Hard Drive Failed Need Help!

Hey guys, heres my story. My hard drive failed last week (wouldnt go past white screen), took it to genius bar, they ran Disk Warrior and it seemed to fix it. As a precautionary measure I bought a 1tb external drive and backep up my system via time machine. Today my imac froze and I am having the same problem, wont boot past white screen. I am 2 months out of my warranty and need to know what is the easiest fastest and cheapest fix since I am a college student. Also are any of these options possible?
1) Install OS X as a clean system and use my external HD to load my system.
2) Buy another external HD and boot up from that?
3) Buy another internal HD and have someone install it (not sure how much this would cost though)
If anyone can help me out I would really appreciate it.

All 3 of those are possible however #1 and 2 are not favorable. I would suggest to first run a few tests to make sure that your hard drive is actually bad.
1) The first test like Larry suggested is to boot up to your Mac OS install disk, but do not go through the installation process. Instead go to the Utilities Menu at the top and open Disk Utility. If your drive does not show up in the left hand column then the drive is likely bad.
2) Insert the original iMac install disk like in step 1 but this time when you startup hold down the "d" key. This will load up the Apple Hardware Test. Run the Extended test. If it passes everything then this means your computer is ok just the hard drive is bad.
3) However if in step 1 Disk Utility does see the hard drive first try Repairing the Disk. If this fails you might try reformatting the drive and reinstalling Mac OS X as the problem could be an issue with the system software.
4) Which should actually be step 1 is to disconnect all of your external devices like hard drives and see if you still cannot boot. Keep everything disconnected during testing.
The problem is hard drive failures can be intermittent. One minute it works the next minute it doesn't even see a hard drive. Good luck though and let us know how it goes.
George

Similar Messages

C440 Hard drive failed NEED HELP ASAP PLEASE!

SO my c440 lenovo all-in-one Desktop Has had a Hard drive failure i get the error "Error 1962: No operating system found. Press any key to repeat boot sequence." I've had the hard drive looked at and it wont power on or anything. I can buy a new HHD same model ect But how can i get my operating System of Windows 8 back on the New HHD( hard drive)??? i only have the Lenovo drivers Disk

Good day and welcome to the community.
If you didn't make recovery media prior to the HDD failure, which sounds catastrophic, you'll need to contact Support (info below) to discuss obtaining the proper media. There may be an associated cost.
Hope this helps.
Regards.
United Kingdom
IDEA-branded and B, C, E, G, H, K, N, Q, V, Y Series Products
English
0333-777-3991
(National Rate)
9:00 - 18:00 Monday - Friday

Hard drive failed - need to get music off my iPod

Greetings:
I have an iPod Video, 80 gigabyte.
A while back, I had a hard drive fail which was storing all my music to sync to the iPod. Now, I have the music on the iPod, but need to get it back into iTunes, without iTunes deleting the music upon sync.
Is there a way to do this?
Thanks,
Paul

Connect your iPod to your computer. If it is set to update automatically you'll get a message that it is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all the songs from your iPod. Your iPod should appear in the iTunes source list from where you can change the update setting to manual and use your iPod without the risk of accidentally erasing it. Also when using most of the utilities listed below your iPod needs to be enabled for disc use, changing to manual update will do this by default. Check the "manually manage music and videos" box in Summary then press the Apply button: Managing content manually on iPod
Once you are safely connected there are a few things you can do to restore your iTunes from the iPod. If you have any iTunes Music Store purchases the transfer of purchased content from the iPod to authorised computers was introduced with iTunes 7. You'll find details in this article: Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod to a computer
The transfer of content from other sources such as songs imported from CD is designed by default to be one way from iTunes to iPod. However there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the music files and playlists from your iPod. You'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer movies, videos, photos, podcasts and games as well. Have a look at the web pages and documentation, this is just a small selection of what's available, they are generally quite straightforward. You can read reviews and comparisons of some of them here:
Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
Comparison of iPod managers
TuneJack Windows Only
iPod2PC Windows Only
iGadget Windows Only
iDump Windows Only
SharePod Windows Only
iPodRip Mac & Windows
YamiPod Mac and Windows
Music Rescue Mac & Windows
iPodCopy Mac and Windows
iRepo Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Access Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
There is also a manual method of accessing the iPod's hard drive and copying songs back to iTunes on Windows or a Mac. The procedure is a bit involved and won't recover playlists but if you're interested it's available at this link: Two-way Street: Moving Music Off the iPod
Whichever of these retrieval methods you choose, keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync. I would also advise that you get yourself an external hard drive and back your stuff up, relying on an iPod as your sole backup is not a good idea and external drives are comparatively inexpensive these days, you can get loads of storage for a reasonable outlay.

