Hard Drive Damage

I've been having trouble with my refurbished G3 833 iBook, and I think it's physical damage to the hard drive. It sometimes makes this repeated brrr-tic-tic-tic sound when I open an app, and then it just freezes completely. I've read about other people having the same type of problem.
Does this sound like physical damage to you Mac geniuses out there? And if it is, is there anything I can do about it short of replacing the hard drive?
Thanks in advance.

Hello, Tyro.
I would advise you to back up important data if you have not done so already, just in case.
Boot from your OS installation disk, and from the menu, choose Disk Utility and repair the hard drive. If any errors come up that were shown as "fixed," run the repair again. If you get a message that there were errors that DU could not fix, then you may want to look into Disk Warrior.
There are other potential causes for application misbehavior, some of which include hardware problems. Dr. Smoke has a FAQ on Multiple applications quite unexpectedly or fail to launch and some trouble shooting steps.
Good luck.

Similar Messages

Boot Problems- Hard Drive Damaged? Something Else?

Yesterday my MacBook Pro went to the blue screen of death after freezing for a few minutes. When I restarted it, I couldn't get beyond the apple with the spinning graphic below it. I tried resetting the SMC and PRAM, archiving and reinstalling (which hung up every time), and ultimately backed up the files I could (many generated errors and could not be copied) using Target Disk. After backing up, I did an erase and reinstall, which was successful (mostly). After getting the system running again, I attempted to update from what I think is 10.4.5 to 10.4.11. At the end of the download, it crashed, and on restart would not boot again (apple logo with random flickerings of the "no" sign).
At first, I assumed hard drive damage for the following reasons:
-Something fell and landed right over the hard drive, putting a small dent in the open case
-The files that would not copy seemed like they could have been corrupted by physical disk damage
-The hangups seem like they could be caused by the same issue
The things that worry me about this diagnosis are the fact that the erase and reinstall worked, and that the problem seems confined to boot errors (it has only successfully booted once since the first crash).
1. Can I confidently call this a hard drive failure, order one from OWC tomorrow morning overnight, and consider it solved?
2. If not, are there any diagnostic tools I can use to help zero in on my problem?
3. What, if any additional information would he helpful?
Before today's successes/failures, I was all ready to pull the trigger on a new drive (Hitachi 7200RPM 200GB). However, now I'm not so sure. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thank you again for your advice.
At this point, I am amazed to say I have it up and running and was even able to upgrade to 10.4.11, which caused one of the recent crashes. I have in fact prepared my data for "the unthinkable" (which has now happened four times in the last forty-eight hours), but this whole "working" thing is pretty creepy. (I tried to pop the top to see if the hard drive has any physical damage from the dent, but apparently the only thing harder to find in this town than a FireWire cable is a Torx T-6. I guess I'll be ordering OWC's lame eleven-piece $17 tool kit. Oh well.).
Is this normal? Can I expect another crash soon?
I think I'm going to try copying some large files to see if I can't repeat my failure. Maybe I've just been really lucky this particular time.

IPod Classic: what causes hard drive damage?

I charged my iPod Classic (160GB) this morning, properly ejected the device, used it for a few minutes, then it just..... crashed. I've tried running tests and nothing happened. I've also tried reconnecting it to my laptop (Mac) but it indicated Error 1434/ said the device is not repairable/. Then went straight to restoring it via my iMac, but no luck (it detects the device, but it doesn't show up on iTunes -- so how can I restore?). I've done my research and ended up with this idea: my iPod is dead. Now I'm just wondering -- after almost a year and a half of taking care of my iPod (by taking care, I mean proper ejecting, not dropping it, etc), why the sudden hard drive damage?
Please enlighten me.

Hard drives do fail over time. Even solid state drives will fail one day.
However, I once had a problem with an iPod Classic that I belive was caused by using the iPod as an external hard drive and I ended up taking it to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store. All the Genius did was plug it in to his computer and used some 3rd party application to force the iPod to restore again. And that was after I tried several things. So I suggest you take it to a Apple Genius if you can.
If you can't go to an Apple Store, I can look for that 3rd party Application.

Old hard drive damaged; how to upload from iPod to new computer

The hard drive on my old computer was damaged. I had not backed up all of my iTunes library to either a DVD or external drive. My iPod classic has about 6,300 songs. I just purchased a new computer. Is it possible to upload all of the songs on my iPod to the new iTunes library on the new computer? I assume I will get a message telling me that the computer is not authorized. I am not all that tech savvy, so I don't want to hit "sync" and lose all my non-Apple purchased music. Thanks.

