Changing Hard Drive Woes

Alright well i bought a 7200rpm 250gb scorpio black to update from the standard included HDD. I have the external case, cloned to it, restarted and was able to run it from the external. I bought a case of 11 philips and flat precision screwdrivers from #1 to #0 -4. Ive followed all the directions up to the point where you unscrew the bracket above the HDD. Everything is going well. Im using the #0 -3 (after trying -1 to -4) and now...
I cant do it.
Its stuck ridiculously tight, and im pretty sure if i keep trying to do it, the screw head will strip (actually it looks halfway there). Ive tried wrapping a rubberband around the driver for some grip, and ive tried turning the actual body of the mac while i attempted to turn the screw. I know that this isnt exactly something that can be solved by an answer over the internet, but I need your input on what to do now. Should I call up AppleCare? Do they even tend to these issues? Take it to an Apple Store (though i heard they wouldnt do it for you)? Or am i just stuck with a small hard drive held in place by an irremovable screw?
I do hope it isnt the latter.
(if its any help, i got this the week after it came out in october, maybe a problem limited to time of production?)

carl wolf wrote:
Using the wrong tool to perform a job is ridiculous. Another poster tried the same thing as you, and stripped a screw. He thought Apple would replace the HDA carrier free of charge as a sign of good will. He hasn't posted since then.
Doesn't say too much that he hasn't responded. I've seen some threads that seemed to die until a month later when the result was posted. I don't know if they would replace a specialized part that's bigger than a screw or an adapter cap for free. However - we've all heard of complimentary service at Apple Stores, including fishing out a mini CD/DVD improperly inserted in the optical drive or helping to turn off a stuck optical digital out.
What we would hope would be that they would at least help the guy extract the part and inspect it for damage. From rereading the thread, I'm not even so sure if the reference was to the drive screws or the bracket that secures the drive assembly to the chassis. The bracket would have a captive screw. iFixit doesn't have any in stock, but they normally charge $29.95 for it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/MacBook-Unibody/589/1
http://www.ifixit.com/MacBook-Parts/MacBook-Unibody-Hard-Drive-Bracket/IF160-012
In fact he never said anything about hoping to get it done for free, but that he wished it could be replaced without having it sent out. Some in the thread suggested that it might be done for free, while others suggested that they might do it for a nominal charge. One person noted that the same thing had happened to him with an out of warranty PowerBook and his local Apple Store did in fact fix it for free.
Here's the thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1791238

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DANGER: Do Not Change Hard Drive Ownership and Permissions

DANGER: Do Not Change Hard Drive Ownership and Permissions (Unless you know what you are doing... I didn't!)
FIRST, THE REPAIR PERMISSIONS SOLUTION:
Use Disk Utilities on the "Sofware Install and Restore" DVD that came with your computer to set the permissions back to the defaults. Not the MacOSX Installation Disk. (This worked in MacOS 10.3.9)
MY SCREW UP
In my Hard Drive's "Get Info" dialog I switched the permissions of the Owner to my username and all others to no access. I had not yet closed the dialog and decided that it was probably dangerous so I started changing them back. I first changed the owner back to system. It asked for authentication.
After entering my password I assumed that I would be able to go back and change the others as well. Nope! The dialog disappeared, my desktop disappeared and I couldn't do anything. I was locked out.
After ten minutes of the beachball I restarted to the "Panther Installation disk" and tried repairing permissioins using disk utility. Evertime it "lost contact" with the system and would not work. Restarting (without CD) took me to a root user login (black sreen). My username and password did nothing.
THE SOLUTION
I then restarted to the "Software Install and Restore" DVD that came with my computer and used its Disk Utility to repair permissions. IT WORKED! It set permissions back to the default. THANK GOD.
NOTE: I wonder, will using the Install and Restore DVD to repair permissions reset any computer's files to the defaults? Is that a backdoor into someones currently restricted files and folders? (Assuming that you have physical access and the computer specific DVD)

Using the Repair Permissions function will not change the permissions on an account's home folder or anything in it, but there are at least two other ways in which someone with a Mac OS X 10.4 installation disk can get access to an account's files or folders unless some or all of those files are encrypted.
(19285)

I have a macbook pro md318 late 2011 i want to know can i change hard drive from 500GB to 2TB????

i have a macbook pro md318 late 2011 i want to know can i change hard drive from 500GB to 2TB????

Tbh, I really wouldn't bother.
I may get shot down here, but I like having storage centralised, backed up etc, so I would use the internal storage for the day to day stuff, and anything more dated, and large, then dump it on an external, with backup.
I've heard some horror stories about larger capacity drives getting over hot, and failing in some machines. Not macs particularly though.

