dropped macbook - hardrive buggered?

[nicK]

a friend tripped over the power plug knocking over my precious macbook pro last week..
since, i've been booting into windows via bootcamp and have only now found out that i can't boot into osx at all..

there are a lot of important unbacked up files that i need so doing an 'erase and install' isn't an option to fix it.. for now..

i tried to repair the disk using disk utilty (from install cd) but it stopped halfway through and gave the below errors:

"Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit."
"1 Volume could not repaired because of an error."



the windows partition is booting and working, albeit a little slower than usual.. so i assume the harddrive isn't completely dead..

safe mode also doesn't work.. have i any other options?

monkeyfudge

So much for the MagSafe power adapter then.

Sad Professor

monkeyfudge wrote:

So much for the MagSafe power adapter then.

lol, indeed

OP, have you another mac you could connect it up to? Or an external drive to install osx on and then access the internal hd? See if you can get a hold of Diskwarrior, it might be able to save the disk. Either way you'll need to boot off something else as the install cd doesn't give you many options afaik.

And give your friend a good slap.

mikemac

I was looking through the preferences of my macbook and it has something called a "sudden sension monitor". Something like that.

The idea being that if the laptop falls, the hard drive cuts out so no damage is done.
If this feature is on your macbook pro, it obviously isn't working so.

Sad Professor

micmclo wrote:

I was looking through the preferences of my macbook and it has something called a "sudden sension monitor". Something like that.

The idea being that if the laptop falls, the hard drive cuts out so no damage is done.
If this feature is on your macbook pro, it obviously isn't working so.

That's a relatively new feature which is no guarantee in the case of a sudden drop. The macbook wouldn't even have to be on for the hd to be damaged.

ZENER

Isn't it possible to access the Mac partition from within Windows ?

MacDisk should allow you to "see" the files on the disk. Haven't tried it myself so just throwing it out there for ridicule . . .

ZEN

luckat

Maybe you should get a new hard drive?

Do you know the exact model of your MacBook? If so, go to www.xlr8yourmac.com and go down to the right of the homepage to find your model, and it will tell you possible hard drives to use with it.

Meanwhile, if you have another Mac available, I wonder if it might help to try looking at your drive from that, so it's not trying to run the system while you're looking at it?

This is how you do it: get a FireWire cable (your Mac probably came with one; if not, go to All Cables in Cork Street, Dublin). Shut down the sick little MacBook. Start up the other Mac (hereafter to be called the Big Mac).

Now plug the FireWire cable into both, and start up the MacBook with your finger on the T (for Target) key.

It should start up, probably with the screen black, and a Firewire image will show on the Big Mac's desktop. Click on this (on the Big Mac), and it'll show the contents of your MacBook's drive, and you'll be able to drag them in and copy them to DVD, or if you have a USB drive, to that.

monkeyfudge

luckat wrote:

Do you know the exact model of your MacBook? If so, go to www.xlr8yourmac.com and go down to the right of the homepage to find your model, and it will tell you possible hard drives to use with it.

It's a MacBook Pro. Not terribly easy to change the hard drive on them.

luckat

Sorry to hear it's hard to change the hard drive. Again, xlr8yourmac (which seems to be down at the moment but normally works) has guides to changing the drives on various models, as far as I remember.

ZENER

Just a thought . . . You mention Windows XP running slowly, have a look to see what memory windows says is installed. Right Click on the My Computer icon > Properties. Does this amount match what you bought ? It's a slim possibility that one of the memory modules has become dislodged with the fall. From experience Windows will be the first to complain of har disk errors during bootup meaning that if it's booting then the drive is probably not the culprit.

The memory modules are accessible by removing the battery. Just a thought.

ZEN

Oriel

Sad Professor wrote:

That's a relatively new feature which is no guarantee in the case of a sudden drop. The macbook wouldn't even have to be on for the hd to be damaged.

That's been on powerbooks for ages!
Why didn't cable break away from the machine? Did you see it happen?

[nicK]

eventually got access to the harddrive via macdrive (thanks zener) on windows and managed to backup most of the important data.. (the rest of the files were corrupt)

then ran disk utility again but this time it wouldn't even allow me to attempt to repair the disk..
the drive appeared red in disk utily and gave the error message something along the lines of: "your hard disk is failing, please backup important data"..

so it's the hard drive at fault and presumably it won't be with me much longer..

i'm wondering though, has anybody else had problems with their macbook pro hard drives?
are they easy to replace?
can apple take care of it?
will warranty cover it?
ahhh...

i suppose i'll have to wait until monday morning to see what they can do ..