How do I know if my hard drive is failing?

I have a Mid-2012 13" Macbook Pro.
I've been having problems with it running really slowly since August of last year, but I haven't gone around to doing much about it yet.
Every time I try to do anything on it - even if I'm just typing - I get the spinning beach ball.
I opened disk utility and checked the S.M.A.R.T status and it said it was not supported. I reset my computer and checked it again and it said it was verified this time? So I don't know what's up with that.
Could that mean that my hard drive is failing, and if so, how do I make completely sure that's what's happening so I don't waste money on a replacement hard drive?

One common problem that leads to slow computers is adding too much junk.
If you restart your computer in Safe mode, and everything is nice and fast again, you should be suspicious of the 'too much junk' problem.
Too much junk can only be solved by carefully un-installing the junk -- no cleaner programs can tell you that you should never have installed that widget that turns the screen purple, shows font-names in their own fonts, or makes the MenuBar black instead of white.

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How do you know when your hard drive is failing

Having trouble turning on computer and computer freezing and getting a blue screen. Videos freeze. Do I need a new hard drive for my Imac Hard drive has errors.

Boot your machine with the install disc that came with it, launch Disk Utility and repair the disk. If that passes, then boot your machine with the supplied Apple Hardware Test disc and run the extended tests, at least twice. If that passes, download and run Rember,

HT2173 How to know when a hard drive has failed ?

How to know when a hard drive has failed ?

Machine doesn't boot. You experience strange crashes. Gets wrong results. Your harddrive is five or more years old. Time to consider repacing it.   You do have backup?
You may want to run these "standard" fixes if the problem persists.
1) Check the amount of free space on your harddrive. You should have a several gigs free.
2) You should run disk utility
     a) verify the disk
     b) update your permissions.
3) Try a safe boot.
    Shutdown your machine. Hold down the shift key. Poweron. Wait awhile Wait awhile while you harddrive
      is being checked.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1455
4) You may want to run applejack to clean up your machine.
     http://applejack.sourceforge.net/
a lot more ways to fix your Mac.
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/faqs.html
verify & repair your startup drive
To verify & repair you file system on the startup drive, you will need to run disk utility from you installation DVD.
This article will tell you how to get to disk utility. Once in a disk utility, you can go and attempt to recover the disk.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417
To repair your startup drive, you will need to run disk utility from your startup DVD.
Mac OS X 10.4: About the utilities available on the Mac OS X 10.4 Install DVD
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2055
How to run disk utility from your startup DVD.
Insert your startup DVD into your reader. Power down your machine. Hold down to the c key. Power on your machine. This will bootup your startup DVD.
This will bring you to a panel asking you for your language. Pick your language.
You you come to the Install Mac OS panel. Do not install.
Click on Utilities menu item. This will give you a pulldown list of utilities.
Click on the disk utility.
You are now in disk utility. Pick your disk. Click on repair it should be on the lower right of the panel.
Once the repair completes successfully, you should update your permissions.
Verify a disk
As an alternative, you can verify that the filesystem on the disk is correct. You will not be able to repair the file system.
I suggest that you use disk utility to verify that your startup disk is OK.
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility
Start up disk utility. On the left pane view, you will see a list of all your disks.
Click on your startup disk.
Click on the First Aid Tab.
Click on verify.
Hopefully your disk will verify. If not, you have to boot from your installation DVD and run Disk Utility from there to attempt to repair your file-system.

I need to update to OS X ..... but I need to backup my system first. How do I know what exterior hard drive I need in order to do this?

How do I find out what size exterior hard drive I need to back up my system?

Click on the Apple icon on menu bar and select About this Mac. Click on the Storage button. Look at how much space your hard drive is currently consuming take that number and at least double it. This would be your minimum space for your hard drive back up. Or for a simpler answer, if your hard drive is 1TB in size, get a 2TB external hard drive for backups.

My mac mini hard drive is failing. I am no longer under warranty. Do you know how much it cost to have Apple replace the hard drive? or How I can replace it myself?

MY mac mini hard drive is failing. I am no longer under warranty. Do you know how much it cost to have Apple replace the hard drive? or How I can replace it myself?

