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HELP! Macbook about to die

J

jkmakesmusic

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 10, 2007
32
0
nashville
alright, here's the deal. just around half an hour ago i was online and had no other applications apart from safari and itunes opened. all the sudden my macbook (1st gen) went completely unresponsive. i rebooted and it stayed on the white screen for maybe a minute, and then went to a blinking grey folder with a question mark in it.

the apple support site states that this means it can't locate the system files on any connected hard drives. in my case, i only had the internal drive connected at the time that this happened.

anyway, i have NO way of getting my files off of the macbook's internal drive. i know you can connect another mac via firewire and get the files off by using a key command to make one of the macs act as an external drive. the only problem is that i don't own another mac, and neither does any one in the house hold. i know some friends who do, but i wouldn't be able to get over to any of their places until later on tomorrow.

i have an external firewire drive, is there any key command that i can hold to make all the files in my internal drive automatically copy over to the firewire drive on boot up or anything?

i got this thing in june of last year without apple care (couldn't afford it), so i'm afraid i might be sunk...
 
When in June? It's June now, check your date and take it to the Genius Bar right away. You have one year of Apple Care.

As for getting your data, I would suggest getting with a friend who has a Mac, transferring your data to his/her computer, then transferring it to your external. Good luck and keep us updated!
 
i forget exactly when in june it was. i guess we'll find out today, haha. i'm taking it into an apple store. last night i put the install disk in and tried to do a disk repair, but it couldn't even locate the drive. i have a feeling it's dead....which means some 30 gigs of music are gone with it
 
jkmakesmusic said:
i forget exactly when in june it was. i guess we'll find out today, haha. i'm taking it into an apple store. last night i put the install disk in and tried to do a disk repair, but it couldn't even locate the drive. i have a feeling it's dead....which means some 30 gigs of music are gone with it
Click to expand...

You should be OK, since you have an external Firewire drive you were keeping all the data backed up.
Right?



Right?
 
wong. i used the external drive to record audio to.

anyway, i went to the mac store today and expecting them to help me, seeing as my macbook is not booting up. wrong. they told me to come back THURSDAY, as there were no time slots opened at the genius bar.

dont know about you guys, but at least with a pc or somethign you can take it to where you bought it and have them ship it out to get fixed. with this i have to wait until they can tell me what i already know.

anyway, i'm thinking about screwing it all and just buying a new hard drive to put in the thing and installing tiger on it. i honestly don't feel like dealing with a mac store any more than i have
 
Hook your Mac up a friend's, turn on yours and hold down the T key, making your hard drive a target for your friend's mac. Should appear on your freind's desktop as a firewire drive, and from there, ideally you'll be able to copy your stuff over ... granting s/he has a large enough HD.
 
that'd work great, expect not even my mac is recognizing the drive.

anyway, i took my macbook over to a local place here in nashville called mac authority. they told me they could service it under apple care at the store and turn it around in 4 days. i gave the guy a hug, ahahaha, they saved my butt.

he said, like i suspected, that my hard drive fried. basically, i'll have to reinstall all my programs, etc.. i also lost 40 some gigs of music. lame.
 
i'll give it a shot when they return the drive, right now it's in the shop. at this point i'm just thankful that it'll take 5 days to get it back fixed instead of the 2-3 weeks it'd take apple
 
Try turning it on and then leave it for like an hour, after a while it should find the volume and work.
I have seen someone post this as a succesful method to cure this problem,
I don't know what you would do after this, whether a format or disk repair but at the very least it should allow you in at least to deauthorise itunes accounts and other things that can't easily be done when viewing as a target disk) my method of curing it was to throw it back at apple (was within aboout 2weeks of purchase)

good luck, and sorry you've had this problem

Nick
 
oh man, you went to Mac Authority?

may I ask why when there's an Apple Store in the Green Hills Mall 5 miles away?

I once had a HD fail on an iMac, and Mac Authority charged me 200 dollars in labor, plus 90 dollars more than the going rate at the time on a 30 gb hard drive.

What's worse, they put a refurbished 4200 rpm hard drive in as a replacement for the stock hard drive, which was faster.

I wouldn't have known about that if 1 month later, the hard drive hadn't gone bad again. Took it in to MA and said "what's the deal with this hard drive failing if it's only a month old? Can I see this one replaced?"

