Am i SOL?

[LilSnoop40]

i have a MacBook that when i power it on a folder shows up with a flashing "?". i read that its either a bad drive/or cable or corrupt system files.  i need to get information off the drive. i pulled the drive out and put into another mac and had the same issue... am i sol? i heard a clicking sound on the hard drive once it was installed in the other mac.  like the sound makes when the drive is broke... please advise

[Guest]

All I can think of trying is buying an external enclosure so you don't need to boot from the drive. Just maybe, the files you're trying to recover will still be intact.

[Phantom Helix]

What version of OS X? do you have a recovery partition installed?

 

It MAY NOT be a hard drive failure at all, it could be the system startup drive selection got fuddled, or the NVram battery died

 

Do you have a DVD of OS X or a flash thumb drive with the installer on it? you can use it to reset the startup drivedrive

 

here are some tips from apple  http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1440

[LilSnoop40]

when i try to boot from the cd it won't boot... i power off hold down c and try to boot... nothing just the puff of smoke. no recovery partition that im away of

[The Evil Overlord]

Smoke? from the hard drive?

(I've never had one fail in smoke before)

But if you're about to answer yes, then I regret to inform you, the hard drive's toast

[LilSnoop40]

... not smoke from the hard drive... on the boot up screen when i hold down either alt or c it tries to boot from the dvd then after it doesn't you see what appears to be white smoke cloud about where the hard drive icon is... then it disappears.

[The Evil Overlord]

oh, my mistake, sorry

[Raa]

If the drive was/is clicking, the chance for a recovery is slim, at best.

 

Sorry. :(

[LilSnoop40]

yep that's what i thought. i ruled out it wasn't the hard drive cable in the mac that i took the hard drive out. i installed a new hard drive in the mac and then installed mac osx with no issues. from the sound i heard when it was in my other mac i think i am sol, but have an appointment at apple today to see if they can pull the info off the drive i need.

 

Thanks

[Brian M. Veteran]

yep that's what i thought. i ruled out it wasn't the hard drive cable in the mac that i took the hard drive out. i installed a new hard drive in the mac and then installed mac osx with no issues. from the sound i heard when it was in my other mac i think i am sol, but have an appointment at apple today to see if they can pull the info off the drive i need.

 

Thanks

 

How'd it go? I doubt they can do anything though.

 

When a drive starts clicking like that, there's normally no way out of it. You could try the freezer trick - I've had that work once for just long enough to get some data off.

[Astra.Xtreme]

How'd it go? I doubt they can do anything though.

 

When a drive starts clicking like that, there's normally no way out of it. You could try the freezer trick - I've had that work once for just long enough to get some data off.

 

This is exactly what I'd recommend.  

 

Put it in a bag with some rice (to prevent moisture) and put it in the freezer for a few hours.

Pull it out, put it back in your Macbook, and if you're lucky, it will come back alive for a little while.  Be aware that you need to backup your files ASAP if it works since this will only be a temporary fix.

[Shadrack]

A friend of mine had a PowerBook G4 that had a similar hard drive "clicking" issue years ago.  She needed to recover data from the drive, and I think she took it into an Apple Store or some repair place they all said she was SOL and that it would be super expensive to recover the data.

 

I used an external IDE to USB adapter and was able to recover the data on my Windows PC using MacDrive.  The only way I could get the data off the drive was if I physically held the drive and applied pressure to the end of the drive (slightly warping it from side to side) until i didn't hear the clicking.  It was fortunate that most of her data was small documents because it took several attempts to get each file off of the hard drive.

 

Now it is time for some Captain Hindsight:

 

 

Time Machine is an amazing feature and external USB drives are cheap.

[Phantom Helix]

Time Machine is an amazing feature and external USB drives are cheap.

 

 

Just do your self a solid and get a seagate barracuda for the external drive, sat away from Western digital's goofy external firmware BS

[DeadEndAccount]

Just do your self a solid and get a seagate barracuda for the external drive, sat away from Western digital's goofy external firmware BS

 

You can actually get rid of the external firmware (the built in applications) and reclaim the space. IMHO no hard disk vendor has a monopoly on producing perfect disks - the best solution if one is really paranoid is a NAS configuration along the lines of a Drobo 5N device with mirroring.

[Phantom Helix]

You can actually get rid of the external firmware (the built in applications) and reclaim the space. IMHO no hard disk vendor has a monopoly on producing perfect disks - the best solution if one is really paranoid is a NAS configuration along the lines of a Drobo 5N device with mirroring.

 

What im talking about is how the MyBook's store the partition map on the enclosure controller, if you remove the hard drive from that enclosure and connect directly to your SATA internal connection you will have to re-initialize the drive (re-partition) in order to use it.

 

and the VCD is also stored on the enclosure controller and you can not erase it only disable it with the Smartware software so there is no space to recover.

 

Not only that I have had nearly every external WD drive i bought over a 3 year period (6 total, 4 failed) have some major malfunction by the time they were around 1 year old, im guessing mostly because the enclosures do not have fans and drives themselves don't have a very good tolerance for heat.

 

I finally switched to Seagate externals, have not yet had a failed drive in 2 years, and even at retail price direct from seagate the externals are cheaper than the internals of the exact same drive so even if you need an internal its cheaper to get an external and rip it out of the exclosure, not always the case with WD