Toshiba 1TB USB 3.5" External Desktop Hard Drive I need help

Hi and I hope you can help me soon.
I have a Toshiba 1TB USB 3.5" External Desktop Hard Drive which has worked as a back up to my computer without fail and last week I had to get a new computer with W8 installed. I connected this external up to retrieve my backed up folders etc and it was OK at first but now it does not show up under the computer tab but is visble in the devices and printers section of Control panel, I can also see it in the disk management console. It is just the Computer tab where I cannot see it, the problem being that my backup program cannot locate it either and I need to retrieve e-mails etc.
I have a HP desktop running W8 with 8GB of RAM. it is also 64BIT
One other point is that I can access the external using a laptop of my daughters so I know it is OK.
Thank you for any help.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

I reassigned it the drive letter..
Great, Jeff. That's actually not an uncommon problem.
My Drive does not appear in Windows Explorer view
-Jerry

Hard drive crash need help with new iTunes load and backup files

I have looked through the posts and not found my situation.
I had my iPhone synced to a PC computer and the hard drive crashed. I had an extensive library in iTunes, but none of the music was purchased online so I can't simply download it again. It was all from CD's, many of which belonged to friends. I now have an iMac. The music I like is still on my iPhone, but not on my new iMac. When I try to sync the iPhone with my iMac it wants to delete all the music on my iPhone. Is there any way to copy the music off my iPhone first - so I can add it back into my iTunes library?

Yes, luckily I have been in this situation.
You can download a free application that will take your music from your iPhone and place it onto your Macintosh HD.
One of these should suit your needs:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/19890/ipoddisk
http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy/index.php?gclid=CPjvvOiyr6gCFaNl7Aodm h6QIQ
http://www.headlightsoft.com/detune/
I hope this helped.

Hard drive failing, need new Mac, how can I keep iTunes 10.7

I've got a mini mac, ca. 2009. The hard drive has begun to fail, and the external monitor is also beginning to go (once all-black screens is now mostly pale grey.
I have 75,000 songs on an external drive. I tried iTunes 11 when it came out, and had to roll back to 10.7 because iTunes 11 is simply not capable of managing a large library. Lack of multiple screens alone is enough to drive me away.
When I asked at the Apple store if there is any way to keep iTunes 10, they laughed in my face, then got the Apple-knows-better-than-you tone and said there is no way to use an "inferior" version of itunes anymore.
Is there any hope?

