Bad HDD?

My 2007 intel dou core iMac is running VERY slow. I have run the DU from start up and it shows that the S.M.A.R.T. working and the drive is verified. I also ran the repair disk, found 1 prob and fixed it and ran repair permission. I ran the AHT from start up and it shows a "4mot" (I may not have that correct) but it relates to a HDD fan so I downloaded a SMC fan control and bumped up the speed of my HDD and processor fans. I went back to start up and reloaded OSX Mountain Lion from Internet. I also replaced my 2gb ram with Apple 4gb. I am doing this post on my iPad because trying to type on the iMac takes forever. The pin wheel of death is everywhere.

The 4MOT AHT message means there is an issue with either the HDD fan or HDD itself. Does SMC fan control, or iStat Pro if you have it, indicate that the hard drive fan is not working properly?
Download SMART Utility which will give you more insight into the health of the hard drive.
See this FAQ on dealing with the pin wheel.

Similar Messages

DV2000 has a bad hdd that won't power up

This DV2000 i'm working on has a bad hdd that won't power up & used a usb device to clarify the issue.
Shouldn't the system bootup to bio's even though the hdd is gone?
Worked on alot of desktops & I know they should boot to bio's so you can set the hdd to auto.
This thing now won't even bootup to the bio's, just a black screen with all light's lit up on keyboard & on front.
It beeps 2 short beeps (very low beeps). No loud annoying beeps like i've read on here & the support site.
I'm pretty sure it's not a overheating gpu issue.
Hooked it up to an external monitor & stll won't show a screen as long as I entered the right keys.
Thank's for any comments you might have.
David
[Title edited for clarity.]
HP Pavilion D2346C Seagate 500 gig 7200 rpm 4 gb FoxConn socket 775
Compaq Presario laptop CQ57 Windows 7 64 bit 4 gb's ram
Compaq Presario F700US Windows Vista 64 bit 2gb ram.
Being old is no fun at all!
Home based computer repair business PCTech Inc.

First thing, see if it will boot into the Recovery Partition: Hold down Command R at restart.
If it boots up there, then it's likely that the hard drive has failed, or simply doesn't have a working system.
If it doesn't boot up there, then it's likely to be some other part of the hardware.
If it is the hard drive, then this can be replaced. You can find videos showing you how to do this on sites like ifixit.com.
Then you can just restore all your data from your backup. You do have a backup, right?

HT1750 bought a used iMac with bad HDD and I have a external HDD but it wont let me reinstall the os until it is registered to me

I bought a iMac with a bad hdd but I have a external hdd. I wanted to reinstall the OS on the external but it would not let me because I am not the registered user. What can I do as I do not have the original user info?

You can go to the Mac App Store from another Mac and purchase Mountain Lion while logged in with your Apple ID. It's $19.99 US. After that you can just sign in at the re-install screen with your AppleID and password and it will verify that you did purchase it.

How to retrieve data from a bad HDD off of a L755?

I have a L755-S5162 Satellite. Recently the HDD went bad.
It is a Toshiba 640gb SATA drive.
BIOS won't see it at all, nor will the BIOS of my desktop when I conenct it to the desktop.
When connected however, it sees power and I can hear it spin,
but all it does is "click" or "tick" for a little while; then nothing...
All I need is to "zombify" it for a little bit to get at least some of my data off of it,
so any ideas on how do I go about that would be greatly appreciated!

L755-S5162 Satellite
Maybe this one?
Satellite L755D-S5162
1. Possibly it is still accessible as an external drive using another computer. To do that, you would mount it in an enclosure. If it's still not accessible, sometimes this freezer trick works.
2. If the above fails, the Ontrack people can recovery almost anything, but it's very expensive.
-Jerry

Help Rehabing a old iMac with a bad HDD

I inherited an original, tray loading, iMac, built in 9/98. We used it here around the house for dial up web surfing till about 5 years ago when the HDD went bad. I don't remember the specific errors it gave, but as I recall from my research at the time it was clear it needed a new drive.
At this point, I'm trying to rehab the machine for an elderly relative. She's recently moved from a home where they provided computers for the residents to one where they do not. She'll be dialing up and using the machine for email and very light surfing.
I have an old 60gig Western Digital Enhanced IDE hard drive that I'm given to understand is compatible with the iMac. Is this true?
The problem is I've long since lost the software for the machine if I even had it to begin with.
What I need help with is identifying and obtaining a start up disk that will allow me to format and build the HDD far enough that I can take it online to download any other software I need through my network here at home.
Can I download and burn such a disc from PC? Will I have to buy an OS and software or is this sufficiently old that it can be had for free?
Dell Windows XP Q re: iMac Rev A. HDD

The Hard drive will work, but in the installation process, make sure you format the drive with one partition smaller than 8GB and put your system on that volume.
There is information here on swapping drives.
You should really buy an OS9 disk available here. They aren't free, and I recommend OS9 'cause 9 is about as ancient as you can go for net connection these days. You can check eBay for a grey machine-specific disk for your iMac, but beware. A lot of folks don't know what they are selling. Personally, ... I'd buy a universal OS9.2.1 disk.
David

Good or bad hdd?

