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Weblog:   Curious iMac Hard Drive Failures
Subject:   another 1999 DV SE hard drive failure, and another
Date:   2002-12-08 20:45:04
From:   anonymous2
Mine died a couple of months ago just as you described. I then replaced the 13GB Quantum Fireball with a Western Digital 60 GB and installed Jaguar. This new drive died last week in a similar way: lots of extraneous seeking, then the awful groinking noises, then the disk spinning down on its own, and finally, nothing. I tried to repair it with the jaguar installation disk, but every time I ran the repair function it found new errors.
Is there something about this iMac model that kills drives? Or is it just mine? Has anyone else had a second drive failure?
I want my iMac up and running again, but I don't want to sacrifice another drive. Please post if you know the cause of this type of failure.
David W.
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Showing messages 1 through 5 of 5.

  • The answer to iMac DV HD problems/failures
    2005-02-12 09:41:11  1computergeek [Reply | View]

    I have an iMac DV 400, which came with a Seagate 20gig HD. It worked fine for a while, but when I started to leave it on for extended periods of time, the HD started to spin down by itself. After a while, the HD just wouldn't even spin-up at power-on. I thought it was the HD so I replaced it with an 80gig Maxtor. It worked fine for a month, then started making horrible sounds, bad blocks appearing, and then started spinning down randomly like the Seagate.

    I used to turn over the iMac and reseat the power and bus cables and then turn it back on, which fixed the problem temporarily. Anyway, I decided to buy an external FireWire enclosure for the HD to see if that would work. Lo and behold, BOTH hard-drives function perfectly. I can boot off my old hard-drves and they have no bad-blocks and work perfectly.

    So in conclusion, if you have iMac HD problems, go and buy a FireWire enlosure for your HD. The bus could be at fault, or I am thinking it is most likely the internal power to the HD which causes the problems. (anyone want to confirm this?)

    I hope you guys kept your supposed "Failed Hard Drive". I hope you also kept your iMac too...

    Good luck
    • The answer to iMac DV HD problems/failures
      2005-08-11 12:13:47  imacquestion [Reply | View]

      I have an Imac DV 400 Graphite with a 13 Gig hard drive and I have experienced the same HD failure described by others in this blog. How did you get your Imac 400 DV to boot up from the external hard drive? This was the solution that I thought I would try but the Mac OS 9 Bible, pg 829, says this cannot be done?
  • another 1999 DV SE hard drive failure, and another
    2003-08-05 08:48:19  anonymous2 [Reply | View]

    Is there a manual online with step by step instructions for hard drive replacement?
    • another 1999 DV SE hard drive failure, and another
      2003-08-07 05:56:54  anonymous2 [Reply | View]

      http://www.nelsonbc.ca/mactech_supprt_html/imac_hard_drive_replace/imac_replace_hard_drive.html

      http://www.theimac.com/drive_steps.shtml

      http://www.lowendmac.com/macdan/03/0307ek.html
      • another 1999 DV SE hard drive failure, and another
        2005-01-05 12:53:00  GAHEYRMAN [Reply | View]

        Hi, My DV SE hard drive died on 12/27/04, so I got 5 years to the day out of it. I purchased it on 12/26/99. It went quietly and I lost a month of pictures and etc. I have and extrnal HD, allows me to operate off the computer but the HD cannot be booted. Just get the file with the flashing face & ?.
        I would really like to to replace the HD and give it to one of my sons as I did with my 6116CD.

        I'm looking for a book on how to replace the HD. Please advise if there is one available. Thanks and enjoy your iMac. GAH
Showing messages 1 through 5 of 5.