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The iBook G3 was unveiled in July 1999 as Apple's portable computer for consumers.

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"This Drive Has Reported A Fatal Hardware Error To Disk Utility"

Today, I decided to upgrade my computer's hard drive, I have an 800Mhz Solid White iBook G3. It had a 20GB drive, that I upgraded to 40GB (not a major upgrade, but i was running out of space) After the painstaking process of getting the thing open, and installing the drive, I installed OS tiger, and opened Disk Utility. When i got to the drive, it showed me the following message "This Drive Has Reported A Fatal Hardware Error To Disk Utility" and the S.M.A.R.T. Status was "Failing" the drive is a toshiba MK4025GAS that i removed from my old dead powerbook g4 (spilled coffee) and the drive worked fine in a USB enclosure on my PC, and never reported any errors. The drive workes fine to me, it installed tiger fine, and just to test it, i copied about 10GB of files to it, and deleted them, and did it again, and it still works fine. It doesnt make any strange noises, and the coumpuer is just as fast, if not faster than it was before. Could the drive be giving a false warning? It seems to be holding up great, and even though i could put the old drive back in it, i could use the extra space on the larger one. Any Ideas on whether the drive actually has a problem or not?

Thanks,

Chris

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Repairing the directory (fsck and Disk Utility's Repair Disk and Verify Disk) has nothing to do with a hardware failure as reported by SMART. Directory is software. Hardware is hardware.

I would dump this drive and replace it with a new one, without hesitation. They don't cost much. Though I guess it depends on how much you value your data.

To find out more, assuming you have at least 10.4.11, download SMART Utility which will tell you exactly which attribute(s) are failing. http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/sy...

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just installed it, here's the info:

Toshiba MK4025GAS

SN: 34H552775

Capacity: 40,007,761,920 Bytes

Power On Hours: 1850

Temp: 31C

Pending Bad Sectors: 0

Removed Bad Sectors: 0

Start Stop Count: 6066

Reallocated bad sectors: 993

CRC Error Count: 0

Total Errors: 0

Overall SMART Status: FAILED

anything that i didn't type here was just marked with a "-"

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It's failed. Dump it. Just because it might work to some degree right now doesn't make it trustworthy. 993 replaced blocks is a lot. If you do manage to reformat it with "write all zeroes", which maps out the bad blocks, in most cases bad blocks is a progressively worsening situation and it's just not worth risking any data with a drive like this. (Blocks = sectors.)

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Ok, thanks.

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I doubt its a false warning- did you verify it as well? Since you could actually do a lot I think it may be a more minor permissions problem, but even fatal errors that are extremely dangerous can go unnoticed for a while, do a verify IMMEDIATELY.

Sounds like you got a bad drive though, so I'd just return it instead of trying to see if repair is possible.

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when i go to the drive page in disk utility, it just says "This Drive Has Reported A Fatal Hardware Error To Disk Utility" i can't get to the repair and verify options

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Looks like you're beyond much chance of repair, as a last attempt I suggest you boot into single-user mode and try fsyck -y

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tried that, it seemed to work fine, i also forced disk checking (fsck -f) and it produced no errors, it seems to me like there is no actual error, either way, i am ready to re-install the origional drive is nessicary

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Hi, Let me see if I understand the problem

1. drive came from an old computer of yours--not new

2. it worked properly in an USB enclosure

3. in the enclosure you used it with a PC

4. you installed Tiger on it without problem

I am assuming you reformatted the drive to install Tiger and are trying to reach disk utility with the install disk. At this point I think I would probably do good backups and use the drive or remove it and place it back in the USB enclosure and use it to as a backup drive. Ralph

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I am trying to reach disk utility, in mac OS, and thats where it gives me the error.

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I wouldn't even use it as a backup drive. What's the point if its integrity and lifespan is in doubt?

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I agree==I only said as a backup because the OP stated the drive was working. Ralph

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Chris Green will be eternally grateful.
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