Do I have a bad hard drive?

How do you determine is a hard drive is bad.
When staring my Macbook I get a folder with question mark.
Rebooted and tried Disc Utility and it didn't find the hard drive.
Tried Disk Warrior and it couldn't find the hard drive.
Thought about reinstalling operating system but not sure if I want to waste my time if the hard drive is shot.

Unless the installer finds a usable drive you could not reinstall. You can try this:
Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
If you are successful doing the above then reinstall OS X after the formatting has completed.
If this doesn't work then you need to replace the hard drive in order to know if the failure was only the drive.

Similar Messages

Do I have a bad hard drive? Constant freezes.

I am having constant freezes on my eMac not specific to any one application. Can't do a force quit when this happens and have to hold down start button to shut down. I thought this might mean that my hard drive was going bad, but when I do a safe boot everything seems to be stabilized and so far this evening no freezes. Have run the disk repair utility several times. Also can't print; computer doesn't find printer but I see it in system profiler. I asked a separate question about the print problem in the printer forum, but I mention this here because I wonder if it might also be related to whatever is causing the system to freeze or is this just a coincidence and an independent problem. What do I do about the freeze problem? Thanks for any advice.

probably not a hard drive problem per se, but you could have a corrupted system, or corrupted parameter RAM (PRAM).
1.) you might try erasing the PRAM (I forget how, but you can look it up easily enough)
2.) You also might try an "archive and install" of the system, which preserves your files, but re-installed the OS. Then you need to do the autoupdates.
Grant

Looks as though i have a bad hard drive... please help with a replacement

I was having some problems with loading windows...problems partitioning... slow opening of drives... slow copying to drives... I currently cannot load windows.. cannot reinstall as everything seems to be very slow or freeze.. Got stuck on a disk check with 0 % checked.
I got a boot disk (seatools for dos)... hard drive is failing the tests...
I have a 500GB sata II....
Can someone recommend a good replacement from say best buy?
I would like at least 500GB but I see hard drives are pretty inexpensive now adays.
Are most hard drives compatible with my lenovo 3000 H210 desktop?
THANKS for any help.
you can email me at xxxxxxxxxx
Moderator note; e-mail address removed to stop the spambots getting it

Here's a 500GB for only $54.99 w/ free shipping and no tax for most states. $15 off with promo code EMCYXNR27, ends 9/30
grab it within 3 days for just $40.
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I had to have a new hard drive installed. Now programs load slowly and pinwheel spins a lot. Any suggestions?, I had to have a new hard drive installed. Now programs load slowly and pinwheel spins a lot. Any suggestions?

I had to have a new hard drive installed. Now programs load slowly and pinwheel spins a lot. Any suggestions?, I had to have a new hard drive installed. Now programs load slowly and pinwheel spins a lot. Any suggestions?

It's likely that the new drive isn't working, or it wasn't installed correctly, or you had some other hardware fault rather than a bad drive.

How to recover data from bad hard drive

Once a hard drive goes bad (cannot get into the computer), is there any hope of recovering any data from it? If so, how?

Do you mean the hard drive is mechanically broken for sure? It's not a data corruption issue that is causing a problem with starting up the Mac, but maybe not be a bad mechanism?
If the drive is definitely broken, there are businesses that specialize in recovering data from bad hard drives. For example
http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/ (I always saw their booth at MacWorld Expos...)
The cost of such services is usually high.
cannot get into the computer
So that probably means the hard drive in question is the internal drive? If you don't know for sure that the hard drive is physically broken, you can try starting up using your Mac OS X installation disc. Insert disc in optical drive and start up with the C key held down. When you get to Installer's screen, go up to the menu bar and run Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Does the internal drive appear in the Disk Utility sidebar?
Alternately, if you have another Mac (that has FireWire), you can try starting the Mac with the problem in FireWire Target Disk Mode,
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
Connect the "target" Mac to the other Mac (running normally) using a FireWire cable. Run Disk Utility on that Mac. Does the hard drive of the Mac in FireWire Target Disk Mode appear in the sidebar?
If you can get the internal drive to appear in Disk Utility, you may be able to run Repair Disk on the First Aid tab. There are also third-party utilities, such as TechTool Pro (Micromat), Drive Genius (Prosoft), and Disk Warrior (Alsoft), that may be able to fix (or at least recover data from) the hard drive.

Cannot uninstall cs6 bad hard drive, any suggestions?

