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noatonement

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 27, 2011
54
0
My Mac froze and i did a force shutdown by holding the power button down.. when i went to reboot it just gets stuck at the loading screen with the apple and the spinning circle on the bottom.

I tried resetting my PRAM
I tried booting into safe mode
I finally tried booting while holding down the option key and then booting from my OSX disk.

It gets going up until i need to choose where to install OSX, it says examining disks and it shows my HD but i can't click it. After a few minutes my HD disappears and i can't choose where to install OSX.

I'm guessing my harddrive is completely shot?
If anyone knows how to fix this, that'd be great...if my harddrive being shot is the case...

Does anyone know how much it would cost at an Apple Store to get this fixed? (rough estimate)

Also if i purchased a new Harddrive and installed it myself, would this fix the problem?
 

noatonement

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 27, 2011
54
0
First you need to know what is going on.
Start in verbose mode and see what is going on: command + V

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1492

Can you run Disk Utility out of the other Volume?
Do you have a back up of all your data?

I booted in verbose mode.. is there any information you'd like me to provide? The screen is gibberish to me...

Also if i boot holding option and choose my OSX disk i can eventually get to my Disk Utility
 

McGiord

macrumors 601
Oct 5, 2003
4,558
290
Dark Castle
Using Disk Utility verify the disk and repair as needed, and also repair the the permissions. After that it might work well.
 

noatonement

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 27, 2011
54
0
I started it up as normal... and it now works... my next question is..

Is this going to be a common occurance now? Should i take it easy with my mac or can i go back to the same stuff i use to do?

Also would this mean it's time to upgrade the internals? (More ram.. different harddrive) or should i be good to go now?
 
Last edited:

McGiord

macrumors 601
Oct 5, 2003
4,558
290
Dark Castle
The forced shut down might had altered the disk structure (a software thing).
I think it will work OK after the repair with Disk Utility.
What you have to understand is why it failed the first time, and what was reported with the Disk Utility repair, knowing about those two things will help you have a better understanding if you neeed to do something else.
Be sure that you have a regular backup of all your data.
Upgrades are always welcome, if you have the funds.
Check the Console to gather details of the problems.

Give it a try for some days, and if you see new or the same issues, depending on what you see you can reinstall the OS.

Before doing the reinstall, you can create another user and boot from it, if everyhing works fine then it might be a software issue, but if the problem is consistent with any user it might be the OS or a hardware problem.

To check the hardware you can run Apple Hardware Test.
 

Steve.P.JobsFan

macrumors 65816
Jan 27, 2010
1,010
613
Columbus
To check the hardware you can run Apple Hardware Test.

+1'd. Hold the D key to boot to it. An ethernet or WiFi connection is REQUIRED to run the AHT. If AHT is not installed on your Mac, and it's running Lion, you'll boot to an internet-based version of the AHT.
 
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