I think my hard drive is dying, do you agree?

Hello folks! I have a late 2011 15" MbP, and recently it has become extremely slow and glitchy. I have checked the activity monitor to see if anything is using up my memory (I have 8 gb) or my processor (I picked the best one offered at the time), and even when my computer is completely frozen, the activity monitor does not show any excessive processor or ram usage. My computer being glitchy and slow randomly started about 5 days ago, I have not installed/done anything different in the last few days, so I don't think that is the problem. Also, I have windows 7 installed via bootcamp, and it is experiencing the exact same problems. I have had to force restart (hold the power button down) both operating systems at least 2 times each today, so I think it is getting worse. Does this sound like a failing hdd to anyone?
Thanks!

Actually I took some time to "revisit" the free space recommendations. For power users (e.g. media production) users free space is recommended not to drop below 50% of the boot volume space.
The fusion drive puts the OS on one drive and your applications & data on another - its seamless you don't have to do anything the OS is monitoring how much free space the boot volume can access.
Partitioning a single drive (in the case of Mavericks that wants 8GB minimum - such a partition should be that 8, plus room for VMEM and scratch files)... so make a 12-25GB partition (how many apps will you install) and put the OS on that would act in a like manner - but it would not be a Fusion drive and it would not be seamless,
You would use the rest of the drive for storage and apps that do not have to reside (installer allows you to change the default install site) on the boot volume.

Similar Messages

I think my hard drive is dying?

My daughter's ibook G-4 seems to be dying. Although she's had it for almost 5 years (yes, really), it's recently started to lock up or go blank even when she's using it or even if she moves it a little. She has to restart constantly - every few minutes. Can anyone help?

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
After 5 years, the hard drive could well be dying, as they have an average useful life span of 3-5 years.
Unfortunately, it could also be having logic board problems.
Do you have the original discs? If so, a good place to start troubleshooting is with the Apple Hardware Test, which will be on one of the original discs. Run the extended version, and repeat back how it goes. In particular, notice if it seems to run normally when booted from the disc, or if it has the same problems as when booted from the hard drive. If you get any error codes, post back with them.
Good luck!

Nothing works on iPod, I think my hard drive is shot on my 120g classic. Help?

Okay, so I purchased the iPod at Target in April of 2010. I didn't save the receipt or buy any sort of warranty plan or anything because I didn't anticipate any problems and frankly didn't have the cash. I also never registered the iPod with Apple or anything like that. I know this was a bad plan. But anyway, about 4 months after using the iPod it started getting...screwy. Some songs lost their album artwork or some of the album artworks got switched, for example Radiohead songs all had Killers album covers and Pink album covers instead of their originals. It was weird but nothing else seemed to be wrong. Later I noticed that some songs would only play for a minute or so and then skip to the next song in the playlist or album. And some songs wouldn't play at all. I could still listen to some of my music just fine so I ignored it in hopes it would go away. It didn't so I tried the 5 R's on the troubleshooting page and it didn't really help anything. It only made it worse. It made it so I couldn't listen to ANY song. I could go to any song in my library and once I clicked play, the little play triangle icon would show up at the top bar of the screen but the slider was stuck at 0.00 and no music would play. No music worked, but I was able to watch my podcasts, view photos, and watch most of my one movie. About 15 minutes from the end of the movie, though, it froze and went to the apple logo. After a month or so I noticed that when I plugged the iPod into my computer it made iTunes completely unresponsive no matter what I did. As soon as I disconnected the iPod it became responsive again. I searched through internet forums for help and found little to no help. I reinstalled iTunes about 3 times before giving up and putting the broken iPod on a shelf. Today I found it and thought I could possibly make it work again, and so I plugged it into my laptop (I hadn't used it before with the laptop) and nothing had changed versus the desktop; it still rendered iTunes unresponsive. So I did some research and found a couple new things. I first tried putting it into disk mode (hadn't tried that before) and it seemed to work just fine! I plugged it in and my iTunes remained the same. I renamed it just to differentiate it from my iPod Nano, and hit the sync button. While it was syncing I listened to some music and sometimes it would make the music skip just a bit or delay playing the next song, but it never completely stopped anything. I waited for it to sync my 23 gb of music, and after an hour or so I looked at it and it said something about being unable to sync because of an error (-50) or something to that effect. Later tonight I found out the diagnostic test and performed it. I couldn't get all the way through the auto test because I don't and never have had a firewire adapter, but I poked around the hard drive test and this is what I came up with:
Retracts: 21
Reallocs: 16376
Pending Sectors: 0
PowerOn Hours: 230
Start/Stops: 7686
Temp: Current 33c
Temp: Min 19c
Temp: Max 49c.
I read somewhere that the higher numbers of the reallocs and the pending sectors are bad.... And my reallocs number is astronomically high. So I'm thinking my hard drive is fried. Is it worth it to jump through all the hoops to fix it, and possibly not even be able to since I have no warranty or proof of purchase, or should I just invest in a new iPod?

