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Is my 2010 13" MBP kaput?

C

carmidy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 21, 2010
20
0
In cold, cold South Dakota
A few months ago, my late 2010 13" MBP crashed out of no where. I was able to get into the disk utility and tried "Repair Disk", but no luck. Out of frustration (and haste) I ended transferring all my files to an external hard drive and formatted the drive so I could just start over and reinstall OSX. When I initially tried to reinstall, I'd get a 5-10 hour clock at the bottom of the globe and it would just stay suck half way through and then eventually shut down. Now I'm not sure how to proceed. I tried downloading OSX again last night and it seemed to be working. The download time was only 39mins, so I started it earlier in the night, did some things with the family, checked before bed and there were 2 minutes left in the countdown. It said that it would restart on its own so I decided to head to bed and finish everything up in the morning. Well this morning, the computer was off (plugged in, so it didn't die). I turned it on feeling hopeful, but got the "?" folder at start up again. Any ideas? I'd love to try to fix all this in house if possible. I live in the boonies in South Dakota. The nearest apple store is almost 3 hours away and it's not the best place to go.


Some other tidbits - I had whatever OSX was before lion when I purchased the MBP in 2010. I upgraded to lion via internet so I don't have an installation CD. Didn't bother upgrading to Mavericks yet because I already had it on my iMac and 90% of my work was done on that, so not a huge priority.

Also - I have 2 apple IDs. I don't know how I managed to do it. But over the course of the years I started out with 1 apple ID and as I got my new apple products (iPad/iMac, etc) I have been using a newer one. This MBP was originally under my old apple ID. To download the new OSX, I signed into my NEW apple ID to download Mavericks so I finally have everything on one acct again. Could that be part of the problem? I wouldn't think so?
 
If you get the ? folder you should check your startup disk.

I'm not sure if you can access this from the installation menu, but the way I did it is take out the hard drive, put it in an external USB case and boot it externally on another Mac. Once its booted up, you can select the startup disk.

You could also use Target disk mode if you have the right cables.
 
I'm willing to be your hard drive is on it's way out. If you have a spare lying around I would try popping that in and giving it a go with the OS install. You could even attempt it on an external (albeit that method will be rather slow).
 
@GhettoMrBob - :( I have been fearing this day!!! No spare. Any idea if it's worth starting over with a new drive or if I should just buy a whole new machine?

@Cloudsurfer - can't see that as an option from the installation menu. I have no external USB case, but maybe I can find someone who has one I can borrow. No FireWire here. I will ask about that too. Thanks for the ideas!
 
Depending on what HD size you want, the repair would be fairly cheap (much more so than a new machine).

If you decide to fix it, it's just a matter of installing the new drive and reinstalling the OS. Even SSD's go for around $100 these days for at least 128GB.
 
@GhettoMrBob - I went into my Startup Disk menu as Cloudsurfer mentioned, and when it asks me to choose my startup disk, there's nothing to choose. Do you know if that means my drive is completely destroyed?
 
carmidy said:
@GhettoMrBob - I went into my Startup Disk menu as Cloudsurfer mentioned, and when it asks me to choose my startup disk, there's nothing to choose. Do you know if that means my drive is completely destroyed?
Click to expand...

I'm assuming you're booted to an Install. And yes, if it's not seeing the drive that means there's an issue.

If you're booted to an install, try firing up the Disk Utility and see if your drive is detected that way.
 
Try highlighting the HD (250.06 Hitachi...) and selecting Repair Disk.

Should be in the lower right portion under the First Aid section. That should run through the drive and give you an idea if it runs into an issue.

Also, since it's saying OS X Base System, that's indicating that the install never really finished all the way....another reason it would be with the flashing ? mark. It's hard to say if the install failed or the HD is going bad without a little more diagnosis. Give the disk repair I stated above a shot and see what it turns up.
 
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