[P1] new iBook problem...

[Mike Beede]

On Friday, May 2, 2003, at 23:22 US/Central, Brian Pearce wrote:

>> ...Yesterday I put the 'book to sleep for a few hours while I ran 
>> into town and when I came home and lifted the lid she started right 
>> up . THEN after about 30 seconds I get this loud whirring sound. 
>> What's that? I don't know.
>
> Assuming you don't have a CD in the tray, this is probably the hard 
> disc. Offhand, I'd venture a guess that some part is heating up with 
> use, expanding, and creating friction with a spinning component of the 
> drive.

There are no spinning components of the drive outside its case.
If something _internal_ to the drive's case is making any noise
you can describe as "a loud whirring," it is probably almost dead.
Back up whatever is near and dear and get ready to send
the machine back for a new disk.  If that's the case, I'd try
to negotiate a bigger disk "for your trouble," even if you have
to pay a little for it.  Replacing the disk in my iBook with
a 40GB one cost me $140 in labor.

I thought there was some way of doing a nondestructive surface
scan with Disk Utility, but a brief check doesn't show one.
Perhaps another list member can suggest a way to do that.  If the
disk is actually to the point of making noise, it would probably
show some errors.

Harking back to Brian's comment, maybe something is contacting the
fan.  Even a light touch could give the "card in the spokes" effect.
People more familiar with the iBook than I may be able to say whether
that's possible or not.

I see no reason to assume it has anything to do with the memory, but
you just never know.  Maybe it will never happen again.  In
that case I vote for your husband playing a prank on you.  Those
PC guys are like that.  Good luck.

Regards,

	Mike