What the heck happened???

[Christopher]

This may be the dumbest question ever, but you can't hook a 2.5" laptop drive onto a 3.5" IDE connection, correct?

There's never a stupid question....

But no you can't. check out the connectors. 2.5" uses one single connector, 3.5" uses two, one for power and one for data.

 

[Gil]

I wish I could avoid taking the thing apart. iBooks are the worst machines to take apart. I would take it to the Apple Store, but I have a feeling they'd charge a pretty penny, since it's not under warranty.

 

[Christopher]

snowbook's aren't as bad as clamshells.

 

[Gil]

Update.

Got OS X Server 10.1 on my Beige G3, and now in ASP, it shows "Target Disk" on the FireWire Bus. However, no disk appears on desktop.

 

[Christopher]

Can you hear the hard drive in your iBook running?

Wait, thats a stupid question...

 

[Gil]

Can you hear the hard drive in your iBook running?
Wait, thats a stupid question...

Yup

 

[MacMan]

This may be the dumbest question ever, but you can't hook a 2.5" laptop drive onto a 3.5" IDE connection, correct?

You can - there are adaptors available that can do this and they are generally very cheap. Try Googling or searching on eBay.

Also, getting down to the obvious, it may be worth opening up the iBook and looking to see if the hard drive connector has partially popped out of the drive or motherboard. It can and does happen in notebooks from time to time, just through the movement they are subjected to when being carted about. If the connector has popped out slightly it could be enough to power up the drive but not correctly shift data.

 

[Gil]

This may be the dumbest question ever, but you can't hook a 2.5" laptop drive onto a 3.5" IDE connection, correct?

You can - there are adaptors available that can do this and they are generally very cheap. Try Googling or searching on eBay.

Also, getting down to the obvious, it may be worth opening up the iBook and looking to see if the hard drive connector has somehow popped out of the drive or motherboard. It can and does happen in notebooks from time to time, just through the movement they are subjected to when being carted about.

That's interesting. I'm gonna try that.

 

[Gil]

Okay so I opened it up last night and took the hard drive out. Today, I slipped in the original Apple 40 gb drive, since I had upgraded to an 80 GB drive. Low and behold, that drive was not recognized either, despite me clearly rememering not deleting anything off the drive. I opened up Disk Utility from the Tiger CD ROM, and no recognition from there either.

At least we know the data isn't at risk. Hopefully.

 

[Christopher]

Okay so I opened it up last night and took the hard drive out. Today, I slipped in the original Apple 40 gb drive, since I had upgraded to an 80 GB drive. Low and behold, that drive was not recognized either, despite me clearly rememering not deleting anything off the drive. I opened up Disk Utility from the Tiger CD ROM, and no recognition from there either.
At least we know the data isn't at risk. Hopefully.

Do you have another laptop you can put it into?

 

[Gil]

Only a PC. I'm ordering one of those adapters that lets you plug a 2.5" laptop HD to a normal desktop IDE connection. Only $4, and I can just pop it into my G3.

I'm not sure how I would be able to do it on a PC.

 

[Gil]

I got my adapter today and popped the 80 GB drive into my G3. After a little playing around with the Silverlining software, I can access *ALL* of the files on my disk! Copying them is another thing. I think it has a problem copying large files. If I image the drive with Disk Copy, transfer it to my USB drive, and extract it there, can I get around the errors?

 

[macgeek417]

In disk utility, try selecting the drive itsself, and clicking mount!

 

[macgeek417]

I got my adapter today and popped the 80 GB drive into my G3. After a little playing around with the Silverlining software, I can access *ALL* of the files on my disk! Copying them is another thing. I think it has a problem copying large files. If I image the drive with Disk Copy, transfer it to my USB drive, and extract it there, can I get around the errors?

...WHat kind of errors???

 

[thinkdifferent]

I was on my iBook G4 tonight, when the machine froze up. I thought it was due to having a lot of tabs open in FireFox. I did the Command-Option-Escape command, but nothing came up. So I held the power switch. I turn it back on, and I get the New World Mac blinking question mark equivilent. I reset PRAM, and same thing. What the heck could have happened to it?

Could the entire operating system be deleted? Perhaps a hacker... or a very serious system error. Maybe the hard drive died... did you hear it spinning up?

 

[Gil]

I was on my iBook G4 tonight, when the machine froze up. I thought it was due to having a lot of tabs open in FireFox. I did the Command-Option-Escape command, but nothing came up. So I held the power switch. I turn it back on, and I get the New World Mac blinking question mark equivilent. I reset PRAM, and same thing. What the heck could have happened to it?

Could the entire operating system be deleted? Perhaps a hacker... or a very serious system error. Maybe the hard drive died... did you hear it spinning up?

Might be a good idea to read through the entire thread before posting (especially a thread that has long-since been dead). :

 

[Gil]

Just for the hell of it, I decided to look into this problem again. I was FINALLY able to get all of my data off the drive that was in there, when it crapped out. So I stuck it back in and booted from CD. No go. It took about 5 times before the hard drive was recognized. But it finally was, I formatted and installed, and now I'm typing this post on it now.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting to ever use this machine again. Now that I can, I'm not really sure what to do with it...

iBook G4: January 2008 - December 27, 2008. Resurrected May 8, 2009.

 

[Christopher]

Just for the hell of it, I decided to look into this problem again. I was FINALLY able to get all of my data off the drive that was in there, when it crapped out. So I stuck it back in and booted from CD. No go. It took about 5 times before the hard drive was recognized. But it finally was, I formatted and installed, and now I'm typing this post on it now.
Honestly, I wasn't expecting to ever use this machine again. Now that I can, I'm not really sure what to do with it...

iBook G4: January 2008 - December 27, 2008. Resurrected May 8, 2009.

What do you want for it?

 

[Gil]

Just for the hell of it, I decided to look into this problem again. I was FINALLY able to get all of my data off the drive that was in there, when it crapped out. So I stuck it back in and booted from CD. No go. It took about 5 times before the hard drive was recognized. But it finally was, I formatted and installed, and now I'm typing this post on it now.
Honestly, I wasn't expecting to ever use this machine again. Now that I can, I'm not really sure what to do with it...

iBook G4: January 2008 - December 27, 2008. Resurrected May 8, 2009.

What do you want for it?

Not sure. I honestly don't think it's worth much. Cosmetically, it's pretty bad, and it's missing about half the screws that hold it together (damn iBooks...).

I'll think about it.

 

[Christopher]

I have iBook screws, so nothing to worry about in that aspect.