I lost my logic 8 pro serial number. I can't find the booklet that comes with the serial number. How can retrieve this? I upgraded from logic pro 7. I changed hard drives and now it keeps asking for the serial number. But I can't find it. Where can I requ

I lost my logic 8 pro serial number. I can't find the booklet that comes with the serial number. How can retrieve this? I upgraded from logic pro 7. I changed hard drives and now it keeps asking for the serial number. But I can't find it. Where can I request it? Thanks!

If you still have the receipt or other proof of purchase, you can ask Apple to send you the serial. Otherwise, bad luck mate.. Good news is, you can now buy Logic Pro 9 from App Store for just 199 USD

Changed hard drive successfully, but still have a question.

I just replaced the internal hard drive in my Intel Mac Mini with a new 250G 2.5 inch SATA drive (Seagate Momentus). The original hard drive had died, after showing symptoms of illness for a while. The operation was a success, and everything is working fine, but the way I did it, it wouldn't have been possible without a second Mac, as described below. So I'm wondering if I'm missing some basic concept here. Seems like I should have been able to do it with just the install DVDs.
I was following an instructional video at this site, http://tinyurl.com/2fow2q, which had been recommended to me in an earlier thread of mine. That made the physical part of replacing the drive easy enough. When I went to boot up, though, with the DVD in the drive, it wouldn't recognize that there was any hard drive in the computer at all.
I assumed that I had broken something when I had the computer open. In desperation, I took a fairly new, almost unused firewire external drive that I had, and used my MacBook to set it up as a bootable drive. Then I connected it to the Mini, turned it on again, and was able to install OS X on the external drive. With the Mini working again, I used Disk Utility to look at the drives, and discovered that it did see the internal one, it just didn't know what format it was in. So I partitioned it as a bootable drive, turned off the Mini, disconnected the external drive, and booted it up again with the DVD. This time it saw the drive, and I was able to install OS X to it.
It has occurred to me that maybe I could have skipped a step by hooking the Mini up to my MacBook, booted it up in target mode, and then have used the MacBook's Disk Utility to partition the drive. But I didn't think of this at the time, and I was just assuming that I had physically broken something inside the Mini.
What I would like to know is if there was any way to do this without my second Mac. I had naively assumed that the DVD would allow the Mini to detect the drive, and just partition it properly before starting the rest of the install. I had bought the drive from Tiger Direct, and was sure that it wouldn't come properly formatted, but I thought the install would take care of that.
If I had bought from a dealer that specializes in Macs, like the one I linked to above, could I assume that the drive would have arrived already formatted for OS X? I notice that their advertising doesn't specifically say this. Are there other partitioning tools that would have allowed me to set up the drive without having another computer handy, say some other CD or DVD? I remember changing hard drives back when I used Windows, and getting a bootable CD which would partition the drive before you installed the OS, but nothing like that came with this one.
Any advice welcome. As things turned out, I found a solution, but it became obvious that I hadn't known everything I needed to ahead of time.

if you were to get hold of a hard disk caddie (carrier) such as:
http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-5-SATA-HDD-Hard-Drive-External-Enclosure-Caddy-1K_W0QQ itemZ220335852761QQcmdZViewItem
then your mac would just see it as an external drive and you would be able to reformat/partition it as you see fit.

Have a MBP mid 2009, had mavericks, changed hard drive and now have 10.6.8 and can't update to mavericks again. Any help?

Hi,
I Have a MBP mid 2009, 8 Gb RAM, had mavericks, changed hard drive to get more space (500Gb) and couldn't restart from time machine so had to install Snow Leopard, now have OS 10.6.8 and can't update to mavericks again. Any help?

You did not contact us. This is just a user to user forum where we try to help each other out. No one here works for Apple and as far as we know Apple do not even come here. Ring back the number you originally called on and ask for an explanation.
Cheers
Pete

Hard drive woes ...

