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Baffled with my macbook's sudden HD going out.

N

Nevpaurion

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 25, 2008
101
0
Seattle/Houston
Yesterday, I was just using my macbook (13 inch, 1.83 GHz, late 2006 model), and it suddenly just froze on me. I turned it off and when I attempted to reboot, it was stuck on the gray screen with the apple and spinner below it. After several minutes it finally went to what looked like a dos screen, (all black with white font) and proceeded to go on about "i have no name!" It then tried to restart sever al times but to no avail.

This is when i decided perhaps a OS X reinstall was in order. I attempted to do this but, it failed 2 times in a row. I then decided to completely wipe the hard drive, but oddly enough I can neither wipe it nor verify it, due to a "unable to unmount" error.

This pretty much has me stuck. I read something about kernel panics so I tried restarting with different RAM modules, but it did nothing.

This is the exact hard drive that the macbook came with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149054

Any help would be greatly appreciated because it's really starting to worry me now that all my options are seemingly gone except for buying a new hard drive.
 
I haven't tried the that hardware test. Basically since it attempted to reinstall the os but failed, ( i just used disk utility then went to the hard drive and clicked erase) Whenever I try to start the computer without the cd, it just has a folder with a "?" in the middle of it. EDIT: Is that hardware test from apple an actual CD that I need to insert? Because if so my computer never came with it, and I don't own one.
 
Sorry, that part was slightly unclear. It's part of the first system restore DVD that came with your Mac. Just put it in the drive and hold the D key down while booting.
 
Hmmm, I guess you can try repartitioning the drive in disk utility, instead of just erasing it. Or else you have to crack it open and mount the drive in an enclosure or something, to validate that it's the drive and not the controller....

(I assume the computer is out of warranty?)
 
Well now that I'm back in disk utility, it says "This drive reported a fatal hardware error to disk utility. If the drive has not failed completely then back up as much data as you can and then replace it with a working drive.
S.M.A.R.T. Status: FAILING"

So I'm pretty sure its my hardrive and not hardware lol. But then again my knowledge on these matters is limited.

I bought it in august 2006, and didn't have the money for apple care (it took me all summer to get the 1000 dollars for the computer itself lol) so I'm assuming the factory warranty is done with.

Where should I go from here? Buy a new hard drive for it?

EDIT: when i tried to repartition it earlier before it failed, it said it had an error attempting to repartition for the same reason that it wouldn't erase or verify, "unable to unmount disc"
 
A lot dead more these days ... which is why everyone says back them up.

People asked for quiet drives to replace the extremely noisy drives.

Problem was they sacrificed noisy and durable mechanisms for quiet less durable ones.

If the drives don't suffer mechanical failure, the heat of the new enclosures tend to cook the electronics.

And Nevpaurion, a lot of times the SMART status simply gives no warning.

A few hard system freezes where everything including the mouse stop and drive access. Then a flashing ? mark.

If you are lucky you might hear the drive begin to make the thermal recalibration more often (sort of a beeping sound).
 
Yes, I have noticed that sort of thing, as I was looking around, I saw alot of people having laptop drives fail. I honestly don't really care as to how loud the thing is, as long as it works well and for a long time.

Being an audio engineering student, I have had my share of back up your stuff, and in all honesty I really think it's super important to do so. I go by the, "if it's not in three physical places, it doesn't exist" rule.

All that being said, the only place this really hurts is the wallet :(
 
I don't have any suggestions about specific models (there have been some threads here, though, so perhaps search for those). As far as vendors go, Newegg is fabulous in my experience. :)
 
Nevpaurion said:
Great! I was looking to buy from them already. Thanks again both of your help :D
Click to expand...

Take the drive out, find the brand and see if you can enter the serial number into support site of the manufacturer; maybe you can get a direct warranty replacement as most HDDs have a 3-5 year hardware warranty.
 
I had the same issue and took it to an Apple Store to have a Genius look at the Macbook. I'd done the same thing with the 1st restore disk and the hardware test results showed nothing was wrong. I knew I had a bad drive and mentioned so when I took it to the Genius Bar. They verified that the drive was indeed dead and replaced it with a functional drive...sadly, I hadn't done a recent backup (but I did back up my user directory).

If the unit weren't under warranty, I'd have just put replace the drive myself (with a bigger unit too), but I can do that in another year when Applecare runs out.

I just wanted to mention that, in my case, the hardware test didn't detect a bad drive, yet when I went to the drive utility, it couldn't see the drive.
 
Yeah, same thing happened here, after a day, the hard drive was no longer even detected in the computer, I have since taken it out and am going to contact Toshiba tomorrow, (memorial day >.<) about their warranty.
They SAY that their drives that are 2.5mm have a 3 year warranty, and my macbook is only 1 year and about 10 or 11 months old. So hopefully they can send me a new drive that can hold me over until I can afford to buy something like a 120 or 160 gig.
 
Unlikely you will get Toshiba to honour a retail warranty on a manufacturer OEM drive. Commany, When a manufacturer sells the drives in bulk to Apple, Apple gets $ off the cost in exchange for Apple assuming all warranty liability, then Apple puts on their standard 1 year warranty to you the consumer. Toshiba has no liability to you for any warranty on this drive, as Apple is their customer, not you. Toshiba's 3 year warranty is only for drives purchased at retail by the end user.
 
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