Ok so i was loking at this Western Digital hd and i was wondering if any of you guys have bought one , and if it has caused any trouble.
www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=314
thanks

Couple of people i know put one in their macbooks and macbook pros and they are very pleased with it. I got a slightly bigger model, the 320GB and no complaints from me either.
Whisper quiet and fast.

HDD Bad Sectors question...

It happened like 3 months ago I had to shut down (via force shutdown i.e. holding the power button for over 3 seconds) my Mac after the system became un responsive during an empty trash operation. Then while running apple software update Windows (running Windows via bootcamp) it also locked up (it like completely froze no mouse movement at all). I would like to know if that created a bad sector in my HDD by doing this forced shutdown procedure. I reinstalled Mac OS X just to avoid any problems down the road after the forced shutdown.
Again the question is: Does a forced shutdown can create a bad hard drive sector?
Also, is there a way to recover bad HDD sectors? Disk Utility perhaps?
Thank You for your time.

Kappy wrote:
Snow Leopard's installer is smart. If a system is already present the installer does not erase the drive but installs a fresh system, moves all your stuff into the new system then removes the old one. To erase the drive you must first run Disk Utility from the installer's Utilities menu and use it to erase the drive.
The hard drive and the fans are both starting up at the same time. You may be hearing the fans and not the drive. If you're sure it's the drive making the noise but you don't hear more noise all the time, then it may be nothing. If you are hearing a sort of chirping noise coming from the drive that could be a sign of mechanical failure.
When you open Disk Utility and select your drive's main entry in the sidebar you will get the SMART status reported in the DU status area. If it doesn't say "verified' then the drive is failing. You can also run hardware diagnostics to check:
How to run hardware diagnostics for an Intel Mac
Boot from your original OS X Installer Disc One that came with your computer. After the chime press and hold down the "D" key until the diagnostic screen appears. Run the extended tests for a minimum of two or three hours. If any error messages appear note them down as you will need to report them to the service tech when you take the computer in for repair.
Some "common" error indicators:
SNS - sensor error
MEM - memory error
HDD - hard disk drive error
MOT - fan error
Just to clear myself up. When I clicked the "erase" (in Disk Utility) button when I reinstalled OSX 3 months ago on my MacBook Pro, it said in the Disk Utility Progress bar un-mounting image, it took like two minutes. Then I went to install OSX and I had to reinstall iLife, and the rest of my third party apps, so that's why I think I did a clean reinstall.
However, this question of bad sectors came to be because one close friend of mine told me that I damaged my HDD by doing the hard shutdown method (Power button 3-second hold), which of course concerned me. I think I might go ahead and do the zero out disk option when I do reinstall OSX again in the future. As far as disk utility goes, it says that my SMART status is "veryfied" I did also used OnyX SMART status veryfication and it turned out to be ok. I think that I am best off keep using my MacBook Pro until it requires a new OS reinstall or an HDD failure.

Is there any way to expand both the OSX and Bootcamp partitions after imaging the drive to a larger HDD?

Hey all. I have been searching forums and racking my brain to find a way to fix an issue I am having with my Late 2011 13" MBP. SInce I wasn't able to find an answer, I figured it was time for reach out to the community.
I purchased a Late 2011 13" Core i5 MBP that had a bad HDD from a friend. I replaced the HDD with an old 100GB SATA drive I had lying around. My mistake was thinking that it was a 1TB drive. Regardless, I was able to reinstall Lion to the new HDD and get the machine up and running. Once that was working, I went ahead and upgraded to Mountain Lion with no issues, then I unstalled Boot Camp and Windows 8. Everything installed without a hitch and was working great. Right about that time I realized that I had almost no free hard drive space and discovered my error (the 100GB HDD).
I pulled the HDD and put in in my ASUS G74SX laptop along with a Seagate 750GB Hybrid Drive and used Clonezilla to do a hardware-to-hardware clone of the drive. When it was completed, I put the 750GB Hybrid drive in the MBP and it booted right up with no problems. I was also able to switch back and forth from my Boot Camp drive and everything appears to be working as it should.
The only problem I have is that both the OSX partition and the Boot Camp partition are still the same size as they were before I cloned the drive. Try as I might, I can't find any way to expand either one to use the additional 650GB of space that is sitting on the drive unused. Disk Utility won't allow me to expand the partitions unless the free space is contiguous with the drives.
Does anyone know of a utility that I can use to fix my problem? I really don't want to reload everything from scratch.
Thanks,
Scott

You need to combine the libraries on one computer. Otherwise you'll be constantly erasing your iTunes content as you switch computers. iPhone will only sync or manually manage iTunes content with ONE computer at a time.

