hard drive failure

[griever]

Mostly to rant, but is it fairly common for hard drives to die with no prolonged agonizing click-click?  Cause mine just did without any symptoms of a dying hard drive.    No power surge, no abuse, no viruses, no magnets, no sledgehammer and boom. 

[Witchiebunny]

What manufacturer is it? OUr hard drive has done the same once or twice, and we've managed to bring it back to life. Internal or external?

[griever]

It was a Seagate.  My little nerdling boyfriend replaced a new one and informed me that the early Macbooks had faulty Seagate drives (a lot of them anyway).  It was internal.  We got a new one and now it's not recognizing the install disks.

[Xepher]

That's no fun... but yeah, a harddrive can die from about a thousand different causes, and not all of them make noise or give warnings. Two main distinctions are if the drive's electronics fail, or if the mechanical stuff fails. The electronics _should_ outlast the mechanical bits, but when they do die (from a short or surge usually) it's sudden, with no noise and no warning. The more common thing is mechanical failure, and that usually does give warnings as it gets worse. Often funny noises, but more reliable is to check error rates that increase... that'll show up as it just acting "slower" for a while. If you can, use SMART monitoring tools. I don't know where/what that would be on a mac, but the drives have internal self-test and error monitoring firmware, and you can put software on your computer that will talk with that, and notice when certain conditions are increasing too fast (so-called "pre-fail attributes") and give you some advanced warning for a dieing drive.

As for the install discs... that should have nothing to do with the hard drive. Check them for fingerprints and scratches? :-)

[griever]

Hmm...my guess is that it was a short or just plain crappy construction because there were 3 other computers running in the apartment at the time and nothing noticeable.  I think Macs some with some kind of monitoring software but I never used it.  There's also one that will let you know about the internal temperature, which I would like, because those things get really hot.

The boyfriend said something about "firmware" which I've never heard of.  But he is bringing those discs back today.  He also said something about Intel Mac vs. Other Mac (I was tuning out at this point) and so there might be more stuff bring home.  Luckily, he works for a computer repair type company so he has a lot of stuff on hand.  And all I have to do is make a steak or something.  w00t.

[Xepher]

Ah yes... if they're not the install discs that came with your computer, they might be for the wrong type of mac. Newer macs use intel chips, same as PCs do. Old macs used PowerPC chips, which have to run different code. Either way... best of luck, and I hope you get it working.

[griever]

Curse this growing up, out of the house life!  Thanks...I've got my fingers crossed.