Any experiences with Mission Repair? Girlfriend's computer crashed

[LawDog1180]

Okay, so my girlfriend's MacBook Pro crashed. Its a unibody from 2009 I *think* (not 100% on the year, but i'm pretty sure it is a 2009). We go to different colleges and she's been telling me about it making weird noises for a while. I told her she needed to back up all of her stuff to an external hard drive or flash drives, but she didn't. And now, on startup a question mark and folder pop up and flash continuously and it won't boot past that. I've tried all of the suggested trouble shooting (holding down C, and Option/R, etc) and i've tried booting from an installation disk all to no avail. I'm pretty good with using computers, but i'm no DIY repair man when it comes to them, but i'm pretty sure the HD is shot. I've looked into DIY kits and i'm fairly certain I could switch out HDs, but I'm concerned about the possibility that something more than the HD is messed up.

That being said, I'm seriously looking into Mission Repair for a diagnostic check and repair. Does anyone here have experience with MR? I'm a little hesitant to ship off her computer just anywhere. Ideally, I would replace it myself, but i'm just worried that it might be a bigger problem than I could fix.

Thanks for the help guys, and any help you can give me will win me some serious brownie points

 

[archimonster]

Give it a go

I have taken apart a few MBP's in recent history, and I want to encourage you to try it on your own. Its a little daunting to think about, but the walkthrough at iFixit makes it incredibly straightforward. The hard drive can be picked up at any best buy or similar big box, or order one offline. If you are trying to recover files and you think the disk might still read then get a 3.5" SATA to USB cable. It is about 30 bucks in a store or cheaper online. Then you can put in the new hard drive and plug the old one into the USB port to try to grab some files. In the past I have used Disk Warrior to recover a hard drive. The laptop is already out of warranty so it can't hurt to take it apart a little bit.

 

[mentalcase]

+1 on the DIY. It definitely sounds like a bad HDD. Pick one up and throw it in the machine. The install should only take 10 minutes and will save you a good amount of money.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

I had a similar issue with my 2009 MBP, and it turned out to just be the hard drive cable. If so, the data is still there, the drive just can't communicate with the logic board. Although if it's still the original hard drive, it's probably not a bad idea to change it out.

 

[gngan]

Okay, so my girlfriend's MacBook Pro crashed. Its a unibody from 2009 I *think* (not 100% on the year, but i'm pretty sure it is a 2009). We go to different colleges and she's been telling me about it making weird noises for a while. I told her she needed to back up all of her stuff to an external hard drive or flash drives, but she didn't. And now, on startup a question mark and folder pop up and flash continuously and it won't boot past that. I've tried all of the suggested trouble shooting (holding down C, and Option/R, etc) and i've tried booting from an installation disk all to no avail. I'm pretty good with using computers, but i'm no DIY repair man when it comes to them, but i'm pretty sure the HD is shot. I've looked into DIY kits and i'm fairly certain I could switch out HDs, but I'm concerned about the possibility that something more than the HD is messed up.

That being said, I'm seriously looking into Mission Repair for a diagnostic check and repair. Does anyone here have experience with MR? I'm a little hesitant to ship off her computer just anywhere. Ideally, I would replace it myself, but i'm just worried that it might be a bigger problem than I could fix.

Thanks for the help guys, and any help you can give me will win me some serious brownie points

Exact same issue with me 3 days ago.

I had my SSD died on me. Question mark on folder when boot up. Tried holding Option during bootup, reset PRAM and nothing worked. Tried Apple Hardware Test and it says nothing found. Tried Internet Recovery (Command R) and went into Disk Utlities hoping to repair it but it does not see the SSD.

Swap the original HDD back in and it was able to detect it. Did a fresh install and it works. Everything is working fine.

It best to put the HDD into an enclosure and plug it into another computer and see if it detects it. If it doesn't then it's very likely that it's dead.

 

[iPhonesandMacs]

used to repair macs for cash on the side in college, and I would definitely go to a computer supply store like Microcenter (if you have one nearby), or best buy and buy a 2.5" laptop drive (pretty cheap depending on storage capacity), and follow the instructions at ifixit like others have suggested.