Internal Hard Drive Help

[swadd1er]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone can help.

My early 2011 Macbook Pro decided to die on me yesterday. Whilst photo editing, lots of horizontal lines appeared on the screen and Macbook shut down. I turned it back on and signed in (with the horizontal lines still on the screen) the screen would go completely grey. Now, when I turn my Macbook on I get the Apple logo and a loading bar underneath then the screen goes completely blue.

Unfortunately I haven't backed up my hard drive where i have thousands of photos etc. I have removed the hard drive from the mac and have tried plugging it into a Windows pc and another mac using a USB to SATA adapter. The windows pc would identify the hard drive but even with downloaded programs such as Macdrive the drive wouldn't open. On the mac it just said it couldn't read the drive.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get the data off the drive? I know there are companies out there that can do this however they can be expensive.

Thank you

 

[Fishrrman]

Is this a 2011 15" or 17" MacBook Pro?
If the answer is "yes"... do you know what "RadeonGate" is?
If the answer is "no" ... then you'd better start reading up on it.

Essentially, the internal discrete GPU on 2011 15" and 17" MBP's fails (due to heat and solder failure and/or other reasons).
Apple WILL NOT repair these any more.
A 3rd-party repair place -might-, but just changing out the motherboard won't permanently fix it, because the GPU may just fail again.

There -are- ways to permanently disable the discrete GPU and run with "integrated graphics" only. There is a sticky thread about that here on MacRumors.

Your best option is to start shopping for a replacement.
(It just so happens that Apple has announced a new 16" MacBook Pro today with a [finally] improved keyboard)

Now... about the drive.
I recommend that you DO NOT attempt to hook it up to a PC unless you're sure of what you're doing.

It's possible to mount the drive on a PC (while still in Mac format) and access the data, but it requires special software on the PC side.

What I'd suggest:
Get one of these external enclosures (cheap):

https://tinyurl.com/y5ucqfaj

Put the drive into it, and you can now plug it into another Mac for access.

When you get a new Mac, you can use setup assistant (during the initial bootup and setup) to migrate all "your stuff" from the old drive to the new one.

 

[swadd1er]

Thanks for your response. I actually read up on RadeonGate yesterday and it does seem like that is definitely the problem.

Would an enclosure do a different job to a usb to Sata adapter? I plugged in the hard drive to a neighbours Mac using an adapter but it popped up saying it couldn't read the drive. Is there something we can do on his mac to get the hard drive to read and to transfer my data onto his machine then transfer to an external hard drive?

Alternatively, if I were to buy a second hand early 2011 Macbook Pro with the same spec as mine, if I were to swap the internal hard drive with the one from my Macbook, would it read? I could then sell both Macbooks once the data was recovered.

Thank you