Hey there again, here's another answer.
Be very careful when connecting an iPod full of music to an empty iTunes library.There is very real risk of permanently losing all the music.
To prevent auto sync, before you connect the iPod go to the iTunes preferences and select "devices", then select "disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods".
An alternative method is to connect the iPod whilst holding down the 'control+shift' keys and do not let them go until your iPod appears in iTunes.
If you see a message that your iPod is associated with a different library and asks if you want to link to a new one, make sure you press "Cancel".
If you should click on "Erase and Sync" will erase all the content currently on your iPod and it will be replaced with the content of the iTunes library you just connected to.
When you've pressed cancel your iPod should appear in the iTunes source list under "devices" and allow you to change the update setting to manage the iPod content manually, and that will let you use your iPod for the time being without the risk of accidentally erasing the contents.
Then do any of the following to transfer your music from iPod back to the computer/iTunes.
For iTunes version 7 or later, then you can transfer purchased iTunes store music from the iPod to an authorized computer by using the "file/transfer purchases from iPod" menu. Note that the maximum of 5 authorized computers applies here.
Find out how to do that here.
How to copy iTunes purchases from an iPod or iPhone to a computer.
For all other non purchased content (your own CDs etc), check out the instructions/suggestions here.
Music from iPod to computer (using option 2). This a manual method using "hidden folders" and although it works, it is a little more involved than other methods.
Much easier ways are to use one of the many 3rd party programs that copy music from the iPod to the computer.
One of the most recommended is Yamipod. This is a free program that transfers music from iPod back to the computer. However, it does not transfer playcounts/ratings etc.
Other free programs are Pod Player, SharePod and Floola and iDump and iPodRobot.
If you want to recover just the structure of playlists from the iPod (and not the actual song files themselves), there's iRepo for Windows. which I understand has this feature along with all the standard features for these programs.
iPodRip also has the feature enabling you to reconstruct playlists.
There is also CopyTrans. This does preserve ratings/playcounts etc if those are important to you but this program is not free. It also supports video transfer.
More information is contained here.
Copying content from your iPod to your computer - The Definitive Guide.

Hard drive damaged - replace it myself?

My computer crashed the other day, and a technician came over and after it wouldn't mount on his computer, and made some awful noises trying to start up, he declared the hard disk dead. I live in Costa Rica, so getting service is a pain. The tech offered to sell me a new WD Scorpio 2.5" 320Gb SATA hard drive for $190, and do a "complete installation and configuration" of the drive and system for another $150. I found the DIY guide for replacing the hard drive, and it looks simple enough. My question is, given the damaged drive, is there any risk in replacing the drive myself? Any reason to pay the tech to do it for me?
Thanks

It comes form my experience in the computer repair/computer service industry. There have been many times where I've seen WD OEM (original electronic manufacturer) or Retail drives fail. At my particular store we only carry SeaGate & WD internals hard drives (on occasion we have Maxtor too, but they're a rebranded low quality SeaGate); it seems to be much more frequent that I have my clients coming back in 2-7 months saying "My computer isn't working again" and more often than not testing shows the hard drive to be bad. Most of the time these hard drives are WD. That doesn't mean that SeaGate drives don't fail, but I see it much less often.
Because of things like this WD has made me (& my team) look like we don't know what we're doing. As a result, I encourage SeaGate & Hitachi drives due to their higher quality. Everyone has an opinion though and I'm sure there are good WD drives out there. They just don't seem to be as frequent in my experience. In addition, a lot of manufacturers buy & use WD drives due to their (typically) lower price point. One of my coworkers recently bought a WD external about 4 months ago. It failed on him & while WD gladly replaced the drive, that doesn't help him get his data back. He's a graphic design student & had literally thousands of pictures. WD wanted to charge him $1000+ to send the drive out to a disaster recovery center (which is a common price); but it was still within their 3-year warranty...
I guess my experience has just left a super-bad taste in my mouth with WD. That being said, I still prefer WD over Maxtor drives. I don't what SeaGate says about their quality, they seem to be the cheap-brand cola compared to Coke/Pepsi.
SeaGate or Hitachi > WD > Maxtor
/END RANT; sorry if I hijacked the thread, lol.

Hard Drive Damaged (Input/Out Error etc)?