Going a little nuts here. Back in February, I decided that I needed a bigger hard drive. I ordered up a 500GB 5400rpm drive from Other World Computing. They sent me the enclosure kit along with it. I cloned my existing drive, and after cloning I swapped one drive for the other. Everything was fine for a little over a month. I started experiencing freezing and slowdowns while browsing the internet, and then one day while downloading some digital media, everything froze up. I had to turn the machine off to un-freeze it. When I tried to boot again it wouldn't boot.
I surfed around the internet on another machine and got all kinds of voodoo suggestions for how to get the thing to boot. While I can't recall all of the things that I eventually did, suffice to say I finally got the thing booted but much of my data was scattered into all sorts of folders marked "Lost and Found". It took me weeks to retrieve my most important data. I'm sure I lost some critical stuff, I just haven't attempted to access it yet to discover it isn't there. Of course by now I'm sure you have figured out that I didn't have a backup ... shame on me, and I have (for the most part) learned that hard lesson. I was able to successfully use Data Rescue II to pull all the data off the drive but it took days.
Well, a couple of weeks after this debacle I experienced the slowdowns again to the point where the information was simply not coming up. The drive had failed. I called up OWC, and after some wrangling they agreed to replace the drive. I installed the new drive and everything worked fine for about 3 weeks. While away on travel, I checked my email one morning at the hotel, put my computer away in my bag and drove 2 minutes to the place I needed to run a seminar on PowerPoint. When I plugged the PowerPoint projector into my machine and woke it up, it froze. This happens about half the time I do this. My solution is always to restart the computer. (I had used this identical projector and computer for two solid days of training before this happened). The computer appeared to start, then flashed a file folder with a question mark symbol in it. It would not boot. Because of the previous shenanigans with this **** thing, I had brought an external USB hard drive with all of my backed up data on it. I can boot from this hard drive and, in fact, I'm typing this question on the problem computer right now. But I can't access the internal drive.
I attempted to use Disk Utility and it sees the drive and the partition, but it will not allow the partition to mount. When I attempt to use Disk Warrior, it will not register the drive or the partition during a disk scan. I have been running Data Rescue II for the past two days non-stop trying to clone the failed drive to a new external drive. There are times when it will run fast (copying 1 GB every 20-30 seconds) and other times where it slows down so that it copies 256 KB every 20-30 seconds) It has so far cloned 277GB of 465GB. At this rate, it will take about two more days to finish, then I have to figure out if the data is useable. I would have simply cloned my backup drive to the new drive except I had to go out of the country for two weeks, and my external USB backup drive is so bulky and needs an external power supply, so I had two weeks of important work that was not (I know, I know!!!) backed up.
I contacted OWC again, and they are reluctant to replace the drive. They told me that the first "failed" drive I sent back to them tested out fine, despite the fact that I had actually sent the whole computer into Apple for a service call and Apple told me the drive was fried. Of course they wouldn't do anything about it because it was a third party drive. I took the computer into the Genius Bar for this second failed drive to find out if there were any tech tool programs I could use to find out exactly what was going on with the **** thing, but they again told me that the drive was fried.
So my ultimate question after that lengthy background, is this: Is my MacBook Pro killing hard drives, or am I getting bad drives from my supplier? What on earth could my computer be doing to kill drives if this is the case? It worked flawlessly and I haven't changed my work or travel habits at all since I started installing these Hitachi drives. I don't have any problems at all when using external drives, but as soon as I install something into the box, tick .... tick ... tick ... it seems to wait for a few weeks, then BAM. drive failure.
And why on earth would a drive fail in my computer, then work perfectly fine for the techs at OWC when they test out the drive?
Frustrated beyond belief, and a bit tired of carrying around clunky external hard drives.
Help!!!!

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
This is a very puzzling situation. I don't know if the drives are failing or if the problem lies elsewhere, but there are some things to look at and to try.
One thing to check is the hard drive flex cable. It needs to be undamaged and well seated on the logic board. If it has a piece of Kapton tape over the logic board connector, the kapton tape should be replaced with a fresh piece.
There are a couple of things that can go wrong with hard drives. The complex software on them can become corrupted, and this might have happened to yours. The way to repair this is to boot from your system install disc and navigate to Disk Utility and then repair your startup disk, i. e. the internal hard drive. If Disk Utility finds errors it cannot repair, the perhaps a utility like Disk Warrior can. You want to repair the disk until there is nothing left to repair.
Another way a hard drive can fail is physically, and if this happens, there is no way to repair it. However, there is a utility that will enable you to see the S.M.A.R.T status in considerable detail:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/32454
If you get specific errors either with Disk Utility or with S.M.A.R.T Utility, you can see if you can capture them with a photo. That would give you something very specific to show OWC as evidence that the drive itself is bad.
There is also a possibility that the SATA bus is bad and that is causing your problems. However, if that were the case, you would expect the drive to not work from the beginning instead of working for a while and then failing.
I don't know how the techs at OWC test out their drives, but I do know that S.M.A.R.T. is not supported on external drives.
Is it possible that this is a software issue? If you have a good backup on an external drive, you could try erasing and reformatting the drive and see if this brings it back to life.
When the Apple guys said the drive was fried, did they say why?
One thing you might want to consider until this issue is resolved. Get a 500 GB notebook drive and one of OWC's Mercury on the Go Firewire enclosures with the very reliable Oxford 924+ chipset. I have 2 of these--one with a 320 GB Western Digital Drive and one with a 500 GB Western Digital drive. I use these for backup. They are compact enough to fit in my computer bag and will run off of a firewire port, so no external power supply is needed.
Also, it may be worth talking to Hitache about your drive if you are having trouble with OWC. It may also be worth considering another brand--you can often get drives at good prices with free shipping from Newegg.
It does sound like you may have 2 drives that have failed. It's probably worth taking some pictures of the flashing question mark and any other evidence you may have to send back with the drive. It is probably also worth putting it into an enclosure and seeing if it works properly then. If it does, do a very careful check of the flex cable and connections.
Good luck!

