Dead drive...in the middle of the mac (mbp)...li'l he'p please

stuck in china and temporarily using an ancient computer unit due to mbp hd crash and burn...HELP!
tried searching "magic block" and there were 4 matching but none of the links will show onscreen on this ancient piece (can't even read google mail this thing is so old
can't raise anything on my mbp (flashing file with ?)...stone dead
diagnostics suggest that there is a long piece of code missing or inaccessible in "magic block"
is there a way to retrieve data from fried harddrive, or some other known work-around (the issue is apparently known to some)
went to my "gurus" but they are not hip, to this particular issue at least
went to authorized service center
they say they can replace hd but need my old one in exchange...what's up with that
do folks really just send bad harddrives back to apple with personal and sensitive data on them?!!
your thoughts?
this issue is apparently addressed in some form already on this forum; even if you could just provide hotlinks to threads relevant to "magic block," i'd be most appreciative (i just can't get the search to display those links on this lame machine)
my mbp is still under hardware warranty, but no apple care pkg
many thanks in advance

Do you have , or can you obtain, a Tiger (10.4.10 or later) or Leopard DVD, micbojangles?
If so, try booting from that by holding down the C" key while starting up with the disc in the machine.
Run Disk Utility from the menubar and see if it can "see" and "repair" the drive.
If it can "repair" it, you are home. If not, then , as long as the drive can be seen, you should be able to do an "Archive and Install" of your OS from the DVD , using the settings that allow you to keep your data / settings etc. If even this isn't possible then you are going to have to have access to an external drive.
What were you actually using to run these "diagnostics"?
If you can get hold of an external drive, and install OSX 10.4.10 or later on it, there is a good chance that you would be able to recover the contents of your drive using Prosoft's Data Rescue . As long as the drive hasn't suffered a hardware failure it will usually get back most stuff, regardless of how badly corrupted the drive directories etc are.
(One other word of warning - don't trust any diagnostic results obtained while running in FW TD mode from a PPC based mac. Chances are that they will be incorrect. If you are going ton hook up in FW TD mode to another Mac make sure itis an Intel model when doing such things)
Cheers
Rod
Message was edited by: Rod Hagen

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Dead drive...in the middle of the mac (mbp)...li'l he'p please

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