hard drive issues

[jmdeegan]

seems for me, when it rains, it pours...

lost a hard drive on saturday. just decided to give up the ghost, no warning. only consolation being, it was/is a surfing laptop, no critical files. just a pain in the rear.

so i pulled out the original 120gb drive that i'd replaced many moons ago. cleaned off the items that were on it, reformatted, dropped it in and attempted to do a clean install. last night it was telling me it was going to take 5+ hours, which i thought was crazy high, but i cancelled and figured i'd run it all day today so i could watch it. doing that, it got stuck on the snow leopard install at a point saying it would complete in four hours, 20 minutes. sat there for a couple hours before i cancelled the installation and figured i'd try again. accept that now, whether its internal or in an external enclosure, this once fine drive now does not show up at all. not in disk utility, not under windows storage management, not in data rescue or anything else i've tried thus far.

so.... i guess there are 2 questions, maybe more....

1-is it really possible that this drive decided to die on me now? after having no catastrophic HDD deaths in my many years, i guess i was due for one...but two?

2-did something during the attempted and cancelled install of snow leopard hose the drive? if so...is there anything i can do?

3-assuming the drive might be toast...since it is only 2 years old, even with apple care expired, is there any longer warranty on the drive? i know many other hard drives ive bought have carried 3 or 5 year warranties, so i wasn't sure...i checked the hitachi site and it appears there isn't a valid serial on the drive (so i assume all goes through apple)...would they still replace a kaput drive?

thanks for the help

 

[pdubak]

1. Anythings possible.
2. Again, it's possible. An OS install is going to write to that drive doubletime and give it a good workout so that would be a good time to experience problems. Try putting the drive in another computer if possible. Are you sure the first drive is definitely dead? There is also a cable that goes to the logicboard and the ATA Bus on the logicboard.
3. Your right on no help with Applecare and your not going to be able to replace it through the manufacturer if it was bought through Apple.

Some good news.. Drives are cheap these days as long as they're not not solid state

Edit: I reread your post and see you may have tried it in a different machine. Only sure way to find out is to test with a known good drive.

 

[jmdeegan]

i hadnt thought or considered putting either into my macbook pro....but the possibility does exist. tho, having it in 2 different USB enclosures, which are known good...i figure thats the same test, more or less

i was going to grab a new drive for like 60 bucks, obviously not terrible all things considered, but i was hoping to avoid it. the macbook, as i said, is just really a surfing machine now, my 3 year olds get to play on it (not much, my wife and mother in law swipe it a lot as its better than my wifes 10 month old dell).

the first drive is definetly toast. it was a 320gb drive, and now it goes through anything showing up as a 2TB drive with zero data on it. never ever even heard of that before...and WD said ship it back for a swap.


i just hate waiting....and i dont think i need to drop a 320gb drive back in this machine if its only going to do firefox/safari, some itunes and maybe a little iphoto use.

 

[pdubak]

I can say that Macbook original drives are horrible and I replace them left and right. Thank god they are easy to replace.

I wouldn't recommend swapping drives in your MBP unless you have the tools, you know what you're doing, and it's out of warranty. It does sound like you have two dead drives though. Get a new drive, and hope it's only that.