You can do it yourself. I did on my 2009 Mini
http://www.ifixit.com/Device/Mac_Mini
Also, this place sells HSDs and has install videos.
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/

Anyone know how to find and replace a hard drive cable fo an HP Pavilion zv5160us laptop?

I received message that my hard drive had failed. I ordered an identical drive and replaced it. I now get error message:
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: exiting PXE ROM
The recovery disks will not reformat the drive. What does the cable look like. Can it be replaced? Where could I find one?
Thanks for any help as I have bought new hard drive, more memory and recovery disks. Hate to lose my investment completely. Should have just bought a new laptop!

Hi,
Should be ok to put new WD HDD on your dv6 machine. All connectors are standard. Please watch the following videos to see some idea of this work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP0WYzpKYKk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQx7PlIXFuE
Regards.
BH
**Click the KUDOS thumb up on the left to say 'Thanks'**
Make it easier for other people to find solutions by marking a Reply 'Accept as Solution' if it solves your problem.

How can I use my external hard drive for my iphoto instead of my mac book pro memory?

i don't know if this question has been asked before: how can I use my external hard drive for my iphoto instead of my mac book pro memory? just like itunes all my song are save on my external hard drive. make sense?

Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

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.

S.M.A.R.T. Says 'hard drive is failing' - how to wipe?

As the title says - S.M.A.R.T. says one of my internal hard drives is failing,
and then prevents me from highlighting it to repair or erase.
I have successfully copied the hard drive to a new drive, but how do I now
wipe the failing drive?

Are you trying to do this while booted from the OS or from the install Disk? If your booted into the OS then the repair option shouldn't be click-able. Beyond that, there might be some 3rd party software that could force a reformat and/or erase. I did try to find you something but didn't come across anything specific to what your trying to do. You probably already know this, but the purpose of S.M.A.R.T. is it acts as an early warning indicator. This means the drive is no longer dependable and may fail without warning in the near future, resulting in losing all data. With that being said, I've used a hard drive that S.M.A.R.T. indicated was failing for 3+ years without a hick-up. I don't use it for anything imported though. When I have more time and if I come across anything that might get the job down, I will add to this posting. The worst case scenario is that there is no way to reformat and/or erase the drive due to the state it's in. At that point, the only thing left to do is recycling the drive.

All of my music was on a hard drive that failed. How do I download them from iTunes match to my new hard drive?

All of my music was on a hard drive that failed. How do I download them from iTunes match to my new hard drive? I know how to do it one song at a time, but I want to know if there is a way to do it for all 10,000 song files at once?

There are some recovery programs out there if you google them - many with free trials. I haven't tried them so I have no opinion.Read any professional tech and user reviews you can find before you try one. I have read here in the past that some have worked for people who have posted here.
To help in the future, have you considered using Jump Desktop - Remote Desktop? I know it won't solve the problem you're dealing with now (unless notes were taken on your computer.) It's in the app store. It's the #1 paid app in the business category and the reviews are great. It allows you to see anything that's on your computer on your ipad. If you take your notes on your ipad then you might want to email them to yourself, put them on Word in your computer, for example, and then if you need them in class, you remotely connect your ipad to your computer and you will see your notes. This way you won't have to rely so much on the cloud. The explanation would be too long here, but you might want to take a look at it. You can use the free trial on jumpdesk.com and then if it works for you, buy it in the app store.
Meanwhile, it's hours since you sent this post. Hopefully others who can help solve your problem who are on this forum now can help you. I hope you get your notes back. Don't give up too quickly.
Hope this helps.

How to open C645 to view hard drive that was installed

In June of 2012, I had work done on my Satellite. I am now on my 5th computer since living in Latin America (13 years). None has survived more than 2 years. Approaching my computer's 2nd anniversary, I would like to know what $120 hard drive the repair person installed. I also would like to learn how to replace it should it fail (probable, but not inevitable).
So to begin, how do I open the hard drive bay (and where is it)?

