Very Old Mac Question

[inertiascience]

Help! My macintosh 5300CD (Old Mac) Crashed all of a sudden. I had accidentally shut it down using its switch (equivelant to pulling its plug) and now when I boot I get instead of a smiling mac icon at boot I get a Floppy disk with a question mark on it. I would have been able to resurrect it by using my system recovery cd's but When I inserted them and started up, once the desktop showed up I got a "Would You like to initilize this disk" message (sorry about spelling) for my hard drive. I pressed cancel, then I went to disk doctor. I opened it highlited my hard disk and clicked "repair". When the first test had finished it attempted to repair the errors it found, then it locked up. I had to cold restart my computer and do the process over. I did and when I went into disk doctor again it did not detect a HD. (note: the HD wasn't on the desktop during any of this time) I also checked for a Hard Disk with Drive Setup (The program where you initialize disks) and it didn't detect a disk eather.

Plz Help! Any would be greatly appreciated!

[Buzz]

Bad news I'm afraid.

It sounds like your drive is hosed.

No matter what may be wrong with a disks software if Drive Setup doesn't see the drive then there's only 2 things that could be wrong.

1) the drive has gone bad (as drives do) and is beyond formatting

or

2) you've got a loose connection to the drive or drive power inside the Mac.

If you can boot from a CD or floppy then #1 is most likely the scenario.

I hope you had everything backed up well.

[inertiascience]

... RU Sure, cuz this has happened in the past. My HD on occasion would dissappear(usually when I forget that im not supposed to shut it down by hitting its switch), but it would kind of heal with time. (ex. Im sick and tierd of trying to fix it one night, and the next morning it boots like normal. ) Wierd . I guess that wont happen again. But do know why Disk Doctor crashed so suddenly? (I was using the one on the OS9 CD, (I have OS X for another mac) mainly because I thought the most recent version would solve my problem and also because I didnt have an earlier boot CD at the time). Couldn't it have been DD that crashed my HD instead of age? (although age seems a good possibility (the dusty box it only 8 yrs old )). Thanks for the reply though.

[Zodraz]

Every hard drive evermade will fail, it's just a question of when.

DD could have crashed if the old drive had a "mechanical" failure during the scan.

Or the outermost sectors of the disk(s) that hold the directory data could have finally failed to respond to being written to, or just have gotten too corrupted for the hardware to know what to do next.

There is a slight chance that after sitting a while, (a few days) it might respond. I've had "dead" drives revive (temporarily) if left on over night. (just turn your monitor off.

I suggest that if you need any data off that drive to have it set up with a network connection, or other media to download your stuff. Because if it comes back, it maybe for the last time.

Did you try doing the command "M" (search all busses) in Disk Doctor?

Also newer is not always better for old hardware. You could try copying DD onto a floppy and then boot the 5300 with a similar vintage "system" CD.

Another thing to try is NOT to repair the disk, but just recover it (use Norton's Disk recover). You'll need a network connection or another drive to do that. If that works I suggest you only try to recover your documents, and not any applications as they could be corrupted.

Good Luck!

[Steven.Bentley]

May be worth a PRAM zap - reboot it with apple, option, P and R held down

[inertiascience]

Yep, It's dead. I tryed the pram zap and was able to get an initilization message again. When I tryed initilizing it, it said there was defective media. Can I just replace the HD? If so, where can I find one and how do I do it.

[Buzz]

Well the 5300 needs a SCSI hard drive. A SCSI drive is going to cost you more than a modern ATA drive. Also, you might want to stick to less than 8GB in HD size just to avoid potentional problems. Older Macs had problems booting from a hard drive unless the system folder was contained in the first 8GB of data. You can partition a larger drive to get around that, but if you're unfamiliar with partitioning it may be wise to just avoid it and save some money by getting a 3, 4 or 6gb hard drive.

As for SCSI drives you can get them from a great many places one the web.

http://www.powermax.com/storage/hd_scsi.html

http://www.powermax.com/specials/blowouts/storage.html <-- 2gb SCSI for $30

http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x...g113/wag10013/

Here's an article with some very interesting reading on the x200 series (which the 5300 fits into).

http://lowendmac.com/tech/x200.shtml


As for replacing the drive, it's simply a matter of opening the case and removing the old hard drive and replacing it with a new hard drive. If you're not comfortable doing that, then taking the Mac to an Apple dealer would be wise.

[inertiascience]

Exactly what kind of SCSI Drive should I buy? Ultra, 50-pin, etc?

[Zodraz]

Try these places too.

http://www.pcliquidator.com/mac.htm

http://www.users.qwest.net/~jgarbacz/

http://www.refurbmadness.com/

You'll want a SCSI 2 (narrow, or 50 pin)

A wide-to-narrow (68 to 50 pin) adapter is available, but Shreve Systems prices them out at $79.00 which is an outrage. Plus, the drives will cost more because they are newer (unless you luck into a liquidation which I did at Warehouse.com).

I have had GREAT success with ebay in getting drives for my Macs. Picked up a NEW (old stock) 9GB Micropolis 7200 RPM drive with 30 day warranty for $30.00! BUT you gotta do your homework, and not get sucked into a bidding war.

Good Luck!