A friend was complaining of frequent freeze ups and odd problems with her mac. My initial impression was that the fan was bad because it seemed to be making odd noises and the mac would run hot. I purchased her a new fan. But in the time it took to get there, she experience some data corruption in her email program. The computer was still freezing frequently and accordingly was rarely (if ever) shutdown properly. This could have accounted for the data corruption, but I also began to suspect the hard drive.
Before purchasing the fan, I had run a disk verify but I thought I'd do it again. Being the genius that I am, I thought I'd pop in the install and restore CD just so I could repair any errors that might be found on the startup volume. Well, the disk was 10.2.4 but the installed OS was Panther. The repair option didn't show (I assume because of the difference in OS version), but I thought it wouldn't hurt to run Verify anyway. Well, Verify found errors (something about keys being out of order). So I thought I'd reboot and run fsck on the partition...
However, after a reboot the desktop came back up and the dock had only the Finder and the Trash can and of course an unending spinning pinwheel of doom. So I tried to reboot again and only got kernel panic after kernel panic. After letting it sit for a couple of hours, now I only get the blinking question mark that alternates back and forth between the Finder icon.
I tried resetting the PRAM and PMU, but no help. Infact, it won't even let me boot up to the restore CD anymore without freezing. I tried (with success) putting the machine into target disk mode, but my Intel mac running Leopard said invalid something or other.
I even tore the laptop apart and connected the HD to my Intel mac with a IDE to USB cable I have. I still couldn't mount the disk, but I could run verify which showed the same keys out of order message. I tried to repair, but a little over half way through it just says it can't with no explanation.
I was able to read all of the data off of the disk using ddrescue and now I am trying SpinRite. I suspect the disk, but so far I can't prove anything. SMART status is not supported. I don't know if I just can't repair it because I'm trying to do so on an Intel mac with Leopard and the drive came from a G3 with Panther or if the drive is toast. It isn't really making any funny sounds.
The fact that I can no longer even boot from the restore CD is curious. If you have any thought, please let me know. Thanks!
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