Macbook Failed: Hard-drive I think

Thomas_S_Hunterson

My 16 month old macbook failed on me yesterday.

I had left it downloading a couple of isos and when I came back to the usual black screen it wouldn't wake. I turned it off turned it on and just got a grey screen (no circular loading thingy) and Intermittant clicks from the hard-drive which I think may be failing to spin up.

I've tried booting from the mac install disks, linux disks and none will boot, it just stays on the grey screen clicking away.

Anyone any ideas?

What are my chances getting it repaired by apple? I know it's out of warranty but presumably the statutory legislation will cover it.

Thanks

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Ok quick update, I eventually got it to boot from the install cd after resetting the PRAM and the Disk Utility doesn't even see the Hard-disk.

jpfahy

I don't think you'll get anything from Apple. Luckily replacing the hard disk is easy enough and you can avail of the opportunity to fit a bigger one. See:
http://www.macinstruct.com/node/130

If you order one from Komplett straight away you might have it before Christmas.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

I had the hard drive in the freezer today to see if i could get a few last minutes off it, no luck it just sounded even less healthy.

I think i'll try apple first, 15 months is really way too short for a hard-drive and I think some hdd manufacturers offer 3 year warranties.

I know apple are going to start spouting bull**** about the guarantee at me, so it could be a bit of an uphill struggle.

luckat

Ouch, sorry for your trouble.

For future ref, if you have a 2.5" SATA hard drive that you can use as backup, you can save yourself a lot of grief.

I got a 300GB 2.5" SATA hard drive (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/) from OWC so I could regularly back up my MacBook, whose drive is a 250GB one. (I think the one I got was about $89; to my shock and unpatriotic sorrow, FedEx have come back at me for $28 VAT and handling charge for transporting it.)

I also got a nice little $46 Firewire hard drive enclosure (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Macally/PHRS250CC/), so I can just plug in the enclosure and back up easily using Time Machine.

If the hard drive fails, I'll lose only a week's data (assuming I keep to my plan of backing it up every Saturday). All I have to do is swap the drive in the enclosure into my MacBook and get a new SATA hard drive big enough to use for backup, and I'm back in business.

The alternative is to have a Time Capsule, from which you should be able to pour your data onto a new hard drive, but that's a little dearer at €299 - http://store.apple.com/ie/product/MB276?mco=NTAyMzY.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Was on to apple today, they're sending me out a replacment, i got the impression it's a common enough issue (anyone who ordered a macbook around august 07 with a seagate hard-drive take note).

fitz

Did you have the Applecare warranty, or just the standard one Sean?

Thomas_S_Hunterson

fitz wrote: »

Did you have the Applecare warranty, or just the standard one Sean?

Just the standard one.

fitz

Exact same thing happened to me, I'm on the phone to them now trying to get a replacement too...