That's when I figured out they had used a refurb HD, and a 4200 rpm one. They told me it was "Apple certified" to work with the iMac. I said "pfah. put one of those 60 gb 7200 rpm ones in there instead. According to my bill from last time, this 4200 30 gb model actually costs more than the one you have in a retail box on the shelf behind you."

Funny thing was, they were able to change out the hard drive with me standing there in about 20 minutes. The first time, they managed to spend 2.5 hours doing it (at 85 bucks an hour for labor). I guess when they aren't getting paid to do something, they can do it 5x "normal" speed.

If it were an isolated incident, that would be one thing. But it wasn't. The company I work for used MA for a while. Apparently it's common practice for them to charge 150 dollars plus labor for a refurbished piece of equipment that they sell a new boxed version of for 99 bucks. Forget the fact that their 99 dollar price is a good 30% higher than places like NewEgg.com.

I'm sure they'll be just fine filling out your AppleCare warranty request, as they just bill Apple for their time, not you. But don't be surprised if they try and pull a fast one on you. I would ask them to provide you with the model number and serial number on the replacement hard drive, which you can then verify on your own later. Also make sure they give you the "failed" hard drive.

And don't be surprised if they try and charge you for something that they do that AppleCare "doesn't cover."

ugh. MacAuthority. ugh.
 
Don't worry about getting the data off your fried HDD until after it's been replaced. You can get a usb -> ata3.5/2.5/sata adapter for about $20 and attempt to get back some of your data.

Of course it may be impossible, but if you're particularly concerned about what's on there it might be worth it.

People with dying HDDs have often talked of tossing the drive in a bag and then in the freezer and having luck retrieving the contents before it heats up. I have never needed to use this method, but if the drive is just going in the trash anyway, why not give it a shot.

And, like the annoying older brother who loves monday-morning-quarterbacking your life, use that external drive, another external drive, a shared mac or PC drive in another computer or optical media to back everything up. HDDs are fragile disks spinning around like mad, they will all die eventually, so keep all data of value in 2 places.
 
benpatient said:
oh man, you went to Mac Authority?

may I ask why when there's an Apple Store in the Green Hills Mall 5 miles away?

I once had a HD fail on an iMac, and Mac Authority charged me 200 dollars in labor, plus 90 dollars more than the going rate at the time on a 30 gb hard drive.

What's worse, they put a refurbished 4200 rpm hard drive in as a replacement for the stock hard drive, which was faster.

I wouldn't have known about that if 1 month later, the hard drive hadn't gone bad again. Took it in to MA and said "what's the deal with this hard drive failing if it's only a month old? Can I see this one replaced?"

That's when I figured out they had used a refurb HD, and a 4200 rpm one. They told me it was "Apple certified" to work with the iMac. I said "pfah. put one of those 60 gb 7200 rpm ones in there instead. According to my bill from last time, this 4200 30 gb model actually costs more than the one you have in a retail box on the shelf behind you."

Funny thing was, they were able to change out the hard drive with me standing there in about 20 minutes. The first time, they managed to spend 2.5 hours doing it (at 85 bucks an hour for labor). I guess when they aren't getting paid to do something, they can do it 5x "normal" speed.

If it were an isolated incident, that would be one thing. But it wasn't. The company I work for used MA for a while. Apparently it's common practice for them to charge 150 dollars plus labor for a refurbished piece of equipment that they sell a new boxed version of for 99 bucks. Forget the fact that their 99 dollar price is a good 30% higher than places like NewEgg.com.

I'm sure they'll be just fine filling out your AppleCare warranty request, as they just bill Apple for their time, not you. But don't be surprised if they try and pull a fast one on you. I would ask them to provide you with the model number and serial number on the replacement hard drive, which you can then verify on your own later. Also make sure they give you the "failed" hard drive.

And don't be surprised if they try and charge you for something that they do that AppleCare "doesn't cover."

ugh. MacAuthority. ugh.
Click to expand...

ouch, talk about a horror story. i went to mac authority because the apple store in green hills refused to even talk to me until thursday. i couldn't afford to do that, because i have some work that needs to get completed before i leave town for a week on the 23rd. mac authority gave me a 4-5 day turnaround time. i bought my macbook from them, so i figured it was worth going there to see if they could help. i'll see how things go.

volvoben, i'll give that a shot.

Passante, yeah, tried doing all of that. couldn't locate the drive itself.
 
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