Installing and formatting new HDD

The HDD on my two year old MacBook Pro has gone bad, probably defective from the beginning. Anyway, I live in another country, but had someone bring me a new HDD (upgrading from 750GB to 1TB). I have already unistalled the old HDD and installed the new HDD. Now I am trying to clone the old HDD. I have had some problems using Disk Utility. Not sure if I should have cloned the old HDD before unistalling it??
Also, I have read several discussions involving Carbon Copy Cloner. I don't really understand how it works/how I would use it in my current situation. Should I purchase the software? Will I have to back the computer up to another external HDD using carbon copy cleaner, and only then be able to clone it to the new drive?

rogers2nica,
if your old HDD has gone bad, then cloning it would also clone its faulty areas. The time to clone (and make other forms of backup) is when the source drive is working well. If you’re trying to salvage data from your bad HDD, then to minimize problems with your new HDD, you should install the OS and apps on the new HDD from scratch, and only salvage your personal data files from the old HDD.

Grey screen with apple logo after new HDD install

I have a mid 2010 iMac A1312, this was given to me recently with the knowledge of its bad HDD, so I bought a new HDD. I followed step by step instructions on how to replace a Hard drive and I did. I switched the computer on and inserted my Snow Leopard 10.6.3 install disk and clicked the icon. It is now at a light grey screen with a dark Apple logo. I have waited about ten minutes and restarted the machine. Ive tried all variances of startup holding down c, option, command r and so forth. Currently I am going to give it a good long wait of 20 minutes or so and see if I was just being impatient and not allowing the install software chance to start up. But in the mean time... any suggestions? I have read I need the original disks that came with the computer from factory to get a new HDD going. Is this true? thank you for your time!

it has now been 30 minutes and no change. I still have the grey screen with apple logo. please help

2nd HDD not recognized in Win7 Disk Manager, Shows in Device Manager, BIOS, Win7 Repair CD

Hello,
I am trying to add a newly purchased HDD to my laptop as the secondary HDD. The primary is a 160 GB SSD.
Primary SSD: Intel 160 GB SSD model SSDSA2BW160G3H
Secondary HDD: WD 750 GB 7200 RPM SATA/300, Model WDBLHJ7500ANC-NRSN
Laptop: HP Pavilion dv7t-7000 Quad 17.3" laptop
Laptop Config: Intel i7-3720QM 2.6 GHz Quad Core, 8 GB RAM, nVidia GT650M, 160 GB SSD
Laptop BIOS: F.24
Laptop Date of Birth: 5/24/2012
OS: Win 7 Prof x64
Shows up in BIOS (can run diagnostics OK).
Shows up in Win 7 Prof Device Manager.
Does NOT show up in Disk Manager.
Checked device drivers for Win7 Prof Device Manager HDD, have the latest.
Checked service manual, can't see anything that I missed.
Booted with Active@BootDisk (Win PE rescue disk), drive showed up as uninitialized.
Initialized drive, partitioned (one large), formatted NTFS.
Booted with Win 7 Repair Disk (Win PE), can see the drive in command prompt, able to write a text file to it OK.
Still won't show up in Win 7 Prof in Disk Manager.
Any ideas? Maybe a firmware upgrade for the laptop? Some kind of incompatibility with the HDD and SDD such as different dirve modes (don't believe that Win7 has issues with IDE versus AHCI devices)?
I had trouble adding a 2nd HDD to my dv7-6000 laptop; it finally just showed up months later. Is this common with HP laptops?
I am stumped and any help is appreciated. I checked the Internets and didn't see anything other than HW issues. I need this to work for the new semester that started today.

