, booting into the single-user or safe mode, all useless. I could boot from the Leopard DVD just fine, and I tried running Disk Utility, but it found that it could not repair the drive. The next day I borrowed a 6-pin-to-6-pin firewire cable and mounted the Mini's hard drive on my iBook G4, but again, Disk Utility choked on trying to fix it.

So yay...only good thing is I still have AppleCare on the old Mini and later this afternoon I'll be taking it in to see if they can recover the data and of course replace the drive.

 

[paws]

What was the update, out of interest?

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/11/08/apples-hard-drive-update-1-0-updates-hard-drives-we-guess

 

[cinemafia]

It was the most recent update for Tiger...I don't remember the specifics. But, it's a G4 Mini, and that particular drive update is supposedly for Mactels only.

Anyway...took the Mini to an Apple store, described the problem, and they booted the mini from an external hard drive. The issue was suddenly worse, as now Disk Utility wouldn't even see the internal drive at all. Moreover, the drive was clicking...definitely a sign of death. Since it's under AppleCare, they'll go ahead and replace the drive for free (which will take a while, since they don't stock 2.5" IDE drives anymore)...but, you don't get your drive back.

So, I held onto the Mini for the time being in hopes of being able to get the data off the drive usign Data Rescue II. Only, now the problem has become even worse. I took the Mini home and tried starting it in target disk mode attached to my iBook, but it was a no-go. So, I tried booting off the Leopard DVD again, still nothing. Best I can get is the blinking question mark or a blank boot option screen. Even if I boot in Open Firmware and try to eject the Leopard DVD, it gives the dreaded 'cannot open drive' error.

So, now I have a dead drive in my Mini along with a Leopard DVD stuck in the optical drive. Just wonderful...

 

[madmax_2069]

It was the most recent update for Tiger...I don't remember the specifics. But, it's a G4 Mini, and that particular drive update is supposedly for Mactels only.
Anyway...took the Mini to an Apple store, described the problem, and they booted the mini from an external hard drive. The issue was suddenly worse, as now Disk Utility wouldn't even see the internal drive at all. Moreover, the drive was clicking...definitely a sign of death. Since it's under AppleCare, they'll go ahead and replace the drive for free (which will take a while, since they don't stock 2.5" IDE drives anymore)...but, you don't get your drive back.

So, I held onto the Mini for the time being in hopes of being able to get the data off the drive usign Data Rescue II. Only, now the problem has become even worse. I took the Mini home and tried starting it in target disk mode attached to my iBook, but it was a no-go. So, I tried booting off the Leopard DVD again, still nothing. Best I can get is the blinking question mark or a blank boot option screen. Even if I boot in Open Firmware and try to eject the Leopard DVD, it gives the dreaded 'cannot open drive' error.

So, now I have a dead drive in my Mini along with a Leopard DVD stuck in the optical drive. Just wonderful...

just hold down the mouse button and power up the mini the disk should eject.

 

[LCGuy]

paperclip?

 

[SiliconValleyPirate]

paperclip?

No, madmax's solution will work just fine.

@cinemo:

I'm really gutted for you having this issue. It's a real bummer when your drive goes fut on you, especially as you were *about* to make a full backup. It sounds like the hard disk itself has gone south somehow or other. The data likely won't be recoverable if it's gone that far, and every time you start the disk you are probably doing more damage.If it's head banging (it's a technical term), then it's likely the surface has sustained damage (which confuses the heads), or the drive's formatted data area is corrupt (this causes continuous retries). The latter would point to MacFUSE trying to use the wrong FS type on the drive and screwing the format up. I have had this issue in my Powerbook G4 and the hard drive works ok following a fully Zero erase but the OS on it totally died. That said if you can get a fresh hard disk for free you may as well, it's best not to risk anything with hard drives, then have to go through it all again 2 months down the line.

