he blew up my mac

Orlaithc9

I have a mac laptop which is a few years old now. My other half bought a new recharger from ebay which came from China...when he plugged it into charge my laptop up the charger blew the socket up! Literally, there was smoke and black marks on the socket - the voltage unknowingly to my other half is different.

Now my laptop refuses to charge up or turn on.
What can be done? Where can I go to get it repaired?
Last time I had a problem with it I had to send it off to Denmark or somewhere like that and it cost a few hundred € :eek:

Any advise would be great.
I have a cv on my laptop I would really like to access :mad:

Cuddlesworth

First of all, its not worth repairing if its going to cost more then the laptop is worth. Secondly, recovering the file does not mean the Mac has to be on, any pc repair shop should be able to strip out the hard-drive and recover the data.

Orlaithc9

Great point cuddlesworth...thanks for the advice.
Im not too well up on technology unfortunately
How much should I expect to pay to strip down the hard drive?

seamus

If you're not going to replace the laptop itself, it's simply a matter of removing the hard drive and turning it into an external hard drive.

You can buy a case like this:
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=339051
You put the hard drive from the laptop into it, and when you get a new laptop, you just connect the external drive to the new laptop and you can access your data. You'd need to buy a Mac though a Windows laptop won't read the Mac hard drive.

Orlaithc9

Thanks Seamus....so i still need to get a mac to get into my files to get my cv....
wish i had a hard copy of my cv...im such a fool at times..:mad:

mach1982

No just turn the HD in a exteral one like above hook up any PC or MAC and you have access to your files

seamus

mach1982 wrote: »

No just turn the HD in a exteral one like above hook up any PC or MAC and you have access to your files

As far as I can tell, Windows (even 7) can't natively read Mac partitions, she'd need extra software for that. Though, it would be a good deal cheaper than a new Mac.

NothingMan

mach1982 wrote: »

No just turn the HD in a exteral one like above hook up any PC or MAC and you have access to your files

I don't think MAC uses NTFS or even FAT32 so an external hard drive will work but won't be recognised by a PC unless you reformat it NTFS, and if you reformat it you wipe all the data so....

david

Have you tried a genuine charger yet? I doubt that your mac is fried. I'd say the charger just blew.

If you discharge a macbook battery to a certain point it won't charge up at all. This happened to mine when I left my mac on sleep with 5% battery for a month last year. It's a standard apple warranty item thankfully.

If you have a tech-minded friend they should be able to retrieve your files. It's a 2 minute job with a firewire cable (No dismantling required - hopefully). I'd feel dirty paying a repair store 50-100 euro for this.

david

seamus wrote: »

As far as I can tell, Windows (even 7) can't natively read Mac partitions, she'd need extra software for that. Though, it would be a good deal cheaper than a new Mac.

I'm dual booting Snow Leopard with W7 (Runs like a champ btw). I can confirm that W7 cannot recognize stuff on the main OSX HD partition.

Overheal

david wrote: »

Have you tried a genuine charger yet? I doubt that your mac is fried. I'd say the charger just blew.

blew the socket up! Literally, there was smoke and black marks on the socket

The Charging Socket on the Laptop is toast. And who knows what else.

xsiborg

this-

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=339052

and this-

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

david

Overheal wrote: »

The Charging Socket on the Laptop is toast. And who knows what else.

Ah. I read that as outlet mains socket.

Orlaithc9

Sorry yes maybe I should have said the kitchen socket (2 gang white pvc thingy on the wall) was the socket that blew up as apposed to the actual mac charger....
I have tried it with the orginal charger aswell and still to no luck

bealbocht

I use an external hard drive (usb) between a laptop (with vista) and a mac.
I does work, but I do remember having to mess around with the formatting in the beginning to get it to work.
I dont remember what I did, but it might work for you with a window machine

Just, if you plug it into a machine(windows), and you get a message
"you must format this drive"
DO NOT DO IT,

cancle out of it and find a mac

slowlydownwards

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t46480.html

Blowfish

OS-X uses either UFS or HFS+ file systems, with HFS+ being the default. As mentioned another MAC/Linux/BSD system would be easiest to mount the hdd but if you are stuck with a Win machine, I've found this to work for HFS+, though not perfectly so YMMV.

Komplett: Marc

I'm using a Mac for a long time now and I've been using MacDrive to access HFS file systems from my Windows installs where necessary (I routinely wipe my Windows side and so have a lot of Steam install stuff etc. on my Mac side just being read from Windows).

I'd heartily recommend just cracking open the case and taking the drive out (it's easily done with the standard Macbook, just under the battery) and popping it into an external case. Then installing MacDrive and using it to poke through your drive until you've got your data back

partyatmygaff

The adaptor is at fault here, every laptop adaptor I have had accepts between 100-240V. What does the chinese adaptor say in regards to voltage?

Laptops in general run on between 12v-22v DC. I suspect the adaptor was faulty as laptop chargers should not be only able to work on 1 voltage.

In any case, I think the most that could have been damaged is the power supply on the motherboard and the replica adaptor. Its not worth fixing if the Macbook is pre-Intel.