More testing:
WD Data Lifeguard (Western Digital's HDD diagnostics) also won't see the HDD after booting with Win 7 Prof off of the SSD.
Moved the HDD cable from the 2nd HDD to the primary header (SSD disconnected). Was able to install another instance of Win7 on the 2nd HDD OK; this proves that the new WD HDD and the secondary cable are OK. Moved the cable back to the 2nd header (still no SSD) and the computer booted off of the secondary HDD connected to the secondary header OK.
Added the SSD back to the primary header and booted into the instance of Win7 off of the SSD. Disk Management can't see the 2nd HDD, WD Data Lifeguard can't see the 2nd HDD; however, Device Manager is able to see the 2nd HDD OK.
Ran Intel SSD toolbox on SSD; no issues. Ran WD Align by Acronis on SSD (checks for advanced format alignment of 4K boundaries); it's already aligned to 4k boundaries.
Connected HDD to pri header, booted Win7 Ultimate on HDD. Ran WD Data Lifeguard on HDD; it's fine. Booted into WD Align by Acronis CD, ran WD align against HDD; it's already aligned to 4k boundaries.
Put HDD on pri header, SSD on secondary header and booted into Win7 Ultimate on HDD. Able to see both drives in Dask Management.
Put SSD back onto primary header, HDD back onto 2nd header, booted into Win7 Prof on SSD. Disk Management can't see the HDD again...
Updated laptop BIOS from F.24 to F.2D rev A (Install Shield Wizard confirms that it is for Win7 x64 as well as Win 8.1). Didn't fix the issue...
Ran Intel Driver Update Utility. I have the Intel RST (Rapid Store Technology) driver v 11.0.0.1032. Did not state that I needed to upgrade this driver. This is latest version on the HP website.
Everything works except having the SSD connected to the primary header, having the HDD connected to the secondary header, booting into Win7 Prof on the SSD and trying to see the HDD in Disk Management. Unfortunately, this is the configuration that I need to work.
Any thoughts on what is causing this? Hardware issue with HP Laptop? Power supply issue? Bad HDD controller? Bad install of Win7 Prof on SSD (appears to run fine otherwise).

PXI wont boot past BIOS, strange characters displayed (possible HDD failure)

I've just acquired a PXI-1042 with a much older 8186 Controller which does not boot past the BIOS.
Once powered up the sytem recognizes the HDD and available ram and even does a ram check but then it displays some strange characters; what appear to be "AC" and two dos smiley faces.
CMOS battery has been changed and system time has been updated as well. HDD is recognized in bios and is selected as the boot priority.
This could be a bad HDD since I know nothing of functionality of this PXI, other than its "hardly been used".
Just figure I'd ask around before going through the trouble of purchasing a new drive through IT.
See attachment for screenshot.
SCXI- 1000 Chassis w/ 1346 adapter
PCI 6281 DAQ card
SCXI- 1520 Bridge Board w/ 1314 Terminal Block (x2)
SCXI- 1180 Feedthrough Panel w/ 1302 Block
Signal Express 2014.
Win7 Enterprise
Attachments:
PXI.jpg ‏34 KB

It's possible the drive is fine, but just does not have an operating system installed. If this PXI-8186 controller originally shipped with Windows, it may have an OS recovery partition. This KnowledgeBase article is a good reference: Hard Drive Recovery and OS Installation.
If you want to check the integrity of the drive itself, here is another relevant KnowledgeBase article: Hard Disk Drive Diagnostic Tool for PXI and PXIe Embedded Controllers.

K8N Neo Platinum2 FSR-more problems installing (HDD)

Well, guess who's back-back again...after all my travails getting the system to just BOOT now it won't read ANYTHING from floppy diskette or CD-Rom. I've tried a variety of solutions from Western Digitals Lifeguard 11.0 utilities disk, an old WIN 98 boot disk, and an ancient DOS 6.22 install disk-nothing will load to the HDD. I always get an I/O error or nothing happens at all. I have NEVER had such a rediculous run of luck as this over a half dozen new system installs. After last nights uphoriah over solving the power up problem I find myself in a state of disbelief. This is just too much. Brand new equipment all around only to get S#^! for a result. I am so disgusted right now. Of course,it will end up being something so simple that I have no clue about but for now I am simply disgusted. Open to any suggestions.
thanks

Well, more frustration on my part it seems. I turned the FDD cable around-plugging the end with the twist into the drive itself (red line to the left) and unplugged the DVD drive, removed the jumper from the Burner thinking FOR SURE this was the answer..and nothing. Same thing. I put in the Western Digital partition diskette (brand new) into the FDD, power up, get into BIOS no prob, no errors, diskette starts "Caldera MS-DOS", loads XMS mem manager, creates virtual disk drive D: and everything stops..........light on the FDD stays on and nothing happens. I leave it sitting for 5, 10 minutes and nothing happens. This is exasperating. NEVER had this happen once I got to the point of formatting the drive for install. Really weird. It just hangs. What about that issue you kept mentioning with the case USB connections? Could that possibly cause such a glitch??? I'm using an Arctronix Guardian case-the one with the Cylon-esque blue light that roams back and forth. Pretty cool stuff.
Oh, and I tried booting from the Western Digital BOOTABLE cd-rom after changing boot priorities to cd-rom then HDD...still the same result. It goes to the point of installing the IDE CD-ROM device driver and freezes. Could I be so unbelievably unlucky as to have purchased a bad HDD from WD?????????????????At this point??????