Here's one of the example . Goodluck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnrv8l5R9Q0
(Everyone was new at one point)
You wanna say thanks ?? click the white star on the right side >>>

I believe my macbook pro hard drive is bad. I erased the drive and reinstalled the OS and the macbook still runs really slow. I dont know if the hard drive is the issue.

I believe my macbook pro hard drive is bad. I erased the drive and reinstalled the OS and the macbook still runs really slow. I dont know if the hard drive is the issue.

Did you try an SMC reset too? It's easily done and none of those resets to the best of my knowledge hurt anything. When I was fooling with my system, which at one point was a home made Fusion setup, I needed to reset the SMC sometimes to get the drives recognized. Reading the documentation the sudden motion sensor is drive related but that seems to be about it.
Some more specifics may be needed about the drive itself, the model number of your unit, and the OS version you're running.
At present, the problem seems sort of odd to me. FWIW cable problems can be quite intermittent. I used Scannerz to find some of the problems on my original system that I later converted to a new HD and SSD combo. It can find lots of problems if you learn how to use it right (HD problems, logic board system faults, and cable problems) but you need to get a system at least partially up and running to use it, and it doesn't sound to me like your there right now (in other words, don't go out and buy it because at this point I don't know how it could help you)
Another word of advice would be to not go out and start throwing parts at a problem unless you have a good idea what the source of the problem is. If you have a logic board problem, new drives and new cables won't make it go away, you'll just be wasting your money. Logic board problems, cable problems, and drive problems can all have very similar end user symptoms. The article that I linked above named "Hard Drive Problems" has a section on general symptoms of problems and if you read the article it becomes clear there's a lot of overlap associated with different types of problems.
I assume that your unit isn't under warranty. If, by chance it is I wouldn't even fool with it and I'd take it to Apple and let them deal with the problem. You also might want to check with whatever Apple sources you have available to test your system, like an Apple store, and see how much they'll charge (if anything) to evaluate the system.
I certainly hope this helps.

How to backup data when hard drive is failing.

I think my hard drive is failing..
I booted using Install DVD, and got message in Disc Utility that "this drive has a hardware problem that can't be repaired." It mentioned I should backup data and consult apple representative..
I clicked on Macintosh HD under the red physical drive (500.11 GB Hitachi HTS) and did disc repair.
Strangely, the message went away on the physical drive when I finished. It turned back to black wording and gave green "verified/repaired" messages in the log.
I am still able to boot my macbook, although everything is running slowly... Desktop excel files take 15 mins to open.
Does this still sound like a failing hard drive?
I am trying to act fast and borrowed my sister's external harddrive/ "passport for mac", and it slowly prompted a time machine backup. It is slowly working through "8.34GB of 200.33GB"
I do not really understand what I am doing, but hoping this is the right move. Could someone explain what time machine will do or how it will help?
Is there any chance I will harm her external hd?
I am mostly worried about iPhoto and itunes library, iMovie projects,and important excel spreadsheets on my desktop. Is time machine looking after these concerns?
Any help greatly appreciated.

Where is you TM backup?
Where are your external data redundancies?
Now you will need to use very expensive data recovery experts to recover data when you could have had it safely on a $100 worth of 2 external HD.
Mechanical HD failure circumvents using recovery software.......so, now you backed yourself into a corner and needed expensive data expert recovery.
You took a wrong turn a long while back before reaching this cliff edge.
that wrong term was not having (preferably 2) external HD as a redundant data archive.

I have a new MAcBook Air and my photos don't fit on the internal hard drive. I want to store my photos on an external hard drive which I will connect to my Air when using Iphoto. How do I set an external hard drive as the default drive?

I have a new MAcBook Air and my photos don't fit on the internal hard drive. I want to store my photos on an external hard drive which I will connect to my Air when using Iphoto. How do I set an external hard drive as the default drive in Iphoto?

Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Regards
TD

How do i use an external hard drive for all my itunes music?

how do i use an external hard drive for all my itunes music?

Hi valleydave,
Here are two good links for you to check out:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1751
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449
The first one goes over, in-depth, what you're looking for in regards to "off site" iTunes.

How do I know if my hard drive is failing?

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