Any new Mac will come with the newest iTunes installed. Now something I don't really know much about but could be an issue is according to what I have read iTunes is now more intergrated into the system of the Mac. It used to be a pretty much stand-alone application which you didn't even have to install. How integrated I don't know. It may still be possible to delete iTunes using one of the many reverting back to an older version method posted here. Using older operating system components is not something you can do though, since they may well cause instability in a computer that was designed with a newer system in mind. However, I don't know if iTunes is really that much part of the system.
Realize also that you will be forced to upgrade should you ever buy an i-device since those require the version of iTunes current when you make the purchase.
Here's a downgrade post I had in my archives:
Back up your computer first, in case the unexpected happens
Here's a step-by-step method and you may find it easier to follow than alternative methods I have posted below.
Downgrade iTunes 11 to iTunes 10.7 - http://www.emacconsulting.com/apple/itunes/downgrade-itunes-11-to-itunes-10-7/
If the above does not work, or you want to do it without Pacifist, or you want to know what is actually going on when downgrading, or you encounter error messages, here's more details:
Quit iTunes.
Get iTunes 10.7 from http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1576 or the direct download link at: http://appldnld.apple.com/iTunes10/041-7195.20120912.d3uzQ/iTunes10.7.dmg
Do a few preparatory steps by making sure all iTunes components are not running and cleaning old files.   See https://discussions.apple.com/message/20475394. Do steps 3 and 4. Steps 6-8 may be also useful but I don't know if they are essential. Some of the other steps are not necessary, duplicate steps listed later in my post or are perhaps even unhelpful in the process.
Replace the iTunes 11 application with iTunes 10.7. Simply dragging the application to the trash may not work. Lion (OSX 10.7) and newer systems have iTunes integrated into the operating system and deleting is a bit more involved. Two ways to do this are:
1. (Easier) Use the shareware Pacifist utility (http://www.charlessoft.com/) to install iTunes 10.7 including all associated system files. Details at http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=16400819&postcount=6
2. (More work) Check this reference on how to delete the iTunes application itself:
    Delete iTunes in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion - http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/13/delete-itunes-in-mac-os-x-10-7-lion/
    After deleting the application there may be other files that need downgrading too. See the note about error -42408 at the end of this post. You may want to tuck these away somewhere safe until you have completed the installation of iTunes 10.7. I have not tested this but ideally if newer versions are not found then the installer will put in the old versions. This may include these files in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ which apparently get updated by iTunes 11:
AirTrafficHost.framework
CoreFP.framework
DeviceLink.framework
iTunesAccess.framework
MobileDevice.framework
After doing one of the two procedures above you will have to rescue the most recent old iTunes library from your iTunes > Previous Libraries folder. Rename it "iTunes Library.itl" and replace the existing one in the iTunes folder. A newer version of iTunes irreversibly updates your library file so you have to replace it with the old one or you will get an error message. Note, this will revert your library to the version at the time of the upgrade and you will have to update any changes made since. See:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/20401436 - turingtest2 11/2012 post on rebuilding empty/corrupt library from previous iTunes library file after upgrade/crash.
iTunes: How to re-create your iTunes library and playlists - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1451
Other issues:
- https://discussions.apple.com/message/20432309 - solution to mobile devices saying they need to be restored after downgrading
- If you encounter error -42408:
iTunes: Advanced iTunes Store troubleshooting - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3297 > Specific Conditions and Alert Messages: (Mac OS X / Windows) - including specific error codes.
- Persistent "Show in iTunes Store" arrows after downgrade - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4567064

IPhoto Library moved to External Hard Drive and need help moving library

Hi - Recently I had my hard drive replaced. I purchased Disk Warrior and moved all files to my external hard drive. Now that my hard drive has been replaced, I'm having trouble moving all my photos back to iPhoto. Nearly all of my 8K+ photos are blurry after I import and enlarge. The ones that are fine have dimensions of or more than 1K x 1K. The digital photos that I moved and are blurry when enlarged are 340x360 (hundreds range). How can I correct?
Thanks so much in advance.
Audra

I think I might need to back up ---- So I had a failing hard drive, went to Apple and purchased Disk Warrior. Installed Disk Warrior and tried to recover everything from my hard drive. Then all that was recovered was supposedly moved to my external hard drive. I have now received my computer back with the new hard drive. I plug in my external hard drive and have been trying to move all my images from the external hard drive to iphoto. In both places (external HD and when the photos are imported), the image is at the lower dimensions.
Thanks for your time.

New hard drive issues - need help please!

So I just installed a new hard drive on my Ideapad S10 and having the following issues. I get a PXE-E61 : Media test failure check cable & PXE-M0F : Exiting Broadcom PXE rom message. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the drive to check the connection and still get the error, it's a brand new drive. Also I noticed in the BIOS that the hard drive is showing up under ssd disk and SATA hdd shows - none. If I restore the BIOS settings to original then the drive will show up under ssd but the SATA controller mode will show the AHCI setting instead of the Compatible setting it should use.
I'm really stuck here and don't know what else to check. My orginal drive is dead so I'm trying to get this working so I can install windows. If anyone could help out it would be greatly appreciated - Thanks!