Cannot uninstall cs6 bad hard drive, any suggestions?
THank you

Thank you for the Adobe contact. They connected me to the chat link and the Adobe tech Support rep sent me a License Recovery download link (attached) http://download.macromedia.com/pub/support/tools/LicenseRecovery111.dmg.
I have 10.10.1 Yosemite. When I open the download folder and click on the LicenseRecovery.app it shows up on the dock but it nothing happens. I cannot quit the app only Force Quit. I have restarted the mac and that did't help.
Adobe chat suggested I uninstall CS5.5/6 and re-install but why would that have anything to do with the app opening?
Any suggestion is greatly appreciated, again.
Thank you

Cloning a bad hard drive

If this were a PC, I'd have no problem. But I'm not a Mac Tech.
I usually back up my laptop's hard drive to an external hard drive using the Disk Utility. Has worked great, never had to restore from it.
Now, the hard drive is begining to fail. So I tried to make one more backup of it, to save me reinstalling when I get the new HD. But the backup fails because of a file system error (file/dir does not exist), which is due to the bad state of the hardware.
Now if this was a PC, I'd just use a utility to copy the drive, errors and all, which would be fine because then I could fix the problem once the data is on a good hard drive.
But I have no such utility for my Mac. My PC utilities don't recognize the Mac file system, so I can't trust them.
*So, how does one copy a slightly buggy hard drive using a Mac? Any tricks in Disk Utility? Tried it from the CD, same result. And other utilities?*
I could just reinstall, but I just got this thing built just right a month ago!

One Mac cloning utility that I like is Super Duper:
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
You can download it and do a clone of your hard drive for free. If you decide to register it, you can unlock other features.
Another utility is called Carbon Copy Cloner. I have never used it, so I don't know much about it. I believe you can download and run it for free, and then make a donation if you like it.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
I have never attempted to clone a bad hard drive, so I don't know how this would work.
Good luck!

Cisco IDSM-1 bad hard drive

Hello,
A bit of an odd question but does anyone have any kind of recovery software for the Cisco IDSM1? I have a Cisco 6509 with and old(!) Cisco WS-X6381-IDS that seems to work fine, but has a bad hard drive and therefore wont boot. I get the "boot loader" prompt where I can select maintenance partition or application partition but both result in an I/O bad disk error. I know the WS-X6381-IDS is ancient, but I find the card oddly fascinating. I can browse the "application" software on the download center but I don't see any kind of recovery software. I can obviously replace the hard drive, but how can I re-install the maintenance/application partition and software on the new drive? I'm not even sure if this part of the card was ever user replaceable/maintainable.
Thanks in advance!
--Will
*EDIT*
I was able to figure it out. The files hosted on Ciscos download section, are cab files of the root of the Windows NT 4 install that makes up the IDSMs primary operating system. If you take the hard drive (or another dirve) out of the IDSM and put it in a computer, install Windows NT (create two partitions), boot linux, delete the contents of the partition, and copy the files from Ciscos site to the partitions. The drive should boot right up.
Thanks,
--Will

Hello,
A bit of an odd question but does anyone have any kind of recovery software for the Cisco IDSM1? I have a Cisco 6509 with and old(!) Cisco WS-X6381-IDS that seems to work fine, but has a bad hard drive and therefore wont boot. I get the "boot loader" prompt where I can select maintenance partition or application partition but both result in an I/O bad disk error. I know the WS-X6381-IDS is ancient, but I find the card oddly fascinating. I can browse the "application" software on the download center but I don't see any kind of recovery software. I can obviously replace the hard drive, but how can I re-install the maintenance/application partition and software on the new drive? I'm not even sure if this part of the card was ever user replaceable/maintainable.
Thanks in advance!
--Will
*EDIT*
I was able to figure it out. The files hosted on Ciscos download section, are cab files of the root of the Windows NT 4 install that makes up the IDSMs primary operating system. If you take the hard drive (or another dirve) out of the IDSM and put it in a computer, install Windows NT (create two partitions), boot linux, delete the contents of the partition, and copy the files from Ciscos site to the partitions. The drive should boot right up.
Thanks,
--Will

Bad Hard Drive or Bad File System?

