Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

surfer99

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 30, 2006
253
1
VA
First off sorry for the long post I just want to be as detailed as possible.So I recently ordered a new harddrive for my 60gb macbook becuase of space constraints. I decided to buy this harddrive https://eshop.macsales.com/Search/S...ok+Drive+with+8MB+Cache&x=0&y=0&Manufacturer= , which basicallly is a 160 gb from http://www.owc.com and swap this with my 60gb internal and use my 60gb internal that came with my macbook as my new external. After installing the 160gb harddrive into my computer it was never really working perfect. When ever I was downloading anything or transfering from my old 60gb (now)external harddrive the new 160gb internal would start downloading or transfering files ok but about half way through the 160gb internal harddrive would start to make a clicking noise and soon after my computer would just freeze up. I would shut it down and try again and it would seem to work ok...until I needed to download something again, this was about two weeks ago. But just recently I couldnt even get to my OS when I would turn the computer on. AllI would get was the blue screen with the apple logo and the spinning cirlce underneath it and then it would just shutdown. I hooked up my 60gb external to the computer and was able to get to disk utility through that. When I ran the first aid in the disk utility and ran the "verify disk" on the 160gb internal hard drive and I got this message... First aid falied, Invalived sibling link, the volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired, 1HFS volume checked, Volume needs repair. I then clicked on "repair disk" . When I did that I got half way through repair and then got this message...Invalide sibling link, volume check failed, error:the underlying task repair failure on exit, 1 HFS volume check, 1 volume could not be repaired becuase of an error. After this i decided to just erase the harddrive and start fresh since I have everything backed up on my 60gb external. So I erased everything and then ran the first aid. I was able to "verify disk" just fine so I didnt need any repair. After this I was able to download off the mac osx install cd and getmac osx loaded (with a hicup or two, i.e. half way through downloading it would make the clicking noise and then I restarted the whole process over again). When I finally got everything downloaded and got back to mac osx through the 160gb internal harddrive I plugged in my external, which it recognized and when I started transfering all my files over it would get about 1/4th of the way through the process it would start making the clicking noise again, so I shut down and restarted but it just did the same thing again. Does anybody have any ideas as too why this might be happening or what I can do? Once again so sorry for the long post and thank you so much for taking the time to help me out.
 

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
Okay, we really need you to use sentences and paragraphs.... :(

But let me ask this...your drive has a known bad logical structure (i.e. disk utility's repair disk tried and failed to repair it). It's quite possible that you have a bad hard drive, and it needs to be replaced.

However, first, you ought to try one or both of the following:

1) If DiskWarrior is available or you don't mind purchasing it, try that to repair the disk... you shouldn't expect good behavior from a disk with a logical structural fault.

2) If not, then reformat the disk before you try putting files on it again...

I'm even wondering... is it possible that the clone image itself has the logical fault in it, and you just keep replicating it back onto the new drive?
 

Deputy-Dawg

macrumors member
Aug 23, 2006
90
0
Well, I may be showing my age, but it sounds to me as if you have a bad or at least failing sector on the HD. Historically one would work arround such a problem by doing a low level reformat of the disk and "sparing" our the bad sector. That of course was the fix years ago when the price of a new HD was prohibtively high. I just did a quick look in two major software supply houses and could not find any software that would do that. I suspect with the price of a new hd being in the range of $1.00/gb (give or take) that simply replacing the drive is what would be done today,

In any event that clicking sound sounds to me like the disk head is seeking for a sector and can't find it, a sure sign of a failed sector.
 

surfer99

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 30, 2006
253
1
VA
Thanks so much for the quikc responses from everyone. I want to try to first reformat the disk, stupid question but how would I go about reformating? Also if this does not work could I also just return the hard drive claiming that there is something wrong with it and see if they will just send me a new one?
 

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
Thanks so much for the quikc responses from everyone. I want to try to first reformat the disk, stupid question but how would I go about reformating? Also if this does not work could I also just return the hard drive claiming that there is something wrong with it and see if they will just send me a new one?

If it's the boot drive, you must reformat it by booting off the install DVD. Boot off the DVD and then open Disk Utility from the menus, and click on the hard drive and use the right side of the window to reformat it.
 

Deputy-Dawg

macrumors member
Aug 23, 2006
90
0
Disk Utility does not, at least as I understand it, have the ability to reformat and spare out bad sectors. Indeed if you look at the documentation for Disk Utility it no longer uses the term reformat. It, instead, uses the term Erase and tells you that unless you use one of the security erase options all Erase does is rewrite the address information and sets the addressing style of directory (how the various sectors are assigned to clusters and how they are addressed etc). Security erasing the disk more nearly approximates the kind of reformat that I was discussing.

In a low level reformat of the HD each sector has a specific patten written to it allowed to rest for a while and then is re-read to see if the same pattern is recovered. If the sector does not read back the correct pattern it is generally re-tested (to insure that the error was not in the write process) and if it fails again it is considered bad and is "spared" out, that is it is either kept in a table of "bad" sectors which are never used (which reduces the over all storage capacity of the drive) are has one of a group of spare sectors on the hd mapped to its address (which generally slows down the access time of the hd). Neither of these effects are generally noticeable so long as the number of spared sectors is small.

As one further point of clarification when a drive is verified by Disk Utility the utility simply reads the data in the sector several times to see if it reads the same data back (bad sectors generally will not read back consistently). There is another method of verifying a HD were the sector is read, the data is written back to the sector and re-read. In principle this method should be non destructive to your data. But, as we all well know, any time you introduce the re-writing of data on the HD you always have the possibility of corruption of the data.
 

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
Mmm, I see. Thank you!

I do wonder, though, it may not be a bad sector per se, but just that the disk partition table and/or the partition's format are corrupt. In which case Disk Utility's erase and then re-establishing the partition map and erasing the disk would still help.
 

surfer99

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 30, 2006
253
1
VA
Update:eek:nce again thank you so much for the quick and accurate responses. I really do appreciate it. I just decided to "reformat" the drive and erase all and start fresh. So I did that and everything downloaded fine and as I was installing mac osx I was asked if I wanted to upload any data, so I did from my internal and it worked fine. I am on the computer right now and knock on wood everything seems to be working fine but im not convinced by any means that it will be fixed for good so we shall see. I think if it does happen again I will just look into returning it and seeing if I can get another one. Once again thanks to all.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.