Full Disclosure: I don't know your machine.
That PXE error probably doesn't indicate a problem - or not the problem, anyway. Your machine boots, doesn't see an operating system on the hard drive (or doesn't see a hard drive at all) and tries to boot over the network and fails. That's what the PXE error is about.
As to the SATA problems, what happens when you boot your Windows install media? Does that see a hard drive?
Z.
The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
English Community Deutsche Community Comunidad en Español Русскоязычное Сообщество

Hard Drive Crash - need help with choosing new drive and installation

My hard drive seems to have crashed. My computer froze, and when I tried to reboot, it got stuck at the startup screen. I started from the system CD, ran the disk repair utility, and it said it could not repair the disk. I ran Tech Tool Pro and it could not repair the disk. I tried to start up in Target disk mode while connected to my older G4 iMac (that I'm using now as my backup), and the disk would not mount. So I need some expert advice - I am assuming the hard drive is toast. I wish I could at least mount it in target disk mode to transfer files, but I haven't been able to do that. I was going to take it in for repair (or possibly buy a new computer), but after reading some of the posts here, I am thinking I could just replace the internal hard drive with a 3.5" SATA drive.
What I need to know is am I correct about this? And is this the right kind of drive for my iMac? Are there any specifications I need to be aware of when ordering a new drive? I downloaded the manual explaining how to replace the drive and it looks doable. I would appreciate any guidance as to choosing the new drive (specific brand names/models would be great), installing the drive, and tips for formatting, etc. Thanks in advance for your help!

Welcome to Discussions - any 3 1/2" SATA drive will be fine, go to [macsales.com] or [smalldog.com] or [newegg.com] and choose whichever drive fits your wallet. Most of them are reliable, I have heard of problems with Seagate and Hitachi, but there are always some failures with any brand. Make sure to get a good warranty.Instructions will come with the drive, but you can download them from [Apple|http://www.apple.com/support/manuals/imac> as well.

Hard drive failed, need to rebuild

The hard drive on a friend's laptop failed. I purchased a new drive and now I need to reinstall Windows 7. However there are no recovery disks and the Product Key from the back of the laptop is worn off.Where can I download Windows and the drivers, plus get the Product Key?I will then upgrade to Windows 10.Thanks,Ron

You need Recovery Media to install without the license key. If your friend did not create his Recovery Media or it was lost/damaged you can order them from your Support page. Scoll down the list of drivers/software to see the ordering option. http://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/HP-Pavilion-dv6-2100-Entertainment-Notebook-PC-series/4041735/model/4121245#Z7_3054ICK0KGTE30AQO5O3KA30R1

Huge problem with external hard drive.. need help

Hey everyone! After a series of unfortunate events that began innocently enough, it appears I've trashed my WD 60 GB external USB hard drive.
I was using the drive to back up my iTunes library. When I found that it was also backing up my 30+ GB of video onto the drive and saw how slow it was, I clicked "stop" in iTunes which actually caused it to 'unexpectedly quit'. (I saw it coming).
So I tried to delete everything off the drive so I could try again (after removing videos from my iTunes Library). I found that it wouldn't let me delete everything, so I went to Disk Utility and went to erase to get rid of anything on the drive.
That failed multiple times and I kept quitting out until I got it to work. Now that's where I am now. After the erase, the disk is basically unusable. iTunes alerted me saying that the disk "cannot be read or written", and Disk Utility will not verify, repair, erase, or partition the disk being that "the disk cannot be unmounted".
Can anyone tell me how to wipe this drive so I can bring it back to a "clean slate" state????
Thanks a lot,
Alex

You may have hosed the drive because iTunes unexpectedly quit while it was still writing to disk.
You should try WD support. Also,DiskWarrior may be able to unmount your disk, but run DW from the CD as there are installation issues on a 10.5 system.
-mj
[email protected]
Message was edited by: macjack

How do I check for bad sectors on the hard drive? (Need help soon!)