P205-s6237 Hangs during boot to recovery after replace HDD

I replaced a bad HDD and the machine hangs during boot to the recovery disk. it gets past the inspecting screen and then hangs when the VISTA dots appear. the dots continue to scroll left to right but nothing ever happens. Any ideads on getting it past this point?

I replaced a bad HDD and the machine hangs during boot to the recovery disk. it gets past the inspecting screen and then hangs when the VISTA dots appear. the dots continue to scroll left to right but nothing ever happens. Any ideads on getting it past this point?

W520 hangs on Windows 7 Pro x64 installation, cannot boot live CD

Hi Everyone!
I decided to reach out to the community for some intelligence that I have not been able to obtain elsewhere. Here's my story in details in case someone can find a break on any of them ...
I purchased my W520 in November, 2011 with 1 year warranty and used it without issues until last week. One morning when I started the laptop, it loaded Windows 7 Pro x64, I logged in. After loading the desktop, I locked the screen/user and stepped out for a minute. When I came back, the screen was frozen and after a few minutes of waiting I manually powered off the laptop.
Upon restart, Windows 7 would hang on the logo screen and restart in a few minutes. I was able to restart under Safe Mode, however, which enabled me to create the rescue DVD's.
I decided to re-install the OS, but the installation would hang on the Windows logo screen again. This was also attempted with all accessories (usb kbd, usb wireless mouse, and display I also tried w/o the battery) disconnected. Then I thought, that it could be a bad hdd - I tried installing XP Pro but got the BSOD with a bad hdd error code. At that point, I attached the hdd to a working PC and ran checkdisk which found no errors. The problem persisted even with unpartitioned disk and a spare hdd that I had on hand. What intrigued me was that no linux live CD could load (it would freeze on the loading screen).
After this, I flashed the BIOS to the newest version without any issues during the flash process. The Windows 7 Pro x64 installation would hang again at the usual logo screen. I also tried with different DVD source... Memtest did not show any problems either.
Then I called an IT support guy who was not experienced with the issue and took the laptop for bench testing, and after four days of back and forth the IT company was inconclusive that the issues is most likely caused by a bad BIOS.
This happened around March 21, 2013 after Windows 7 installed updates (not sure if this could be related). The weird part is that the W520 worked fine for a year and four months and when it crashed I was able to use Safe Mode, access and flash BIOS, but was unable to run new installation or live CD's.
Is there anything that I am missing? Has anyone had the same experience? What is the conclusion according to you - it is really bad BIOS chip or just a UEFI-related setting?
Thanks for reading and trying to help!
Configuration:
Processor
Intel Core i7-2620M Processor (2.70GHz, 4MB L3)
Operating system
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64
Operating system language
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 English
Display type
15.6" HD+ (1600 x 900) LED Backlit Anti-Glare Display, Mobile Broadband Ready
System graphics
NVIDIA Quadro 1000M Graphics with 2GB DDR3 Memory
Total memory
4 GB DDR3 - 1333MHz (1 DIMM)
Keyboard
Keyboard US English
Pointing device
UltraNav with TrackPoint & touchpad plus Fingerprint reader
Camera
720p Camera
Storage subsystem
Internal RAID - Not Enabled
Hard drive
500 GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
Optical device
DVD recordable multiburner
System expansion slots
Express Card Slot & 4 in 1 Card Reader
Battery
9 cell Li-Ion Battery - 55++
Power cord
Country Pack North America with Line cord & 170W AC adapter
Integrated WiFi wireless LAN adapters
Intel Centrino Advanced-N + WiMAX 6250
Integrated mobile broadband
Integrated Mobile Broadband - Upgradable
Language pack
Language Pack US English
Fingerprint Reader

Sir:
I'm not entirely sure what you mean when you write "BIOS v1.40 settings that will make it possible to install Windows 7 Pro 64", but, you can download the 1.40 BIOS (which appears to be the most recent release) from this link: Device Driver File Matrix - W520 , and if you have any concerns about the BIOS settings not being appropriate, just enter the BIOS setup manager (tap the F1 key repeatedly when the laptop is booting) and select 'revert to defaults' or similar.
Michael
W520 (4270 CTO), which replaced a W500 (4062-27U), which replaced a T42P, which replaced an A21P...

Bad HDD?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for