Initially my macbook (macbook pro 13 inch running lion) would not turn on (get past the apple logo and spinning cog). So I opened up in recovery mode and after trying a bunch of stuff (reinstalling; repairing; safe mode; verbose mode) installed lion on my external HD which I am currently using to do this. I decided that a lot of my files were not worth recovering so I did a zero erase of the internal HD thinking. I tried installing lion then and it still wouldn't work. It would download everything, get to the end of the downloading bar (I am not using a OS disk) and it would contiuously display ~2hrs left. The time would decrease but as soon as it got to around 5 minutes it would loop back to 2 hours. Anyway. Since then I bought mountain lion and have it installed on my external HD. I tried installing it on the internal and it said the disk is damaged. After another zero erase, it was still damaged. Before this I remember getting errors like Iput/Output Error and what not. What I am basically asking: Is my internal hard drive beyond repair and should I buy a new one and if I do, since I am under warranty, can I get this done for free at an apple retailer (or my university)?
Sorry for being so long winded. I'm writing everything because I don't understand what is actually wrong.

If you can get it to boot somehow and run Disk Utility, the definitive answer to "is the drive dead?" at the user level will be found at the bottom part of DU's window. If the S.M.A.R.T. status of the drive device (not the volume) is anything different from VERIFIED, drive is kaput.
Of course, the Geniuses have heavier duty diagnostic software that can delve deeper into what went wrong, which we mortals don't normally have on hand.

Will removing old versions of illustrator on my hard drive damage my current version of adobe illustrator cc 2014?

I'm having hard drive space issue on my partitioned drive, just wondering if removing old CC and CS6 versions of illustrator and photoshop will damage my current versions?
thank you!

Travis,
It should not; removing newer ones may wreck older ones.

My Power Supply Blew Up Is My Board or Hard Drive Damaged?

Bought myself a Geforce 4 4200 Ti on Saturday ) , installed it, loaded the drivers etc.. and everything was perfect.
I then ran 3dMark 2002SE 5 times on a loop, I left my machine running, then it just switched off.
I tried the power button, the reset button etc.. nothing worked, I then pulled out the power cord and put it back in, I was then presented with a blue flash a bang, and lovely smell of smouldering ;( .
I rushed out to buy a new case and got the system up and running after formatting the hard drive, the system now takes much longer to load considering it was a clean Install, and gets slugish at times - so I reakon some damage has been done, but I'm not sure if its the HD or the Mobo.
Is there anyway of knowing/any software to test if the board has been damaged. I've ran all of the Maxtor tests and the hard drive passed, but the performance issue seems to be linked with the HD.
Also what would cause my p/s to blow in the 1st place, it was a 350w and less than a year old.

I remember a similar problem to this, when the 1st ATA133 boards came out I built a new machine can't remember which board, all I can remember is that the HD ran like a donkey until I installed the 4in1 IDE drivers. And thats very similar to the problem I'm having now, before I could copy+load a program+double click a directory and the system would cope, now it just chugs along, this is why I'm focusing on the HD. It would be nice to get to the bottom of it though as both are a similar price to replace should I need to.
I am currently running the new Hyperion drivers and was doing so before, with no problems, so i think they can be ruled out.
Only other thing is I've flashed my BIOS to the latest version, so I could have a config issue, anyone know the best configs to use for my 7200rpm ATA133 drive?
Also as I asked before is there any software that can test the board for damage?
Many thanks and your help is very much appreciated.

Hard Drive damaged, error trying to Transfer Activation for CS2

The hard drive on my laptop is performing erratically and CHKDSK can't fix it, so it's time for a new drive. In preparation for the new drive, I tried to transfer activation of Photoshop CS2. I get the following error dialogue box message:
"The application or DLL C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Activation\en_US\almuirsc.dll is not a valid Windows image. Please check this against your installation diskette."
The only choice for this box is to click the OK button. When I do, I get the following message:
"Sorry, a serious error has been detected. To continue using Adobe Photoshop, please reinstall the appliation."
Any thoughts on what to do? Perhaps try re-installing and hoping that I can then use the Transfer Activation feature properly?

I wouldn't even worry about it. Get the new drive, install CS2 and try
to activate it. If it's denied call Adobe and explain the crashed drive.
They'll get you running again.
Bob

Mac Hard Drive Damaged Beyond Repair?

Hello, My mac was fine and one day i went to turn it on and found it would not load :O I tried a safe boot, then tried single user mode but got I/O Errors and Invalid Node structure errors forever. I put the computer in Target disk mode and transferred the files i want to keep. Then in target disk mode i tried disk utility but was unable to repair the hard drive So i did the only other thing i thought would work, i erased the hard drive since i already have the files i need. Now Trying to load i get the Blinking folder with ?. so i created a recovery HD thumbdrive and ran disk utility, "Disk Utility Was Unable to repair the hard drive". Is The Hard Drive Toast? Should i buy i new one or have it replaced?
Thanks.