I've asked this in a different thread but am not getting exactly the question answered completely. I need to run a check on my drive that will test each sector and if a bad sector is found, it will block that sector from being written to with data in the future.
I used to use Disk First Aid or Apple HD Setup or Norton Utilities to do this. Norton does not appear to be made for Mac OSX 10.4.4 and those other utilities appear to be System 9 and earlier utilities only.
Is there some way of doing this with current Apple tools? My original post is at http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1592160#1592160
Thank you. I've been down since Saturday and really need to get an answer so I can move forward and get my computer back up and running.

There is only one way to do this. Make a bootable backup of your drive to an external Firewire drive (you can use the Restore option of Disk Utility.) Then do the following:
1 Boot from your Tiger DVD. After the installer loads select Disk Utility from the Utilities.
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. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
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, if supported.) 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 will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
By reformatting using the Zero Data option DU will force checking for bad blocks.
If you wish to forego the above procedure you can purchase TechTool Pro (v. 4.1.1) which has a module for scanning the disk for bad blocks. However, repairing the drive can only be done by reformatting.

I need to install CS6 on a replacement hard drive and need help with deactivation/reactivation

I have had a major hard drive crash that is resulting in my replacing the drive in my Mac with a new one, then re-installing my programs onto it. I have a copy of CS6 on the current bad hard drive that is activated. Do I need to deactivate it before installing it on my new hard drive even though it will be on the same computer, just a different hard drive? If so, how can I deactivate it when the drive the Creative Suite is on is bad? Is there a place on Adobe's website that I can log in and manage my activations if I have to deactivate in order to put CS6 on my replacement drive?

hi. I have the exact same problem. I'm getting the 'configuration' error, and my uninstall application for each application with CS6 'can't be found' since it is apparently an alias. I'm not getting any answers from Adobe and getting frustrated. Would simply like to know how to uninstall or start from scratch. I'll let you know if I hear anything. I posted the question on the 'creative suites' forum.

Getting a new hard drive! Need HELP!

Okay, so I know how to switch out a hard drive in a Macbook Pro...no big deal. My question is if there is an easy way to get al your personal info, files, iphoto library, music...off the laptop onto one external hard drive. I figure I can hunt around and move it all, but had no idea whether or not the OS had a way of boxing up all your stuff within a user account and porting all over ot an external hard drive as one file. That way, when you got OS X re-installed, you could just port that user back onto it. Does that exist?
-Cratin

You could put the new drive in an external firewire enclosure (they're cheap) & clone your current hard drive files to it. Then boot to the new drive to ensure it's working OK. Then install the new drive in your laptop. You can use your old drive as a backup, installed in the firewire enclosure.
To clone, you can use the freeware CarbonCopy Cloner @ http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html , or the freeware SuperDuper @ http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html , or the freeware IBackup @ http://www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup/index.html , or the Restore function of Disk Utility included in OS X.
Here's some helpful laptop sites.
Fix It Guides for Mac Laptops & Mini
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/
The guides can be viewed on-line or you can download a PDF file.
How to Upgrade, Repair, Disassemble an Apple/Macintosh Laptop or Notebook
http://repair4laptop.org/disassembly_apple.html
PowerBookTech
http://www.powerbooktech.com/
(Note - PowerBookTech has some good info, however, some Mac users in other forums were having difficulty getting delivery on parts from them.)
How to Upgrade, Repair, Disassemble an Apple/Macintosh Laptop or Notebook
http://repair4laptop.org/disassembly_apple.html
Laptop Repair Guides
http://www.applerepairmanuals.com/#portables
MicroDock
http://www.microdocusa.com/
 Cheers, Tom

400GB of photos. Want to backup to external hard drive. Need help. Not very computer savvy. Thanks

I have 400 GB of photos in iPhoto and simply want to back them up. I have a 1TB external hard drive and am wondering what is the simplest way to do this. Can I save the photos to the External Drive and them delete them from iPhoto? I need to free up space on the internal drive. Thanks

You can use Time Machine to backup, that does not mean that you can delete photos from iPhoto to save space however.
Plug the drive into your Mac and turn Time Machine on, that is all you need to do as far as backup is concerned.
You will need a second drive for your iPhoto library if you wish to keep access to all photo's, all of the time.

Hard Drive Failed Need Help!

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for