Folders locked in Time Machine after changing hard drive

2008 iMac running Lion 10.7.5
I have had a larger hard drive installed on my iMac and all the data migrated to the new drive.
Time Machine has done a complete new backup but I can't access any of the older backups on Time Machine from the old hard drive.
The error I get trying to open any folder in TM prior to today is (Movies is an example)
The folder “Movies” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents.
My local Apple expert states that - "The backups get protected using the Hardware UUID of the hard drive. In your case, your old backups are protected using the UUID from the old hard drive. OS X is supposed to 'adopt' the old backup once it confirms that the data is the same as what is on the new drive. However, it doesn't always work."
I have since found a workaround on techsurvivors - by changing the permissions in Finder/Get Info on the Time Machine Drive ie
Open Time Machine drive in Finder
Do get info on any locked folder for specific backup date.
Unlock it but do not close the Get Info window.
Click on the black plus sign in the lower left corner of the Get Info window.
Click on the administrators or your account if it is bolded, then the Select blue button.
Click on the little arrows to select "Read and Write" for the account.
After doing this on one folder - Movies - for one backup ie June 11 2013 I was able to restore some movie files using Time Machine as normal.
I don't really want to have to repeat this for all the locked folders for every backup.
Is there an easier way to change the protection of the backups on the Time Machine drive? Or am I stuck with this workaround.
Thanks

Uhhh...
The "Family Pack" is not for sharing among friends. It is for family members in the same physical household. Read the license agreement.
You need the DVD. This might be a great opportunity to go buy one for yourself, and to get legitimate, and stop stealing software.

Changed hard drive, now screen is messed up

I recently changed out the hard drive on my 15" 2007 Macbook Pro from the factory 5400 RPM, 160GB drive to a Hitachi 7200 RPM, 500GB drive. I carefully followed instructions online on how to open the laptop up, remove and replace the hard drive. When I went to boot up the laptop after the new hard drive was in (with the original OS 10.4 boot disc that came with the computer in the DVD drive) it seemed to load fine at first. I was on the grey load screen for a while, and when it moved to the "Choose your language" screen that appears the first time you turn on your Mac, the screen was a garbled mess. The best way I can describe it is that it looks like an old TV with bad reception from rabbit ear antennae. There are diagonal, blocky black lines across the screen. I can move the mouse cursor fine, and can see that clearly, and if I press enter, it's obvious the computer is working and moves on to the next screen, but it's all behind a garbled mess. Technical support wasn't much help, and only suggested I take it into Mac, but I know they'll charge me to fix it. Any ideas?

Welcome to Apple Discussions
Try doing a Parameter RAM reset - hold down command/option/p/r keys at start up and wait for three chimes before releasing the keys.

How do change hard drive creation date on OS 10.3.9 hard drive

Nuts, I installed my OS and configured everything without releasing that because the battery was dean the date had reverted back to 1976. Any way to change the hard drive creation date that shows up in GetInfo on my hard drive. Thanks

Hi, Brett -
That is often an effective solution, when OS 9 is available on another drive or machine, and all that is needed is the availability of Classic.
Unlike OSX, an OS 9 System Folder can be copied via a Finder copy process (drag and drop) and still retain full functionality.
However... if the receiving machine is OS 9 bootable, and the need is not only for Classic but also for a bootable OS 9 System Folder, copying such a folder from a different model Mac will rarely work. Unless specific steps are taken to perform a universal install of OS 9, an OS 9 install will be tailored to the machine it is installed upon - it will be model-specific to that machine.

How to change hard drive in 20" iMac G5 iSight ?

