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Is it possible to brick a Mac?

R

ring

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 17, 2011
156
0
Hi:

I was watching a YT video with a kid showing people how to dual boot ubuntu on osx. He said something along the lines of "if you check this option you will render OSX unbootable".. And that got me thinking

- What if something went terribly wrong and your recoveryHD got overridden? Would you be able to fix your computer and get it to a working OSX state?

- Is it possible to brick a Mac? Make it un restorable via Recovery HD ?


- What would happen if the recoveryHD/Main partition got overridden? Is the computer screwed?

thanks
 
ring said:
I was watching a YT video with a kid showing people how to dual boot ubuntu on osx. He said something along the lines of "if you check this option you will render OSX unbootable".. And that got me thinking

- What if something went terribly wrong and your recoveryHD got overridden? Would you be able to fix your computer and get it to a working OSX state?

- Is it possible to brick a Mac? Make it un restorable via Recovery HD ?


- What would happen if the recoveryHD/Main partition got overridden? Is the computer screwed?
Click to expand...
What do you think happens when a hard drive dies? You put in a new hard drive, install Mac OS X, and you're running again. As long as the hardware isn't damaged, you're fine.
 
GGJstudios said:
What do you think happens when a hard drive dies? You put in a new hard drive, install Mac OS X, and you're running again. As long as the hardware isn't damaged, you're fine.
Click to expand...

How would you go about doing that if the recovery is fine? OSX USB?
 
GGJstudios said:
Did you read the link I posted? It answers your question.
Click to expand...

I think the link is saying if recoveryHD is working. I was saying what if some terrible senario happened and you were unable to access recoveryHD/any other recovery option


I don't understand this stuff -_-
 
ring said:
But i was saying what would happen if that was overridden (RecoveryHD) due to something going wrong?
Click to expand...

If you happen to encounter a situation in which you cannot start from the Recovery HD, such as your hard drive stopped responding or you installed a new hard drive without Mac OS X installed, new Mac models introduced after public availability of OS X Lion automatically use the Lion Internet Recovery feature if the Recovery HD (Command-R method above) doesn't work. Lion Internet Recovery lets you start your Mac directly from Apple's Servers. The system runs a quick test of your memory and hard drive to ensure there are no hardware issues.

Lion Internet Recovery presents a limited interface at first, with only the ability to select your preferred Wi-Fi network and, if needed, enter the WPA passphrase. Next, Lion Internet Recovery will download and start from a Recovery HD image. From there, you are offered all the same utilities and functions described above.
Click to expand...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
 
ring said:
oh ok thanks - I was worried that something could go wrong and me end up with a bricked mac
Click to expand...

Also, computers don't "Brick" in the sense that gaming consoles do. If there's a hardware failure that can't be fixed that could be comparable, but if you were to say accidentally format your drive, that's a super easy fix.


It would take extreme skill to "brick" a computer.
 
chrf097 said:
Also, computers don't "Brick" in the sense that gaming consoles do. If there's a hardware failure that can't be fixed that could be comparable, but if you were to say accidentally format your drive, that's a super easy fix.


It would take extreme skill to "brick" a computer.
Click to expand...

the reason I was asking is because the kid said "render OSX unbootable", and I thought if you can't boot = brick (with RecoveryHD not working and all)
 
ring said:
the reason I was asking is because the kid said "render OSX unbootable",
Click to expand...
Here's your first problem: Don't believe everything people tell you, especially when they don't know what they're talking about.
 
ring said:
the reason I was asking is because the kid said "render OSX unbootable", and I thought if you can't boot = brick (with RecoveryHD not working and all)
Click to expand...

Well what he probably means is that you would write over the Mac OS X partition. If that were to happen technically you couldn't boot to it but a simple reinstall would fix that. I understand what you mean though.
 
chrf097 said:
Well what he probably means is that you would write over the Mac OS X partition. If that were to happen technically you couldn't boot to it but a simple reinstall would fix that. I understand what you mean though.
Click to expand...

he mentioned that "using this option" would "install grub for linux" and "render your OSX unbootable"
 
chrf097 said:
Also, computers don't "Brick" in the sense that gaming consoles do. If there's a hardware failure that can't be fixed that could be comparable, but if you were to say accidentally format your drive, that's a super easy fix.


It would take extreme skill to "brick" a computer.
Click to expand...

You could put a firmware level password on the computer that the user doesn't know about or if you are the user yourself you could just forget it. To my knowledge, there is no way to reset a password at the firmware level. Combine this with changing some firmware settings on critical components before said password implementation and I'd say you've effectively "bricked" the computer. That being said, it would take someone well beyond the abilities of a normal or even pretty advanced user to do this.

Let me know if I'm wrong please! Although, I'm sure you would anyway =P
 
ring said:
he mentioned that "using this option" would "install grub for linux" and "render your OSX unbootable"
Click to expand...

GRUB is just a boot loader. You could still boot into OSX, but you don't want the GRUB boot loader because the only way to get rid of it is to reinstall Mac OS X.

Luvin said:
You could put a firmware level password on the computer that the user doesn't know about or if you are the user yourself you could just forget it. To my knowledge, there is no way to reset a password at the firmware level. Combine this with changing some firmware settings on critical components before said password implementation and I'd say you've effectively "bricked" the computer. That being said, it would take someone well beyond the abilities of a normal or even pretty advanced user to do this.

Let me know if I'm wrong please! Although, I'm sure you would anyway =P
Click to expand...

I keep forgetting that computers also have firmware, so yeah you're right. XD
 
Luvin said:
You could put a firmware level password on the computer that the user doesn't know about or if you are the user yourself you could just forget it. To my knowledge, there is no way to reset a password at the firmware level. Combine this with changing some firmware settings on critical components before said password implementation and I'd say you've effectively "bricked" the computer. That being said, it would take someone well beyond the abilities of a normal or even pretty advanced user to do this.

Let me know if I'm wrong please! Although, I'm sure you would anyway =P
Click to expand...

On most Macs, you can re-set a firmware password by changing the amount of installed RAM. Obviously, this wouldn't work on a MacBook Air, or newer MacBook Pro systems, which only Apple can re-set.
 
chrf097 said:
Also, computers don't "Brick" in the sense that gaming consoles do. If there's a hardware failure that can't be fixed that could be comparable, but if you were to say accidentally format your drive, that's a super easy fix.

It would take extreme skill to "brick" a computer.
Click to expand...

Years ago I found out the hard way that with certain Asus motherboards, removing the jumper that resets the CMOS while the machine is still plugged in bricks the motherboard. (Not turned on -- just plugged into the AC outlet.) Completely. Toss it out, or send it back to Asus, because there's nothing you can do yourself.

I'd better admit that the mobo manual explicitly said not to do that. I was careless.
 
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