Invalid Volume Header

[Myst420]

Hey everyone,

New to the forum here. Let me start off by saying I'm a pc guy, so macs are still a little foreign to me (I'm learning though)

I'm helping out a friend of mine with her Early 2008 macbook pro. It won't startup (I just get the grey apply and spinning wheel). I have booted into recovery mode (command-R) and run the disk utility. When I attempt to repair the volume, I get error:

Invalid Volume Header @ 0: incorrect block type
Invalid Volume Header @ 248880819712: incorrect block type
disk14 is not a CoreStorage volume
Error: Storage system verify or repair failed.


Now, a little back story. Her laptop originally wouldn't do anything but spin the cd drive and the led would go dim. I'm not a mac guy so she took it to someone else who thought it was the HD, and connected it to their mac to verify this (not sure what method they used), but they said it was ok.

They couldn't figure it out so she brought it to me. I determined she was victim to the gpu issue of this model, and was able to fix that by baking the logic board.

The first time I booted it seemed to be ok, until I tried to open any app, it would just bounce. Finder wouldn't even open a new window for me. After restarting it, it won't even boot anymore.

Thanks in advance for any help!
Mike

[Darth.Titan]

Sometimes a paid disk utility suite like DiskWarrior can repair disk errors that Disk Utility cannot, so that might be worth a try. If you don't want to buy it, a complete format and reinstall should do it.

That being said, it sounds like the HD is starting to go south.

[Myst420]

Would there be a way for me to backup her data before formatting? She doesn't have any backups.

[MathiasMM]

Originally Posted by Myst420

Would there be a way for me to backup her data before formatting? She doesn't have any backups.

Another Mac and a Firewire cable will enable the computer to boot into target disk mode, where it's basically an external hdd. This may be how the mac friend tested the hard drive as well.
otherwise, getting the hdd out and putting it in an external enclosure could be a plan...