I opened up the machine to replace a dead hard drive (warranty is over anyway) and discovered
there is black tape that seals the edge of the display as well as the area below it. Can I remove this
to change the drive and then put it back without detriment to the functionality of the machine?

Here are the experiences of someone who did what you are doing:
BulaRae posted this experience with the iSight:
Remove all 5 screws on the bottom. The two for the ram slot are captive. The other 3 are not. One is longer than the others, note which slot it came from.
There are catch levers on the top corners that need to be released by sliding something in there. That post recommended a credit card or thin plastic. I used two thin table knives with non-serrated edges.
Once the top is off you can flip it up and lay it down or undo all the tape and unplug the iSight. I left mine intact.
Then the fun part (NOT!). Using my table knife I very carefully peeled up the thick black foil tape stuff along the two edges. It's so sticky and tears easily. You need infinte patience. Once peeled up it reveals 4 torx screws holding the LCD in down on the bottom. You need a long Torx screwdriver and make sure it is magnetic—the screws are not captive and what a pain! Especially when you don't have a magnetic driver!
The you can lift up the LCD. Again I left mine connected and just propped it up by sticking a can of compressed air I had sitting nearby in as a prop (obviously away from the boards). I did have to disconnect the video though (two white connectors on the left that are easy to disconnect). I later read that other connectors were very fragile in this model and wires rip easily, so I'm glad I didn't mess with any more than I had to.
Once I got to the drive I discovered that the third connector (very small 4-pin that went off the side of the drive and over to the board in a different place than the bigger connectors) was too small for the drive that OWC sent me, so now I'm back together (but it ain't pretty in there anymore!) and calling OWC, only to have to do this again in another week or so.
Moral of the story: don't try this at home, folks, unless you have infinite patience and love to do painstaking, tedious things, and also are really good at putting things back together the way you found them!

Problems after changing hard drives

Hello, I have a Toshiba L655 part.no PSK1JE (if necessary also put the serial no).I changed my hard drive by putting a new SSD, but I have problems in choosing the right drivers. I tried on the site, but I downloaded the drivers are not installed, as if they were incompatible. Could you kindly link me all the drivers needed to run my notebook? So save them and next time I have them all available. Thank You.

Satellite L655-121 (PSK1JE - 03H00HIT)
Downloads here.
For the laptop to work as designed, you need to install essentially all of the drivers and utilities at that site. The order is important. So start with a fresh install of 64-bit Windows 7. You should install the Intel chipset utility followed by the ATI display driver. I would install the other Intel drivers next.
Install the Value Added Package before any other Toshiba utility.

Speaker problem after changing hard drive

Hi,
Yesterday I changed my powerbook's hard drive to a nice big 250Gb one and proceded to install Leopard on it. However, ever since I've changed the hard drive my speakers have been making a horrible loud noise. When I plug headphones in to the jack the noise from the speakers stops and I get perfect sound through my headphones. The noise starts as soon as I turn the powerbook on but stops for a short period during the boot sequence.
Any ideas ?
PS: I'm not 100% sure I put the screws back in the right place but I had no screws left after putting the powerbook back together.

Bienvenue!
First, try resetting your PMU: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1431
If that doesn't do it, recommend you reopen the powerbook to ensure that all cables are securely attached.

How do i change hard drive access from read only to read and write.

I bought a used Macbook late 2008, core 2 duo, 2,4 ghz. The start up hard drive will let me install programs but I can not move data on to the hard drive. Permissions are set to "Read Only". How can I change it to "Read and Write"?

Create a new account as mentioned in this thread and then delete the original malfunctioning one. Or use an OS X installation disk to do a wipe and install of a new OS X.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/21973362#21973362

Gray screen before change of hard drive. Changed hard drive and still gray.

I have already done the startup commands and I'm getting nothing. Have the install disc in and still nothing....bought a new sea gate 1tb hybrid hard drive from macupgradestore.com. Help me

I went to macupgradestore.com and went to my my version iMac Intel mid 2007 20 inch.
I clicked on upgrade my Mac and went to hard drives and chose the "HYBRID HARD DRIVE" and got the 1TB.
It's a 3.5" serial ATA-600 7200RPM.
I didn't think I could go wrong when this was one of the preferred stores from the Mac serial lookup site...
As far as the commands...before I changed the hard drive, it did nothing with the reinstall disc apple sent me.
After the hard drive replacement the commands still do nothing. I hear the disc inside the Mac spinning and making all those noises but nothing happens, just a bright white screen.
The only commands that do anything for me are the eject/f12 and command+option+R+P.
C at startup or any of the other commands do absolute nothing. Frustrated....

Changing Hard Drive Woes

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