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megarot

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 3, 2012
2
0
Hello everyone.

Well here are my woes. I know they've been heard similarly before because I've looked for a few hours already pulling up forum threads and other bits I can grab from the internet.

I was upgrading my Leopard running early 2008 Macbook to Snow Leopard on USB. I've updated my other computer but left this one alone for a long time. Now I want to go up to Lion. Anyway...

My Macbook would see the recognize the USB but it just would NOT boot into Snow Leopard install - I reformatted the USB, did everything to prep. Even created a CCC. So since it wasn't booting I read someone's brilliant advice on another forum to use safe mode while booting. So that's what this dummy did. I selected my USB in my Startup Disk and then held down the shift while booting up.

FAIL.

Now I can't get my computer to back up. I've followed the Apple and Mac Rumors help guides as far as I can. It goes to the apple logo and the spinning wheel then after 15 - 30 seconds it just completely shuts down. I've done SMC reset, PRAM reset (which by the sound of the start up was successful), Safe Boot (again). I tried booting into my external harddrive with the Carbon Copy Clone (that created the circle with line through it), switched USB's that I'm booting into etc. I am in another country and my installation disks are safely packed up home so I dont have them to try out.

Sssooo.. At this point I'd like to see if anyone has any idea's.
 
How can I figure out if my hard drive took a dump and I need to replace it? I can get it done I just need to see if I can find out if it has to be done.
 
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