My 17" MBP has decided it wants to take eternity to start up?? any suggstions

[honisett2002]

Help!
I have a mac book pro 17", yeah its a bit old, but well looked after. I have not had any problems with it. Have Maverick installed. However today it as playing up trying to log onto the internet, so I went to restart it - however it is now prehistorically slow. The grey screen appears with apple logo and and a booting bar underneath but its take almost an hour to boot to my password and login page. I input my password and try to log in but I get the loading circle and also the beach-ball where the cursor was and nothing happens.
I restarted with access ti disk utilities and fixed the drive, nothing doing there, same thing happens. So rebooted again and used the panel to install the os system, again restarted and nothing!! just hours on the grey screen a with apple logo and booting bar, which has basically stopped half way through.
I got nothing now? can anyone help me??? Please feel free to email me? I can't work and am in real trouble!!

 

[Chundles]

Your HDD is dying.

 

[honisett2002]

Oh poop - that does not sound good. Should I stop trying to get the fella to boot up and take it to a mac store instead to see what can be done. I need the stuff off there!!

 

[yjchua95]

Oh poop - that does not sound good. Should I stop trying to get the fella to boot up and take it to a mac store instead to see what can be done. I need the stuff off there!!

Just buy an SSD to replace the dead HDD, and a USB enclosure to recover data off the dead HDD.

 

[Joelburman]

Yeah Time Machine it and put in an SSD.

 

[honisett2002]

Just buy an SSD to replace the dead HDD, and a USB enclosure to recover data off the dead HDD.

Solid state drive is that? however can't timemachine it as it simply won't start at all now, just stuck on the booting bar. What's a USB enclosure? Think I need to take to someone! thanks for the ideas everyone.

 

[yjchua95]

Solid state drive is that? however can't timemachine it as it simply won't start at all now, just stuck on the booting bar. What's a USB enclosure? Think I need to take to someone! thanks for the ideas everyone.

Yup, solid state drive. They're lightning fast.

 

[cjmillsnun]

OK this is important.

Do not try and start it any more.

The drive is dying. To preserve as much as possible do not use it until you're ready to get the data off.

An Apple store will charge you the earth (unless you still have AppleCare). But even then, they will most likely just tell you you've lost everything.

Find someone independent nearby, and explain to them that the drive is dying and it won't boot. Ask them to fit a new drive (or better still an SSD) and if there is any chance that they can get the data off for you.

In future please backup. Apple give you time machine for that very purpose.

There are 2 kinds of drive...

Those that have failed, and those that will fail at some point. You've just learned that the hard way.

 

[jsagurton]

You should be able to handle putting in the SSD on your own. It's very straightforward.

Do you have a recent Time Machine backup? If you don't, you can try doing a fresh install on the SSD and putting the old drive in a USB enclosure (also very straightforward, and they're cheap) and trying to copy files (most important first), although if the drive isn't booting it's unlikely you'll be able to retrieve them (certainly worth a shot though, especially given how cheap enclosures are).

Edit: You can also use a Linux LiveCD if you're reasonably familiar with Linux to do basic browsing, e-mail, etc for the moment, although I wouldn't try accessing your HDD, so as to preserve what little life it might have left.

 

[Joelburman]

You should be able to handle putting in the SSD on your own. It's very straightforward.

Do you have a recent Time Machine backup? If you don't, you can try doing a fresh install on the SSD and putting the old drive in a USB enclosure (also very straightforward, and they're cheap) and trying to copy files (most important first), although if the drive isn't booting it's unlikely you'll be able to retrieve them (certainly worth a shot though, especially given how cheap enclosures are).

In total agreement with this post. Good luck!

 

[Samuelsan2001]

One post ...

You should be able to handle putting in the SSD on your own. It's very straightforward.

Do you have a recent Time Machine backup? If you don't, you can try doing a fresh install on the SSD and putting the old drive in a USB enclosure (also very straightforward, and they're cheap) and trying to copy files (most important first), although if the drive isn't booting it's unlikely you'll be able to retrieve them (certainly worth a shot though, especially given how cheap enclosures are).

Edit: You can also use a Linux LiveCD if you're reasonably familiar with Linux to do basic browsing, e-mail, etc for the moment, although I wouldn't try accessing your HDD, so as to preserve what little life it might have left.

by the OP said oh HDD that sounds serious, they haven't seemingly got a back up and they were unsure what SSD menas. What in any of that makes you think they have they technical know how and confidence to open up their laptop and change to an ssd??? Yes I know it's easy, yes it can be done with a screwdriver but if you are a complete tech novice thats not so easy especially if the original drive is dead and they need to get and load a new OS.

Suggesting they take it to an apple certified repair store seems the best option in this case..

 

[jsagurton]

by the OP said oh HDD that sounds serious, they haven't seemingly got a back up and they were unsure what SSD menas. What in any of that makes you think they have they technical know how and confidence to open up their laptop and change to an ssd??? Yes I know it's easy, yes it can be done with a screwdriver but if you are a complete tech novice thats not so easy especially if the original drive is dead and they need to get and load a new OS.

Suggesting they take it to an apple certified repair store seems the best option in this case..

It's a handful of screws and swapping a plug out (especially in his case, since cloning the hard drive almost certainly isn't an option). There are guides/YouTube videos that go through it step by step.

While generally I would agree, he/she has nothing to lose here so long as they follow a guide for swapping the drive. Apple is certainly not going to attempt any data recovery service for them, and will charge an arm and a leg for swapping out the drive, and will replace it with another HDD anyway, so the huge speed benefits that could be seen from an SSD wouldn't be there either. An authorized repair center might be willing to do those things, but will still charge him a premium, and the physical process of swapping the drive is very basic, installing a new OS via Internet Recovery is very basic, and installing the old drive into an enclosure and attempting to copy files off of it is fairly basic.

Ultimately the decision on him trying it himself or not lies with him, not either of us. My vote is that with the resources available online he should be able to handle it on his own.

 

[Joelburman]

It's a handful of screws and swapping a plug out (especially in his case, since cloning the hard drive almost certainly isn't an option). There are guides/YouTube videos that go through it step by step.

While generally I would agree, he/she has nothing to lose here so long as they follow a guide for swapping the drive. Apple is certainly not going to attempt any data recovery service for them, and will charge an arm and a leg for swapping out the drive, and will replace it with another HDD anyway, so the huge speed benefits that could be seen from an SSD wouldn't be there either. An authorized repair center might be willing to do those things, but will still charge him a premium, and the physical process of swapping the drive is very basic, installing a new OS via Internet Recovery is very basic, and installing the old drive into an enclosure and attempting to copy files off of it is fairly basic.

Ultimately the decision on him trying it himself or not lies with him, not either of us. My vote is that with the resources available online he should be able to handle it on his own.

In total agreement, switching drives in cMBP's are a walk in the park compared to mac minis. Its just a waste of time and money to hire someone to do a drive change on this one.