I guess this is why Apple put Time Machine in Leopard, you just never know WTH your hard disk is going to do to you... :\

Out of interest what vendor is the hard drive from (if you know)? Seagate drives have a 5 year warranty and, save for one batch that recently found their way in to some Intel machines, they are very reliable in my experience. I know the Mini G4s used mostly Seagate Momentus 4200 RPM drives (5600rpm in the later 1.5s).

 

[iMac600]

If the mouse eject trick doesn't work, in which there's a chance this will be the case because of Open Firmware's inability to open the drive, then you will need a paperclip to the small eject button on the side of the drive, same as on the iMac G3's.

I can assume it's still there, unless Apple took it off (which case we can assume Apple has decided to make this hell for us).

Always a shame to hear the drive go... but moreso frustrating. I always wonder when mine will go south and what i'll do when it does... a lot will be lost but at the moment backing it up isn't exactly simple unless I find another drive for the Firewire case. Sometimes they go strange as well... I have a drive that will only start up if it's exactly at 0 degrees of tilt.

 

[cinemafia]

Tried holding down mouse button, doesn't work. Also, the eject button was removed from the optical drives in the Minis (well, the PPC Minis as far as I know). Seriously....the little PCB is there, but no button. After much Googling, the only option is to unscrew the top of the optical drive and remove the disk, which I'm not going to do because it's going to screw me out of my AppleCare.

So, here's where I'm at: In my last-ditch effort to get the data off the drive, I'm going to be installing Tiger onto an external drive, booting the Mini from that drive and then finally running Data Secure II to try to get at it. Of course this is complicated by the fact that I'll have to install Tiger on the external drive from my iBook, which only has a CD-ROM. And I only have one USB-to-IDE unit.

So, I'll have to connect a bare DVD-ROM to the USB-to-IDE unit, make disk images of the Tiger DVDs, then remove the DVD-ROM and mount the hard drive, then open the disk images and install. Hopefully this will all work and by tonight I'll be able to get to the data. The *BIG* reason I need to get at this is because I have 3 years worth of Quicken data on the drive, which, of course, I stupidly did not have a backup of anywhere.

After all that's said and done, I'll be bringing yonder Mini back to the AppleStore so they can start working on it...I'm guessing that in addition to the hard drive, they may end up having to replace the optical as well...

 

[Charlieman]

Tried holding down mouse button, doesn't work. Also, the eject button was removed from the optical drives in the Minis (well, the PPC Minis as far as I know). Seriously....the little PCB is there, but no button. After much Googling, the only option is to unscrew the top of the optical drive and remove the disk, which I'm not going to do because it's going to screw me out of my AppleCare.

Beg/scrounge/steal one of those laptop IDE to 3.5" IDE adapters. They cost about $10 from internet sellers, if necessary. Hook up the Mini's optical drive to any old Mac or PC that has any software that will perform software eject of a CD/DVD. Job done, without voiding warranty.

 

[Temetka]

If you boot the mini from an external drive, then ejecting the disc wont be a problem.

 

[Flash!]

How important is the data? Not important enough to want to keep the HD that will be replaced and not given back under the Applecare plan??

If the data is that important then do yourself a favour and screw Applecare. Buy yourself a replacement HD and swap it out yourself and that will take care of getting the Mini up and running again. Now you can pop your dead HD into a usb emclosure (......or something) and try to retrieve the data that way, or of course there's the option of taking the HD to professionals which unfortunately costs $$$

I had to pay to get some data back recently - that was nearly $1000.00 !!! Shit happens I guess. I have another dead drive that I'm holding on to coz it contains digitized footage from my old VHS camera and some of my early DV shoots - the tapes themselves suffered a bit of water damage (like two-feet under in the basement!) so the dead drive is all I've got. One day when I have a spare $1000......

