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Dropped MacBook: Flashing Folder with question mark

L

laxexquis

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 1, 2010
20
0
Hello,

I dropped my BlackBook, and now when I start it up its stays gray screen for a little while, and then a folder with a flashing question mark comes up.

I researched it and it said to run off the restore disk and then run disk repair.

Well I did, and I got "Invalid Node Structure, Volume check failed. Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed."

Anyone know exactly what that means?

I even tried going in to single-user mode with CMD+S, but it didn't do it. Same with safe mode.

Could DiskWarrior help me or is my hard drive permanently damaged from the impact?

Do I have to erase and restore? Or will that not even work?

Thanks for your help,
John
 
yeah it sounds like you are toasted.

If you can hear the drive spinning and it's not making any crazy sounds, a diskwarrior run might help although for this particular situation i'd go with something like Data Rescue 3 by Prosoft.

Again, this is only if the drive isn't clicking and the heads are miraculously still working properly.

If it is making any strange sounds then you might as well consider it toasted. If you have any serious data on there that wasn't backed up, start looking into data recovery which will cost $$$$$$$$$$$$
 
Eddyisgreat said:
yeah it sounds like you are toasted.

If you can hear the drive spinning and it's not making any crazy sounds, a diskwarrior run might help although for this particular situation i'd go with something like Data Rescue 3 by Prosoft.

Again, this is only if the drive isn't clicking and the heads are miraculously still working properly.

If it is making any strange sounds then you might as well consider it toasted. If you have any serious data on there that wasn't backed up, start looking into data recovery which will cost $$$$$$$$$$$$
Click to expand...

Yea it defineitly is not making any strange sounds. It sound quiet and fine. If I listen closely I hear the normal sounds that a hard drive makes.

Could it really be possible that the cable got disconnected? Is it worth it to open it up?

Also, wierd thing, right after I dropped it (while the computer was in sleep), I opened it up and it worked fine, at least as far as going on Safari. Then I turned it off.

DiskWarrior says it repairs directory damage, is it even possible that dropping a MacBook could cause directory damage?

So which one Disk warrior or data rescue? And I had all my important documents saved on a disk image I made, are disk images recoverable with Data rescue?

Also, the wierd thing is in Disk Utility, it does show that there is a 250GB Fujusti hard drive connected with "Macintosh HD" under it.

Thanks John
 
What about going into target mode?

The only thing is that I encrypted my home folder, which is were all my stuff is, would that stop me?

And actually my stuffisin a disk image which is in my home folder and that disk image is password protected?

I guess my data is screw huh? Really not good! I really need it!
 
laxexquis said:
What about going into target mode?

The only thing is that I encrypted my home folder, which is were all my stuff is, would that stop me?

And actually my stuffisin a disk image which is in my home folder and that disk image is password protected?

I guess my data is screw huh? Really not good! I really need it!
Click to expand...

Data restoration service is very expensive, so if your data is THAT important, you may want to look into that.
 
Took it took Genius bar, only way to fix was reinstall Mac OS, lost everything, but what ever.

The hard drive clearly wasn't broken as I was able to reinstall Mac OS, so you think that DiskWarrior could have fixed it?
 
probably.

who knows.

I'd like to see something with the disk. Can you go to System Profiler (Option Key + :apple: Menu > System Profiler) then go to Hardware > Serial-ATA and take a look at your hard drive. What's the S.M.A.R.T status?
 
Eddyisgreat said:
probably.

who knows.

I'd like to see something with the disk. Can you go to System Profiler (Option Key + :apple: Menu > System Profiler) then go to Hardware > Serial-ATA and take a look at your hard drive. What's the S.M.A.R.T status?
Click to expand...

It's "verified."

Don't know what it means but sounds good to me and makes me think I could have saved my stuff with diskwarrior. :mad:

John
 
That happened to me a few months back... My mac frooze so I turned it off manually by pressing the power button... I had to reinstall the software and restore from a time machine backup. Everything is cool though.
 
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