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macbook harddrive just failed... any steps to take before sucking it up & replacing?

T

threetimesdaily

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 30, 2010
39
0
i have a black macbook thats 5 years old (was)running snow leopard. firefox froze on youtube so i restarted my macbook.

i was greeted by gray screen with apple logo which turned into anti sign(circle with line through it) and then it turned into flashing folder with ? mark.

this pretty much guarantees that my HD is fried which blows bc i didnt back up anything.

apple wasnt much help, apparently they dont replace or sell hard drives, which sounds ridiculous because ive heard of many people having this happen, and apple replaced theirs for free.

sounds like i need to buy a replacement hard drive from best buy and replace it by hand.

does anyone recommend taking any steps that could potentially resolve this issue before i do this? apple told me to search their support site, but i havent found anything regarding this. ive also tried rebooting with the install dvd, but nothing different happened.

i find it strange that hard drives just fail when your mac freezes. shouldnt this only happen when you drop the laptop or something?
 
threetimesdaily said:
i have a black macbook thats 5 years old (was)running snow leopard. firefox froze on youtube so i restarted my macbook.

i was greeted by gray screen with apple logo which turned into anti sign(circle with line through it) and then it turned into flashing folder with ? mark.

this pretty much guarantees that my HD is fried which blows bc i didnt back up anything.

apple wasnt much help, apparently they dont replace or sell hard drives, which sounds ridiculous because ive heard of many people having this happen, and apple replaced theirs for free.

sounds like i need to buy a replacement hard drive from best buy and replace it by hand.

does anyone recommend taking any steps that could potentially resolve this issue before i do this? apple told me to search their support site, but i havent found anything regarding this. ive also tried rebooting with the install dvd, but nothing different happened.

i find it strange that hard drives just fail when your mac freezes. shouldnt this only happen when you drop the laptop or something?
Click to expand...

They wont replace your HD as your MacBook is 5 years old. Even if you had AppleCare, youd only be covered for 3 years. You can try holding the D key on bootup and running Disk Diagnostics to see if you can get anything out of it. HDDs fail all the time. In this case, it sounds like the cause of the freeze, instead of being caused by the freeze. You should just replace it, as even if it comes back, it needs to be replaced as it isnt safe to keep data on (since its failing)
 
is there any major reason to replace my macbook as apposed to just replacing the HDD? supposedly its pretty cheap and easy to do.
 
threetimesdaily said:
is there any major reason to replace my macbook as apposed to just replacing the HDD? supposedly its pretty cheap and easy to do.
Click to expand...

If performance was satisfactory, there's no reason to replace the computer. You could buy yourself a 250GB hard drive for less than $50, or if you want more space you could put a drive up to 750GB in it.
 
alust2013 said:
If performance was satisfactory, there's no reason to replace the computer. You could buy yourself a 250GB hard drive for less than $50, or if you want more space you could put a drive up to 750GB in it.
Click to expand...

ok great, this sounds like the best bet.

now just to be sure, is there any easy way to get files from this crashed HD? i tried holding D during reboot but nothing happened.
 
threetimesdaily said:
ok great, this sounds like the best bet.

now just to be sure, is there any easy way to get files from this crashed HD? i tried holding D during reboot but nothing happened.
Click to expand...

What you'll have to do is get an external enclosure or SATA to USB cable and hook it up as an external drive after you have replaced it, then use a program like DiskWarrior to get what you can off of it. I can't guarantee that it will work, as bad drives don't like to give up data. Also be sure to grab an external drive while you're at it and create a Time Machine backup. It will save you many headaches down the road.

If you're in the US, newegg.com is a great site to order from.
 
I'm in the same boat as you right now. my mac mini HD failed last year and I've since replaced it with a new one but I'm trying to get my info from my old HD to my new one via SATA to USB with diskwarrior running and it's been going on for 48hrs now. if nothing by tomorrow I plan on getting an external HD and use time machine and try it all over again.
 
This same exact thing happened to me, except I force quit when I was trying to repair it and now it wont load past a grey screen. Any help is greatly appreciated. I think I need a new HD, but from what my friend is saying it could also be a motherboard problem, since its just a blank screen. When I hold C and D, it spits my Snow Leopard disc out. My macbook was purchased in December of 2008
 
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