 

[cinemafia]

I totally forgot that you can't boot PPC's from USB, so last night I ran out and got a Ministack v2 (I was actually planning to get one anyway). So, I had a blank HD in the Ministack and a bare DVD-RW on my USB-to-IDE (both connected to my iBook G4) and was all ready to install OS X to the drive, when I realized that none of the OS X install discs I had would run on the iBook. Finally, I ended up using Carbon Copy Cloner to just clone the iBook's drive to the external.

So then, finally, I got the Mini booted up with the external drive. And then came the bad news...my suspicions were confirmed, it was more than just the hard drive. Neither System Profile, Disk Utility, Data Rescue II or any app I could find could even *recognize* the hard drive or the optical drive. Its as if the entire ATA bus was gone! And, of course, I can't eject the disk stuck in there...but that's the least of my problems.

So at this point my only options as far as recovering the data are to tear down the Mini and put the hard drive in a 2.5" enclosure and try to recover it, which will screw me out AppleCare (which, given this is more than just the hard drive being bad, is not a good option), or take it to the local data recovery shop, which will probably cost at least $400...then back to Apple to have them do what they can to fix it or possibly replace it.

So yeah...not sure what I'm going to do yet. I'm of the mind to just forgoe the data and give it to Apple, but my wife really wants to recover it...she's got a lot of financial info, contacts and work stuff on it that will probably take months to try to put back together.

[xx(] ]'>

 

[iMac600]

Sounds like maybe your ATA bus has definitely gone south. This does sometimes lead to a seemingly dead drive, I had one hard disk that would just click over and over in one machine but work in another. Turns out no drives worked in the first machine, all doing the same thing, and days later the ATA controller went up in smoke.

 

[cinemafia]

Yeah, I have a sneaking suspicion that if I can get the drive out, it will either work just fine or will be repaired by Disk Utility/etc. The trouble is doing so looks pretty hairy...especially with the AppleCare hanging in the balance. I'm wondering if I can't just get some Apple-sanctioned shop to just remove the drive and give it to me, and then I can give the Mini back to Apple...maybe they wouldn't charge an arm and a leg for that.

 

[cinemafia]

So, to continue the story, I decided to take yonder Mini to my local Mac shop, a place that actually just opened within a month and is now only the second Mac shop in my immediate area (the first had questionable customer service skills). Anyway, they took the drive out for $75 (and then later put it back in for another $75), and I bought a nice little firewire 2.5" enclosure for it, only to find out that nothing software based would ever be able to recover it. I tried every Mac disk util I could find, as well as some stuff in Terminal and even some Windows-based data recovery apps...nada.

The only hope would be to take the drive to a shop that would actually take it apart and recover the data by hardware...which, of course, is ridiculously expensive. I said forget it, and gave the drive and Mini back to my local Mac shop, who are now sending it off to Apple. In doing some research, I'm pretty sure the problem is the ATA controller going kaput, which of course is a non-replaceable unit. So, either Apple is going to replace the logic board, hard drive and SuperDrive, or just give me a new Mini...I'm crossing my fingers on the latter.

[] ]'>

 

[cinemafia]

Oh yeah, for those who asked, the drive was the Seagate 80GB 4200rpm one.

 

[cinemafia]

Just a quick update, after a full month and a half of waiting I finally got my Mini back. And no, unfortunately it wasn't a new one. They actually replaced the mobo, hard drive and optical drive...so it's like a brand new Mini, albeit a G4, but in the old case. ;-)

I'll hopefully be installing Leopard on it over the weekend and be back in business!

 

[Patrickool93]

Wow, that took awhile Well, it's good to have the mini back nonetheless. What did they keep then besides the case and RAM? All the mini really is is the mobo, and the tray that holds the HD/DVD drives.

 

[Cory5412]

Also, is your serial number SystemSEUMB (or something similar), and if not, does it match th one printed on the case? That'd be entertaining to know. (I had to get my iMac repaired in a similar way to your Mini last year, and they replace the mobo/hdd/cd I think, and the serial number came back weird.