Super Bad Luck Hard Drive *********

[Charley Silver]

Hi all.

I'm new here but have lurked occasionally just for the odd tip and hint which have certainly not gone unappreciated. But I'm going through a real hard time with my MacBook Pro 13" Unibody (2009/10) which I've had no problem with. Ever. Until now...

Initially, I experienced the dreaded Question Mark Folder of Doom when booting up. I saw that a good way of diagnosing some problems with this was to place the drive into an enclosure and boot from the USB. So, I went out got an enclosure - a Dynamode. So, whilst going about the business of removing the HDD, I wanted to check if I'd get a reading one last time... So, I adjusted the hard drive cable, plugged it all back in, screwed the case back on turned it on and hey presto - it booted fine! Then I checked again. It didn't boot. I adjusted the cable and it worked fine gain. Looked through my files and everything looked tickety boo. So, I saw that it was the cable that was to blame. But not wanting to have to take everything apart every time I needed to boot up, I thought I'd just run it from the enclosure until I got a new cable. It all worked fine.. for a day. Yesterday, I got the Apple Logo loading bar and involuntary quits. I'm booting from a OS X usb stick now and under disk utility it tells me I have an HDD that it cannot repair. :-( (Keys out of order, block count issues etc...). I realise I'm probably gonna have to invest in Disk Warrior as I'm only partially backed up but I'm wondering how this happened and perhaps if it's something that anyone here has experienced.

I was so depressed last week when I thought I'd lost my HDD. But then to get it back and then have it taken away again was just another slap in the face.

I'd appreciate any help, advice, guidance or general condolences.

Thank you.

CS

 

[Weaselboy]

Sounds like a classic story of a bad hard drive.

It does seem like in the last year or so there have been more and more of these cable failures also. While you are in there doing surgery anyway, I would just replace the cable too. I think they are about six dollars.

 

[Charley Silver]

Thanks. Yup. Hard Drive is bad by the looks of it. But is it just bad luck that the cable AND the HDD went bad at the same time? Or are enclosures a little flighty at the best of times anyway? And could placing the HDD in an enclosure have been the CAUSE of, or contributed to, the disk becoming shintied?

I'm gonna be replacing the cable - they're a little more expensive in the UK by the way :-(

But thanks a lot for your speedy reply, dude.

CS

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks. Yup. Hard Drive is bad by the looks of it. But is it just bad luck that the cable AND the HDD went bad at the same time? Or are enclosures a little flighty at the best of times anyway? And could placing the HDD in an enclosure have been the CAUSE of, or contributed to, the disk becoming shintied?

I'm gonna be replacing the cable - they're a little more expensive in the UK by the way :-(

But thanks a lot for your speedy reply, dude.

CS

Nah... putting it in that enclosure to test would not hurt anything. You just have a bad drive. I am just thinking given your symptoms it would be a good idea to replace the cable at the same time while you are in there.

 

[Charley Silver]

Bad hard drive. And bad luck.

Bad kharma.

:-(

 

[Fishrrman]

Get a new SSD and put it into the laptop.

Boot from the external if you can (old HDD in external enclosure).
(Aside -- I realize it's late for you to be learning this now, but this is why a savvy Mac user ALWAYS keeps a SECOND bootable drive around)

Install a CLEAN COPY of the OS onto the internal SSD.

Reboot from the internal, create a "temporary administrative" account.

Using that temp account, install whatever software updates you wish.

Now, use Migration Assistant to migrate over your account, apps, data, settings.

Result should be an up-to-date OS with all your stuff "in place".

At this point, you can re-initialize the old HDD. I would run Disk Utility's "repair" function on it about 5 times. If you get a good reading EVERY time, I'd consider the old drive "fixed enough" to serve as an external backup (since you didn't seem to have one before, any backup will be better than none).

 

[Charley Silver]

Thanks. A great excuse for me to get an SSD now! Every cloud and all that....

 

[Weaselboy]

Reboot from the internal, create a "temporary administrative" account.

Using that temp account, install whatever software updates you wish.

Now, use Migration Assistant to migrate over your account, apps, data, settings.

This will cause problems and should not be done.

Assuming OP's current account is the only account on the machine it will be USERID 501. The new temp account on the new install will also be USERID 501. When you use that account to import with Migration Assistant is will see the existing 501 and assign (change) the OP's real account to USERID 502. This will cause permissions problems in the migrated account.

You can read more about it here.

If one chooses to do a OS reinstall, the time to run Migration Assistant is as part of the system setup routine at then end of the install. This will avoid any USERID conflict.