Mac Clicking But Won't Start. Help!

It sounds like your hard drive has died. This is repairable (cheaply, and you can do it yourself), but it is very likely all data on your hard drive is lost.

buy a new hard drive, your hard drive is dead.

goMac said:

It sounds like your hard drive has died. This is repairable (cheaply, and you can do it yourself), but it is very likely all data on your hard drive is lost.

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goMac is 100% correct. Your mac is posting the bios (apple logo, searches for an OS, HDD clicks showing no data...mac shows the folder with a question mark as it cant find an operating system to boot from)

Easy fix, I 2nd what goMac says. Get a new hard drive and let the mac pro live on!

Doctor-Obble said:

How do they die? And is the data lost because it dies or because I put in that damn Install Disc the wrong way? And how do I fix it cheaply?? Sorry...I don't know much about computers.

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They can die because they simply get old as they are filled with moving parts (disc platters, reading arm, etc, etc..)

If you have some important information on the dead drive that you cant lose it can (most likely? Depends on how it failed but thats beyond what I know) be recovered by someone who does data recovery in your local area. I imagine some of the computer shops can do it. Ive never had it done because I keep everything backed on up separate drives/computers.

See what others say as well.

Doctor-Obble said:

How do they die? And is the data lost because it died or because I put in that damn Install Disc the wrong way? And how do I fix it cheaply?? Sorry...I don't know much about computers.

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They die just because they get old. It has nothing to do with the install disk, just an old drive. It's why you should always keep backups. In my experience, drives usually die around the 4-5 year mark.

You'll want to buy a new 3.5" SATA hard drive from any tech retailer you'd like. You can pop open the side of the Mac Pro, and pull the hard drive from bay 1 (there are four bays along the top.)

Here's a guide:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Replacing+HDD/13270/1

You will have to use the original system disks to reinstall everything from scratch.

Data is lost because the hard drive died.

More than likely, the hard drive died this way...hard drive consists of several metal platters, like cd-rs or dvd-rs. They spin incredibly fast and each platter has a super-fast reticulating arms to read the data off each disc. The arm failed, and dropped into the platter whilst spinning fast.

It's a cheap fix...just buy a new hard drive. But all of the data on the dead hard drive is gone unless you want to fork over some serious dough, like several hundred bucks an hour to reconstruct the drive and it's no guarantee that you'll recover everything.


If you put the install in the wrong way, nothing will happen.

Doctor-Obble said:

I'm sorry, I know I ask a lot of questions but I just want to be clear on a few things. Would my improper use of the Install Disc--that is inserting it without pressing "D" or something else--cause any data left on the hard drive to we wiped out?

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No.

Doctor-Obble said:

If not than I WOULD like to try to get the data off because there ais a bunch of original art and some photos I would like to save.

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The clicking noise means the data is likely already gone. It was probably gone before you even tried using the disk.

At this point, your only chance for recovery is probably a company like Data Savers, but it won't be cheap:
http://www.datasaversllc.com

In the future, make sure you keep good backups.

Your hard drive is dead. I have 3 or 4 laying around that are dead when I had my Mac Pro.

Sorry man but get another one and re-install the O/S.

Doctor-Obble said:

How do they die? And is the data lost because it dies or because I put in that damn Install Disc the wrong way? And how do I fix it cheaply?? Sorry...I don't know much about computers.

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They're precision high-speed devices and they just wear out after a time. The manufacturer specifies the approximate number of operating hours they're good for. It's usually a good idea to replace a drive when it has the manufacturer specified number of hours on it - even if it's not dead yet. There are little utilities you can get that will tell you how many operational hours your drive(s) has accumulated.

The data is probably lost. Recovery is a PITA and often not worth the effort. But you DO HAVE a fairly recent backup right? If there's stuff on there you're going to sorely miss you might give recovery a shot tho.

Buy a new HDD. (I recommend either the Seagate 0.75TB 7200RPM SSHD or if you want a bigger drive any of the 1TB per platter models:

• One Terabyte.
• Two Terabytes.
• Three Terabytes.
  
  These four options represent the fastest slash cheapest slash most reliable options currently available. In a month or two it may be different but for now those are it. ),

Install OS X fresh on the newly installed drive or recover from your (Time machine?) backup if you have one, and then place the broken drive back in the system. Research here or other places on how to recover the data from it. It can often take days or weeks to recover tho. Then again it IS possible that it all just comes back in a simple 10min. operation too - it just depends on what's broken. As others have said however, clicking usually signifies complete unrecoverable failure (short of spending a lot of money for a specialty service to do it). And.. if you're going to use such a service do not try and recover anything yourself as it's entirely possible even probable, you will make it worse in the process of doing so.

BTW, this has nothing to do with Apple branded computers being good or bad; it's just the way hard drives are. It sounds to me like your chugging little Dell is overdue and it WILL eventually fail... so as a precaution I would check the uptime hours on it as well and replace if needed!

Doctor-Obble said:

The Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB seems less expensive thyan the Seagate Barracuda 1 TB HDD. What am I missing? Isn't more storage more expensive?

