Hoping you guys can help me out with my current situation. I dropped my Macbook (aluminium oct 2008) and my hard drive is broken. I'm able to boot up from my snow leopard install disk and even after using disk utility and recognizing the 250gb standard hard drive when trying to reinstall OS X it starts for a few minutes but eventually fails every time.
I know that my Macbook uses a 2.5' inch hard drive and I've read online that you can swap the hard drive in a Western Digital Passport into laptops, I have a few questions about this though
1. Is this applicable to Macs and will the hard drive work in my Macbook?
2. I have some data on it already (pictures, movies, etc), will I have to format my drive before installing OS X Snow Leopard on it or does it format the drive automatically during the install process thus leading to my loss of data?
3. Can I install OS X on my external hard drive AS IS without information being deleted? this would be so I can use my macbook until my new 1TB external hard drive arrives in about a week or so, that way I can transfer the media files from my WD Passport and then format and install it as a brand new hard drive in my Macbook
4. Is my old 250gb toshiba hard drive which came stock with my Macbook any good? When I went into the apple store and even at home when trying to re install Snow Leopard Disk Utility recognizes the drive it just won't install OS X on it, does that mean that the drive is gone forever? or am I able to salvage it by buying a dock connector and using it for backup purposes?
5. I've been reading up on data recovery and it seems that there are programs that allow you to recover data, If all is not lost what free program would you recommend to recover my data? Haven't found much information on data recovery programs for Macs though as soon as I finish this post I'm going to search these forums for one. Also, I have access to a Windows PC, if I am able to recover my data at all would running a data recovery program on windows recover the data for my old Mac hard drive?
I know it's a lot of questions that I've asked but any help is greatly appreciated, even if you only have the answer to one or two of the questions. Thank you very much in advance.
I know that my Macbook uses a 2.5' inch hard drive and I've read online that you can swap the hard drive in a Western Digital Passport into laptops, I have a few questions about this though
1. Is this applicable to Macs and will the hard drive work in my Macbook?
2. I have some data on it already (pictures, movies, etc), will I have to format my drive before installing OS X Snow Leopard on it or does it format the drive automatically during the install process thus leading to my loss of data?
3. Can I install OS X on my external hard drive AS IS without information being deleted? this would be so I can use my macbook until my new 1TB external hard drive arrives in about a week or so, that way I can transfer the media files from my WD Passport and then format and install it as a brand new hard drive in my Macbook
4. Is my old 250gb toshiba hard drive which came stock with my Macbook any good? When I went into the apple store and even at home when trying to re install Snow Leopard Disk Utility recognizes the drive it just won't install OS X on it, does that mean that the drive is gone forever? or am I able to salvage it by buying a dock connector and using it for backup purposes?
5. I've been reading up on data recovery and it seems that there are programs that allow you to recover data, If all is not lost what free program would you recommend to recover my data? Haven't found much information on data recovery programs for Macs though as soon as I finish this post I'm going to search these forums for one. Also, I have access to a Windows PC, if I am able to recover my data at all would running a data recovery program on windows recover the data for my old Mac hard drive?
I know it's a lot of questions that I've asked but any help is greatly appreciated, even if you only have the answer to one or two of the questions. Thank you very much in advance.