Good morning.
A few months ago my late 2008 iMac went to the Genius Bar for what I was convinced was a bad hard drive. I was having long "beachball" pauses, until I couldn't do much without waiting several seconds, at least, for the program to respond, even if I wasn't running much of anything. I started seeing I/O errors in the kernel log pointing to the system disk. Finally, the system stopped booting, getting stuck forever at the grey apple screen. The disk utility was unable to repair the file system and the complete hardware test confirmed a problem with the hard drive.
So I was pretty surprised when I lugged the thing to the Genius Bar and they decided the file system was just totally messed up. They reinstalled Snow Leopard (something I could have done at home, had the tech on the phone not agreed with me that it was a physical issue), and I went home. It worked great for a time. I couldn't understand how a system could develop a problem so severe, but it worked and I was happy.
But now it looks like I'm running into the same issue. WoW chokes. Firefox freezes. iTunes 10 makes me want punch a wall. I'm not necessarily running all three at the same time, and other program are starting to act the same way. And as of last night, those I/O errors are appearing in my log again (oh yeah, the console freezes too).
If it's not a physical disk issue, I just don't understand how this could happen twice. IIRC, the Genius explained that the file system is self-healing, but eventually the problems stack up until it just craps itself. Is HFS such a delicate flower? I was gently admonished for doing things like running WoW and having a Bootcamp partition (the latter of which I don't have now). This seems like a silly thing to worry about. Both are perfectly normal uses of any reasonably powerful system.
Could it really be messed up a second time? Should I just insist that the hard drive be replaced? If you do think it's nothing more than a logical issue, can you help me understand how this happens and how to prevent it? I'm trying to understand Macs as well as I understand Windows-based PCs.
Thanks!

Thanks for the reassurance on HFS, Macbig. I wanted to trust the expertise of the Genius, but it was a pretty confusing situation. I saw every sign that on a non-Mac would scream failing hard drive, including an actual failed hardware test, and to have someone confidently tell me that the hard drive was fine and that the test could determine the drive was failed based on a screwy file system left me doubtful that I could ever quite understand these Macs.
I know I won't be able to take my iMac in for service this week, but maybe I can get a ticket in for parts in the meantime.
WZZZ, I will definitely run the extended test again. S.M.A.R.T reports all is well, but I can't remember the last time I've seen S.M.A.R.T warn of approaching doom before it was too late.

I have lost my imac bootable disks and have erased my hard drive.

I wanted to format my hard drive and put a clean install of Tiger on my iMac so that I could sell it, so I went in to disc utility and erased my hard drive. What I thought were my bootable discs were for my macbook pro with Snow Leopard on, and they wont work on my iMac. I have since gone in to disc utilities from the bootable discs (just after it tells me these discs wont work) and have replaced my hard drive with the DVD (thinking I would be able to boot to that point and mount an image from another DVD to run tiger from there) and now I am totally lost! I know I shouldnt meddle with things I dont know, but I've never managed to break a windows PC by doing this!
Could someone help please as I have no idea what I can do now!
Super thanks
Helen

Replacement disks run about 16.00 per disk. You can buy Mac OS X Tiger from Amazon for anywhere from 79.00-200.00.
If you buy a full retail copy of an OS like Snow Leopard you can install that on any compatible computer. The license for a standard retail copy of the Mac OS entitles you to install it on 1 system. However the retail copy of the Mac OS does not include the iLife Applications which come with the original install disks that came with your computer.
The individual install disks that come with each computer are made just for that computer and include drivers required for that system. As a former Dell owner I can tell you that Dell also uses specialized install disks for the OS. They don't hand you a copy of windows, rather a set of disks that are specific to that model of computer.
Cheers!

I have an external hard drive, from Iomega. However, I cannot copy or save any file to it. On my PC it says that is possible to read and write in it, but in my Mac, it says I can only read. can somebody help me?

I have an external hard drive, from Iomega. that I can open and see my files. However, I cannot copy or save any file to it. On my PC I have it says that is possible to read and write in it, but in my Mac, it says I can only read. can somebody help me?
Also, Im a photographer, so I like to name a lot of files at the same time (used to do in on PC and it was very usefull.) cannot find out how to do it on my Mac. Really appretiate if some one can give me a solution! Thanx

Your drive is formatted with the NTFS file system. OS X can read but not write to the NTFS file system. There are third party drivers available that claim to add the ability to OS X to write to an NTFS partition. I have not tried them and don't know if they work.
The only file system that OS X and Windows can both write to natively is the FAT32 file system.

I have a external Hard drive of 1TB. I want to transfer HD movies to it from my MAC but it can only take 4 gb at a time, now i have to format it which is the best format in this situation NTFS or exFAT, as i use windows part ion as well??