Some Test i did:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/111808673@N04/12486601964/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/111808673@N04/12486431753/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/111808673@N04/12486835444/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/111808673@N04/12486378535/
They all fail i will be taking my computer in for a new hard drive as soon as i can .

Hard drive damaged and cannot be repaired

I have had a few weird issues with my early 2011 macbook pro 13 inch, updated fully. All of this started after ML. Sometimes, when I power it up there will be a pause and then the signin screen will appear. If I sign in then, the apple logo and the spinning wheel beneath it will appear as usual, however, it will never login, it will just remain that way indefinitely. Also, sometimes when I shutdown, the grey wheel will appear for about 15 seconds and then the computer will shutdown. Therefore, I decided to do a reinstall of Mountain Lion. It took about 3.5 hours and finally it gave a warning message saying, "installation failed, the hard disk is damaged and cannot be repaired. Restart to try again." I restarted and the same thing accured at startup, same message.
When I restarted in disk utility, the Machintosh HD was not available. When I used disk utility application, the verification said, "disk is damaged, click repair disk", but that option is greyed out. I reset PRAM and nothing changed. My verification is still returning errors and 'damaged disk" but not way to click 'repair'.
Also, for most of the time I have had my laptop, moving slightly or lightly bumping the lower, righthand corner of the body makes a clicking noise, almost like sticking a stick into a moving fanblade, but not very loud. This does not occur now as much as it used to though.
Is there anything I can do short of replacing my HDD, although I would be interested in upgrading to an SSD at some point.
Thanks!
Obbie

FieldMarshallObbie wrote:
finally it gave a warning message saying, "installation failed, the hard disk is damaged and cannot be repaired. Restart to try again."
It's very unlikely you'll be able to fix that without erasing the drive.
Do you have backups?
When I restarted in disk utility, the Machintosh HD was not available. When I used disk utility application, the verification said, "disk is damaged, click repair disk", but that option is greyed out.
There's a very small chance you can start from the Recovery HD and repair the disk from there. It's probably worth a try. See the yellow box in #6 of Using Disk Utility.
If that doesn't help, see the pink box there. If you want to try DiskWarrior, you'll need to borrow a working Mac to download it and put it on a DVD or disk partition.
Otherwise, your only choice is to erase and reformat it, then download a fresh version of OSX (although it sounds like it may be failing -- the clicking noise). You do that from the Recovery HD, too; see the yellow box in #1 of Using Disk Utility.

Hard drives damaged after installing Snow Leopard :(

After installing Snow Leopard all software seemed to work fine. Then I found out that e-sata doesn't seem to work well with Snow.
I've tried two different e-sata cards, including CalDigit's FASTA-2e, which CalDigit claims works fine with 10.6.
My external enclosure appeared and immediately gave me a kernel panic. I tried several times with different working drives and now they are all heavily damaged. Kernal panic after kernal panic, I am noe having a difficult time accessing the data.
Now here's the strange part...after going back to Leopard 10.5, my internal drives all seemed to be infected as well. After using Disk Warrior and apple's disc utility, I got those working ok.
What could be going wrong here? I installed Snow. It was fast. But it wasn't worth it...at least not yet.
If there's anything else I might be doing wrong or any way to fix these drives now, please let me know.
Thanks all!

It seems that Sonnet is not yet compatible with Snow Leopard either. That issue was covered here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2114442&tstart=0.
Anyone know if RocketRAID eSATA for Mac works with Snow? Apple sells it...
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TW106LL/A?mco=NzE2OTU5Nw
Thanks!

Boot camp / partition problems, hard drive damaged?

I was in the middle of using boot camp to allocate 13gb to windows when my macbook pro crashed (the crash screen with the turn off and restart text came up), then when i restarted and ran boot camp it said that my harddrive couldn't be partitioned and to repair it using disk utility. I ran that, but the repair disk is greyed out, the repair permissions doesn't have any effect and when i clicked verify disk it says;
"Disk utility stopped verifying macintosh hd because the following error was encountered filesystem verify or repair failed"
and the log is
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Performing live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume free block count
(It should be 15200369 instead of 11898629)
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
Can you help me out? It's essential i get a number of windows products running.

