iBook G4 hard drive failing, clone with SD ?

[bigp8472]

The HDD in my friends iBook G4 is failing. Sometimes the machine fails to boot, sometimes its fine, guessing mechanics by the grinding sounds when it doesn't work. Anyway, I bought a replacement 120GB drive and I have a document explaining how to fit the replacement (man that's a lot of screws!)

She cannot find the original OS disk (OSX) so I cannot set up any partitions that I see mentioned in other threads.

I have a 2.5" USB disk enclosure so I was hoping I could;

1. Boot from the G4.
2. Run some kind of disk repair.
3. Use SD to completely clone the disk to USB.
4. Replace the internal disk with the one from the USB enclosure and boot up.

On a seperate note I bought her some RAM as she only has 256MB. When I install the 1024MB stick are there any software changes to make ?

[dnanian]

That should work, but make sure your new drive is properly partitioned, using the partition tab in Disk Utility. The "Options" Button is crucial, and your partition type should be set to "Apple Partition Map".

In general terms, though, no promises: a failing drive is likely to generate errors, and we can't/won't copy damaged files. We're really designed to make copies before the drive fails...

[bigp8472]

Thanks for your help.

I have finished the work and it starts up fine. Everything appears to work ok.

The only thing I noticed was that during the clone SD said 309,434 files evaluated and 304,732 files copied.

Is this normal behaviour or has it skipped some bad files that may effect operation later ?

[dnanian]

Totally normal.