I have a external Hard drive of 1TB. I want to transfer HD movies to it from my MAC but it can only take 4 gb at a time, now i have to format it which is the best format in this situation NTFS or exFAT, as i use windows part ion as well?? plzz help
Merry Christmas

Repartition and format the drive for a Mac:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

I have an external hard drive that shows up in disk utility but Verify and Restore are greyed out.

I have an external hard drive that shows up in disk utility but Verify and Restore are greyed out. I am trying to determine what is wrong with the drive.
I need the data on the drive and it won't show up in Disk Warrior. I have tried different Mac's and different USB cords only to find the same outcome. When selected in Disk Utility the information read as such...
Disk Description : WD Elements 1023 Media                      Total Capacity : 500.11 GB (500,105,740,288 Bytes)
Connection Bus : USB                                                               Write Status : Read/Write
Connection Type : External                                                     S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
USB Serial Number : 575837314135304D36373132        Partition Map Scheme : Unformatted
As the drive shows in Disk Utility there must be some life left in it surely. There is a possibilty that the physical connection between the USB cord and the external drive is damaged but since the drive shows up I believe it's unlikely... before I give it to the pro's is there anything else I can do to diagnose the issue?

Hello,
I have just experienced the same thing!
Although my external drive shows in Disk Utility, it does not show in Finder.
And the Verify/Repair buttons are also greyed out.
Also, although the drive is 2TB. DU shows it as having Total Capacity of only 4.14GB! (Which should be the Free Space).
I was wondering if you solved your problem, & if so, would you share your solution.
I´m afraid to Erase in case I lose all my Data on the drive.
Thanks in advance for your reply!

I had a repair done on my MacBook Pro and had to have a new hard drive installed. The Apple Auth Repair Shop then updated the OS from 10.6.8 to 10.7.5. Now my iPhoto v 9.2.3 will not open and it sounds like it will not work with this OS. Can you plea

I had a repair done on my MacBook Pro and had to have a new hard drive installed. The Apple Auth Repair Shop then updated the OS from 10.6.8 to 10.7.5. Now my iPhoto v 9.2.3 will not open and it sounds like it will not work with this OS. Can you please advise?

You may need many other updates to retain compatibility with Lion. I suggest you reinstall Snow Leopard. Unfortunately, you will need to erase the drive first. Be sure to backup your data if you haven't done so already.
Clean Install of Snow Leopard
Be sure to make a backup first because the following procedure will erase
the drive and everything on it.
     1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came
         with your computer. Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.
         After the chime press and hold down the "C" key. Release the key when you see
         a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.
     2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue
         button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
         After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
         size.) Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Set the number of
         partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button
         and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended
         (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.
     3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed
         with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
     4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
         Assistant. After you finish Setup Assistant will complete the installation after which
         you will be running a fresh install of OS X. You can now begin the update process
         by opening Software Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your
         installation current.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

HT1386 I have had to have a new hard drive fitted to my Apple Mac and now I can't sync my music with my iPhone, it thinks it's a new computer. Please help, What do I do?

I have had to have a new hard drive fitted and now I cannot sync my Iphone with my Apple Mac, thinks it's a new computer. Any ideas Please?
Alan C

I keep this as a copy and paste. It's the same process for Mac as it is for a PC. Read it over and see what you think. Post back if you have questions.
The following was copied from this thread. This is essentially what you want to accomplish.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/11527071#11527071
1) Without connecting your iPad to your laptop, start iTunes. Click on Preferences. Click on Devices. Check the box next to "Prevent your iPod etc. from automatically syncing." Click OK.
2) Now connect your iPad to your Mac and start iTunes.
3) When iTunes starts, right click on your iPad under Devices in the left column. Select Transfer purchases etc.
4) After it finishes transferring all your apps to your new laptop, right click on your iPad and select Backup your iPad.
5) After it finishes backing up your iPad, right click on your iPad and select Restore etc.
6) After it finishes restoring, left click on your iPad , then click on the Apps tab on top, and check the box next to Sync Apps, then click on Apply below.
If everything on your iPad looks good after the sync, go back and click on iTunes / Preferences / Devices and UN-check the box next to Prevent your iPod etc. The only other thing you may want to check is if your contacts, bookmarks, etc. are syncing correctly now. If not, go to the Info tab after connecting and make sure you indicate which features you want to sync with what sources.
Read this thread and the support links as well. There are apps that you can purchase that will allow you to transfer photos from the iPad to your PC. Look at Photo Transfer App in the App store and you can search for others as well.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/13016026#13016026
This support site will help you with transferring iTunes music to your new computer.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527

Do I have a bad hard drive?

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