Apple continues to investigate iBook startup/disk damage reports; seeks help from iBook owners with this symptom

It looks like Apple is very serious about investigating recent reports of startup and disk corruption problems with the iBook (see previous MacFixIt item). This Tech Exchange posting from Apple's John Phelps asks for help from iBook owners with this problem: We are continuing to investigate the issue being reported here on the boards of iBook disk corruption. This is where the iBook starts up with a "Flashing Question Mark" icon, starting to the System CD does not mount the internal hard disk (it does not show up on the desktop), and Disk First Aid reports damage it cannot repair. The only fix is to reinitialize the drive. We only want reports from computers suffering this exact symptom. If Disk First Aid "Repaired" damage or if the drive shows up when you start to the CD, you have something else happening, and simply need to reinstall system software. To aid this investigation, we would like Apple System Profile reports generated on the computers suffering from this issue. Send the report to ibookinfo@apple.com. Do not send other email to this address, your message itself will not be read, only the enclosed report.