Need to reformat a non-starting 17 inch

[fmpros]

Hi everyone.

I have a 17 inch MacBook Pro, pre-unibody, with 4 gigs RAM. Runs beautifully until last week. Suddenly an app (Preview) kept bombing so I restarted and upon restarting got a screen full of ominous text. I can access the Unix foundation with CMD S on startup and it runs Unix commands so I don't think the hard drive is damaged. Using "fsck" is does a few commands, then stops and states that 4,339 keys are out of order in the catalog? and that it can't rebuild macintosh hd.

I have the original disks (but now have been running snow leopard for months without any problem) but I can't get it to boot from the CD; it only acts like I held down the SHIFT key on startup. It shows a progress bar for a while, with the Apple logo on a white screen, then auto shuts off.

I've accessed the drive from my wife's MacBook and have backed up everything I need so I just want to get the darn thing reformatted.

Any tricks or suggestions for getting it formatted again? Thanks in advance for ANY help anyone can give. Greatly appreciated.

Bill O'Keefe
Frenel Solutions

 

[Hellhammer]

You can take the HD out and buy a hard drive dock plug it into your wife's MacBook and use Disk Utility to erase it. You could also try installing OS X to that drive with the MacBook and then put it back and see if it works

 

[fmpros]

Thank you, I will look into that. I tried Disk Utility from the secondary through a firewire and it says 1) "checking journaled HFS Plus volume", 2) "Checking Extents Overflow file." 3) "checking Catalog file.", 4) "Keys out of order", 5) "The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired. ERROR: Filesystem verify or repair failed."

With the CD in the failed Macbook the secondary will read it and ask to install Tiger (guess I'll have to upgrade again) but it says to restart to start install and makes me feel that it will try to install on the secondary rather than the failed drive.... don't need that!

Thanks again for any help...

Bill O'Keefe
Frenel Solutions

You can take the HD out and buy a hard drive dock plug it into your wife's MacBook and use Disk Utility to erase it. You could also try installing OS X to that drive with the MacBook and then put it back and see if it works

 

[Hellhammer]

Thank you, I will look into that. I tried Disk Utility from the secondary through a firewire and it says 1) "checking journaled HFS Plus volume", 2) "Checking Extents Overflow file." 3) "checking Catalog file.", 4) "Keys out of order", 5) "The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired. ERROR: Filesystem verify or repair failed."

With the CD in the failed Macbook the secondary will read it and ask to install Tiger (guess I'll have to upgrade again) but it says to restart to start install and makes me feel that it will try to install on the secondary rather than the failed drive.... don't need that!

Thanks again for any help...

Bill O'Keefe
Frenel Solutions

Did you try erasing it with the Disk Utility?

Sounds like the HD is just dead so just buy a new one and replace it and that should fix the issue. HDs are quite cheap, less than 50$ so I would actually skip the dock thing and just grab a new HD, install that and reinstall OS X.

 

[fmpros]

17" rebirth..

Well, doing an erase from the secondary since I can't get a drive tonight; see if that works. If I get in any trouble will probably just do the HD swap; gotta couple of Apple stores out here (probably cheaper on line though).

Thank you brother, I appreciate the help.

Bill O'Keefe
Frenel Solutions

Did you try erasing it with the Disk Utility?

Sounds like the HD is just dead so just buy a new one and replace it and that should fix the issue. HDs are quite cheap, less than 50$ so I would actually skip the dock thing and just grab a new HD, install that and reinstall OS X.

 

[Hellhammer]

Well, doing an erase from the secondary since I can't get a drive tonight; see if that works. If I get in any trouble will probably just do the HD swap; gotta couple of Apple stores out here (probably cheaper on line though).

Thank you brother, I appreciate the help.

Bill O'Keefe
Frenel Solutions

Okay, sounds fair. Also, repair permissions and verify the disk with Disk Utility (you may want to do this before erasing and then reboot).

Any 2.5" SATA drive will work so just go to the nearest store and grab one

 

[fmpros]

17" rebirth...

"Okay, sounds fair. Also, repair permissions and verify the disk with Disk Utility (you may want to do this before erasing and then reboot)."

Tried but it won't let me. Apparently when "keys" are "unordered" you are FUBAR.

"Any 2.5" SATA drive will work so just go to the nearest store and grab one."

Really!? How about a bigger one? Got a 250g in now but would really like something bigger (computer hard drive, that is.

Thanks,

Bill O'Keefe
Frenel Solutions

 

[Hellhammer]

"Okay, sounds fair. Also, repair permissions and verify the disk with Disk Utility (you may want to do this before erasing and then reboot)."

Tried but it won't let me. Apparently when "keys" are "unordered" you are FUBAR.

"Any 2.5" SATA drive will work so just go to the nearest store and grab one."

Really!? How about a bigger one? Got a 250g in now but would really like something bigger (computer hard drive, that is.

Thanks,

Bill O'Keefe
Frenel Solutions

You can get up to 1TB (1000GB). Larger than 500GB is easier to find from online so if you want 640GB, 750GB or 1TB, buy it online but smaller than that can be found from any decent electronics store.

 

[fmpros]

17" rebirth...

You can get up to 1TB (1000GB). Larger than 500GB is easier to find from online so if you want 640GB, 750GB or 1TB, buy it online but smaller than that can be found from any decent electronics store.

Gotcha, and just a simple install? The hardware will auto recognize? Also (sorry, drawing on your obvious experience), with a new or erased HD, on start it should see the CD and auto boot for an install from there? What about CD drivers, etc.?

Thanks again,
Bill O'Keefe
Frenel Solutions

 

[Nermal]

I have the original disks (but now have been running snow leopard for months without any problem) but I can't get it to boot from the CD; it only acts like I held down the SHIFT key on startup. It shows a progress bar for a while, with the Apple logo on a white screen, then auto shuts off.

You should be able to boot from CD, even with a dead hard drive. Just to check: are you holding Option at the boot chime?

 

[fmpros]

17" rebirth..

You should be able to boot from CD, even with a dead hard drive. Just to check: are you holding Option at the boot chime?

No, didn't know about that. Not getting a chime either. It's in the middle of the erase so I'll just wait for it to finish and give it a go. thanks for all the help.

Bill O'Keefe
Frenel Solutions

 

[Hellhammer]

Gotcha, and just a simple install? The hardware will auto recognize? Also (sorry, drawing on your obvious experience), with a new or erased HD, on start it should see the CD and auto boot for an install from there? What about CD drivers, etc.?

Thanks again,
Bill O'Keefe
Frenel Solutions

You boot from the DVD (hold down the option key) and select the DVD with arrow keys and press enter.

You should be able to boot from CD, even with a dead hard drive. Just to check: are you holding Option at the boot chime?

Good point. If you can't boot from the install disk, it's likely something else than just a dead HD. Try holding down the option key

 

[fmpros]

You boot from the DVD (hold down the option key) and select the DVD with arrow keys and press enter.



Good point. If you can't boot from the install disk, it's likely something else than just a dead HD. Try holding down the option key

Thanks again. Got it erased, found my Snow Leopard DVD and got in reloaded and I'm up and running. Thanks for the help!

Bill O'Keefe
Frenel Solutions

 

[Hellhammer]

Thanks again. Got it erased, found my Snow Leopard DVD and got in reloaded and I'm up and running. Thanks for the help!

Bill O'Keefe
Frenel Solutions

So no need for new HD? Nice! You were lucky! Enjoy it