HD failure... need help with recovery. Disk warrior?

[Jekblad]

I hear a ticking sound when i turn on the machine and get a blinking folder w/a question mark. Can't find the startup disk.

The ticking sounds says to me the disk is all effed up. I looked at some disk recovery solutions and they are about 300 bucks. I'd rather spend that money on a new drive and disk warrior, but i don't know if disk warrior can overcome a hardware failure, or how to know if that's the case without sending it in.

if the harddrive is physically broken can i attempt this method?

YOU MUST HAVE access to (2) computers (including yours) & an external hard drive (>100gig)
1. install Super Duper on the computer that you'll be doing the transferring thru
2. startup your laptop in "Target" disk mode and connect it to the computer that has Super Duper installed on it
3. it (your comp) will now be considered a "External" drive
4. plug in the other "external" (>100gig) drive) so now both your laptop and the other external drive are plugged in
5. copy over the material on your laptop's drive thru to the new external drive.
6. install another laptop drive into your laptop after the successful copy is now on the other (>100gig) external drive.
7. copy steps 2-6 but in reverse order so that now you're copying from the >100gig external to your newly installed laptop drive

thanks for any help guys, my life is on that machine. I tried doing online backup for 3 weeks and mozy.com made my machine run horribly slow on top of never being able to back up more than 2gb. I messed with it for 3 weeks and never got it to work. I put it off and now this. classic.

[mihai]

i can't help too much here aside from telling you that when i have issues like this i log onto irc and ask the folks on #apple, #mac, and #macosx on the freenode network for help. usually there's someone around to offer insight fairly fast.

[Jekblad]

i've heard of irc but i'm not up in that. I see that it's a chat client but i wouldn't know who to chat with..

[mihai]

you can install this extension for firefox as an irc client > https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/16

then you just join the network and channels then simply type in your question and someone/a few people will help you out. i say you try it, easier and more convenient than you might expect it to be.

[jeffplaysmoog]

Sounds like it could be a physical failure... this is not something that disc warrior can inherently fix, but it may be helpful... I would suggest putting the hard drive into the freezer for about 15 minutes before attempting this procedure (take it out of the laptop). You actually don't even need disc warrior, just take the HDD out of the freezer, hook it up, put the laptop in target mode (hold T at start up) and cross your fingers that it comes up as a readable drive in Finder... If that works just copy the files over to the other Mac and go about replacing the drive. Good luck.

[BoNGoMaN]

+1 for the freezer trick.

Clicking noises indicate a physical problem, data recovery software will not be of much use if the disk can't spin up.

Check this link out for some more detailed instructions on the technique.

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/0 ... -data.html

[Pitch Black]

The blinking question mark at startup can sometimes mean that your Mac has simply forgotten which system drive it should be booting from - i.e. looking for the "system" drive.

You might try starting up while holding down the ALT key. This will initiate a process where OSX searches for valid system drives. i.e. drives with an installed OS. Hold ALT down while powering up until you see a choice of drives/partitions/OS'es to boot from.

Not to say this might be your answer, but it should exclude it just being a "lost track of the boot drive" issue.

hope this is some help...

[Pitch Black]

data recovery software will not be of much use if the disk can't spin up.

Data recovery software, no... However, one of the techniques data recovery companies can use is to dis-assemble your drive, and load the drive platters on to another mechanism of the same drive model. In my experience this is the +/- NZ$1000 end of drive recovery, done in NZ by a company that does data forensic for the police... While it's nothing anybody wants to contemplate, it is possible, just sayin'.

Good luck to you Jekblad, I'd hate to consider what would happen if my system went down.

paddy

[Jekblad]

900 bones was teh quote i got for data recovery.
not gonna happen here.

here's the latest in teh debacle, turns out i HAD backed up to mozy, 40gb. Not the whole kit and caboodle, but better than nuthin

i just went and bought a new HD to put in teh machine, and now i can't get it to install. As in, i can't push it in all the way. WTF. I've installed one before and don't know what the problem is. This really sux though, i have a genius bar appt for two days from now. Really really lame. I messed with it all for awhile but made no progress, and i didn't want to break the friggin thing. i guess i just wait now. punch me.

thanks for all the ideas paddy, are you on twitter? i had a whole trouble shooting convo with some forum guys on twitter and we did all those things. def a mechanical failure.

[scientist]

i just went and bought a new HD to put in teh machine, and now i can't get it to install. As in, i can't push it in all the way. WTF.

happened to me:
1. is the drive right side up in that little aluminum piece? sounds dumb, but its really easy to get it wrong.
2. and: the hd slides in and out along little rubber channels. for me, one of the channels had rolled itself up and got jammed in the back of the bay...pair of tweezers = fixed.

[Jekblad]

ok i totally thought it could be something like this, but i couldn't see down in there enough. i didn't want to pull it apart and eff stuff up.

i look again.

[Hertz SM]

I would suggest putting the hard drive into the freezer for about 15 minutes

Must try this. Several HDs lying around here for the same reason. Click...click...no detection by OS. If it works you'll be invited for a drink.

[Jekblad]

2. and: the hd slides in and out along little rubber channels. for me, one of the channels had rolled itself up and got jammed in the back of the bay...pair of tweezers = fixed.

this is totally it but it seems to be crumpled up pretty good.

scared. can't see down in there etc

[Jekblad]

phew. got it. let's see if I can get the HD in there...

[Jekblad]

k now both of the little plastic black runners came off. suggestions?