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1 TB is 1000 gigabytes, so the 1 TB drive has more storage than the 750 GB drive.

Doctor-Obble said:

I have very outtdated versions of iPhoto, iMovie HD and PhotoShop. Will they still be installable on the MAC with the new Hard Drive? I don't know if there's an expiration date on that software. I'm not trying to be funny here...

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You should be able to reinstall everything as long as you have the disks.

Doctor-Obble said:

Yeah...sorry, I meant that the Seagate Barracuda 1 TB HDD is less expensive than the smaller one. That's what confused me.

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Right... the 750GB (0.75TB) one includes 8GB of NAND memory and acts more like an SSD than a HDD. Watch the videos at the Amazon link or have a read here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-sshd-ssd-hybrid-drive,21369.html Press-release-ish
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/momentus-xt-750gb-review,3223-7.html Comparison.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/momentus-xt-750gb-review,3223.html Speciic Review.

Anyway so yes, those are about 2x price per GB over rotational (only) media at the moment. But that's still better than the 10 to 12x price per GB one has to pay for full SSD.

And they speed up your machine considerably! It feels like a different machine for the first few weeks of use - till you get used to it.

The 1TB, 2TB, and 3TB drives I linked are the fastest (rotational only) drives currently available (with the exception of expensive specialty drives like the Velociraptor) in those sizes because of the unique combination of rotational speed, large cache, and high 1TB per platter density. The 6Gb/s interface may help a tiny bit too. And the Barracuda line is known for lasting out their warrantee period and then some. They also just happen to be among the most inexpensive for those sizes as well making them the one ring to bind them all. It's nice when it all just comes together like that - rare too I might add.

R.I.P. hard drive.....

Doctor-Obble said:

Tesselator: You are WAYYYYY too advanced for me. I don't know NAND from SSD from HDD! But OK! I'll scrutinize those links (thank you) and try to educate myself! To be honest I’ll probably just break down in the end and save up some $$ and then go to the Apple store and ask ‘em to install a new Hard Drive. I know it will cost me an arm and a leg and maybe another leg too but that's what dolts like me have to do! I’ll wait on getting the old data off for now. God I already miss my iPHOTO!! By the way is Tesselator something from Doctor Who?

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Oh sorry...

NAND is a kind of non-volatile (solid-state) memory.

An SSD is a "hard-drive" entirely composed of such memory (Solid State Drive - SSD)

An HDD of course you know and is what you have in your system at present (Hard Disk Drive as opposed to a Floppy Disk Drive FDD). It's "rotational storage" usually with a little bit of volatile RAM acting as a cache (buffer).

volatile means it loses it's contents when the power goes off and non-volatile means it stays - and at present companies estimate that it stays for around 100 years or something silly like that.

Anytime you see NAND, PRAM, PROM, EPROM, SSD, SSHD, HDD, Platter Density, and other silly computer science terminology you can usually just type it into your search box with "wiki " in front and read the 1st sentence or two (from Wikipedia) to understand what's being talked about.

Solid State technology is set to replace rotational media but currently it's still too expensive. I guess in 6 to 8 years when R&D costs die down some we will finally see the complete replacement of rotational media devices. So this is something to kinda know about as you continue your journey through userdom. The SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive) I mentioned marries the two (rotational and SS) media types for a best-of cost/performance scenario.

Don't go to the Apple store for this!!! You will pay double or triple and also get an inferior (slower) drive! Installing a replacement drive yourself is less complicated than tightening the hinge on your spectacle frames! In fact the most difficult part is ordering the drive through Amazon or another on-line shop.

Nope, not Dr. Who... tho I am a bit of a Who fan. Part of my career path led me through being a Computer Graphics artist producing models and animation like you see in Toy Story and Monsters Inc. Tessellation is a term part and parcel of that industry and I turned it into a personal noun for a screen name about 16 or 18 years ago.

Like Tesselator stated install it yourself

http://computer-hardware.wonderhowto.com/how-to/install-sata-ii-hard-drive-mac-pro-254229/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_xGaTmz2Kk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96NRCmxK100

Toooo many vids showing how

Doctor-Obble said:

Wait a minute…if the new hard drive I put in isn’t an Apple component will the computer still run like an Apple?

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Yep. A hard drive is just a hard drive. It's just dumb storage.

Doctor-Obble said:

Isn’t the SSHD also the OSX or Operating System???

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No. Hard drives are blank. When you get the new one, you will have to install OS X on it (part of your restore cds you got with the machine.)

Please do yourself a favor and backup your new drive once the OS, applications and data are installed. There are a couple of free (and really good) backup programs to clone (backup) your new drive.

Search for SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner for the links. If you purchase another drive, you can install it in one of the other drive carriers in your Mac Pro, or an external drive for offsite storage.

Anyone not doing this is living on borrowed time. It is only a matter of time when you will need to recover from a disaster such as a drive failure.

Re: Software for backups of the boot drive.
I've tried them all.
The only one I've found that actually makes a backup that retains all of the copy protection etc. is CopyCatX.
Obviously this requires that you are using the drive on the same machine.
I can boot from a CopyCatX clone and everything works just like the original.
Great software!