Ok, that seemed to work for part of the problem.
It repaired the disk but whenever I run boot camp it keeps throwing up that crash screen and i have to go through the process of repairing the disk again.
I've ran boot camp with no other programs running in the background or open and without disturbing it while it's allocating the partition and it still crashes.
Any ideas how to get it working?
Heres the crash report
Fri May 30 00:22:56 2008
panic(cpu 1 caller 0x0031D1B3): "hfs_lock: locking against myself!"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1228.3.13/bsd/hfs/hfs_cnode.c:986
Backtrace, Format - Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x3d2476d8 : 0x12b0e1 (0x457024 0x3d24770c 0x13321a 0x0)
0x3d247728 : 0x31d1b3 (0x483cc0 0x0 0x3d247758 0x1f0d72)
0x3d247758 : 0x31db5b (0x5399ae0 0x3 0x0 0x4384804)
0x3d247848 : 0x1f2e30 (0x3d247860 0x0 0x3d247888 0x1f4d49)
0x3d247888 : 0x1da8f0 (0xa1f25a0 0x4a09ca4 0x38ed58 0x0)
0x3d2478a8 : 0x1da95d (0xa1f25a0 0x0 0x246 0x49e1500)
0x3d2478c8 : 0x3346c6 (0xa1f25a0 0x68000 0x57bbee0 0x49e1500)
0x3d247bc8 : 0x334a22 (0x4a09ca4 0x17f7fff 0x3e616c 0x0)
0x3d247c58 : 0x32bc00 (0x4384804 0xf8000000 0x17 0x4a09ca4)
0x3d247cd8 : 0x1f5039 (0x3d247d08 0x0 0x3d247cf8 0x0)
0x3d247d38 : 0x1e7e0c (0x4381c70 0x80006802 0x3d247ee0 0x0)
0x3d247f78 : 0x3dbe77 (0x49e1500 0x4a09ba0 0x4a09be4 0xb0080d78)
0x3d247fc8 : 0x19f084 (0x46543a0 0x0 0x1a20b5 0x46543a0)
No mapping exists for frame pointer
Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0xb0080d88
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: DiskManagementTo
Mac OS version:
9C31
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 9.2.0: Tue Feb 5 16:13:22 PST 2008; root:xnu-1228.3.13~1/RELEASE_I386
System model name: MacBookPro3,1 (Mac-F4238BC8)

2011 Macbook Pro Hard Drive damaged?

Hi,
I own a 2011 Macbook Pro 13" with i5 processor. I went to open my laptop this morning and saw a blank gray screen with a folder and question mark flashing. My computer was never turned off the last time I used it. I just closed it, putting it in sleep mode.
I did research and read all kinds of articles about disk recovery and internet recovery and so on. I successfully reached the Mac Utilities screen with disk utility, reinstall OS X, etc. When I click on reinstall OS X, go through the terms and conditions, no disk pops up on the list for me to install the software to. It's an empty box. And also I had Yosemite installed but it wants to reinstall Mountain Lion.
If I try to go and erase/repair a disk, the only thing that shows on the left is disk0 and Mac OS X Base System, and none of the buttons on the right on the screen such as verify, repair etc are illuminated so I can't click them.
On a side note, ever since I bought the computer in 2013 (bought it used), the screen would randomly start going crazy and get all messed up, but often I could just close the screen and open it back up to fix it. It happens 4-5 times a month using it almost daily. Might this issue be related to my current issue?

It may be the HDD or it may be the connecting cable. Take out the HDD and install it in an enclosure. Connect it to the MBP via USB and use startup manager to boot the MBP:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204417
If it boots that MBPO, then the internal connection is faulty, usually the SATA cable It is an inexpensive repair.
Ciao.

Laptop will NOT Shutdown after a hard drive installation

We have been rebuilding a Pismo from scratch basically. The last part was the hard drive which we did yesterday. It too awhile to get the computer to boot up but when it did it worked perfectly - or so we thought. After replacing all the contents of a broken iBook (cloned backup), we used it for a while and things worked fine. Unfortunately, it will not shutdown. Using shutdown ... it closes all the files and then just sits there with the desktop open. Tried several things and it just won't shut off. Any ideas?

Hi, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
Are you talking about the Pismo not shutting down? Or an iBook?
Have you tried forcing a shutdown by holding down the power button for 5-10 seconds? This is how to force an iBook to shut down.
Every time you have to do a forced shutdown instead of a normal one, there is a chance of hard drive damage and you should repair the hard drive, either by booting into Safe Mode OR by starting up from the Mac OS X Install disc by inserting the disc and restarting your computer, holding down the C key as the startup chime is ending. Then click 'Next' at the language screen and choose Utilities > Disk Utility and select the hard drive in the left column. Choose the First Aid tab. Click Repair Disk to test and repair the hard drive.
Once you have repaired the hard drive with either Safe Mode or the Install disc's Disk Utility, then start up normally and repair permissions from Disk Utility in the Utilities folder on the hard drive.
If it continues to have problems shutting down, you may want to try resetting the PMU.
Good luck.

Hard Drive Damage

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