Thank you for a delightful and very detailed descripton of your problem. Delight because you have tried everything that this forum can offer you, and you are quite right in stating your hardisk is dying (fried). You can try Apple, but if they wont replace the Hardisk at your acceptable price, then try 3rd Party vendors near your area.
If you need max 32GB of space for music, perhaps, try a 3rd Party vendor, who can replace your hardisk with a 32GB SSD, these definitely wont give you hardisk problems.
If you are a video junkie, then junk this idea, even a 64GB SSD can set you back a few hundreds.
Have a nice day.
PS: SSD are Solid State Drive, some use Compact Flash Memory, there are not new, been in used for some years by Apple.

I have a 4th gen 20G ipod whose hard drive has died. Are replacement hard drives available through the apple store?

I have a 4th gen 20G ipod whose hard drive has died. Are replacement hard drives available through the apple store?

I don't think Apple will do that repair for you, because the iPod is too old. I believe the hard drive type used in 4th gen and older iPods is no longer produced. There may be non-Apple shops who can do the repair, but they may be using a working part salvaged from a used iPod.
If you want to do the repair work yourself, and you are good at such things, this web site has repair guides
http://www.ifixit.com/Device/iPod_Original
(There are probably also YouTube videos on the topic.)
NOTE: There are two hard drive physical sizes. The thick version has two platters, and corresponds to the "thick" iPods (with double storage capacity). A 4th gen 20GB model should be the thin version. The hard drive used in iPods up to 4th gen should work interchangeably, but 5th gen and later iPods use a different type.
I have a 4th gen iPod that started out as a 20GB. The hard drive failed, so I put a compact flash card on an adapter in there. The adapter is like this one (I bought it a few years ago so it's probably not the same seller)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Compact-Flash-CF-SSD-To-Toshiba-IPod-1-8-inch-Adapte r-Black-/121174875639
The compact flash card is standard; I bought the cheapest one. I currently have an 8GB card in there, but prices have come down, so I may get a 64GB card soon. It works great with the 8GB card. No more hard drive spin-up delay. Battery lasts longer. It's lighter. And it should be more shock resistant.
The only mod I needed to make on the adapter was to bend over two pins 90º, where you place a jumper to set the drive to "master." The adapter plus CF card is actually smaller and thinner than just original 1.8-inch Toshiba hard drive; I used some thin foam packing material (cut to the right shape) to take up the excess space and ensure the adapter and card did not become disconnected.
The 4th gen iPod has excellent sound, compared to some later iPods.

I recently had a kernel panic in which I think my hard drive only had so much space left after I ran a bunch of drivers I thought I needed. I uninstalled all and moved files. For some odd reason I'm not getting sound of of my hdtv/monitor.HELP?

I recently had a kernel panic in which I think my hard drive only had so much space left after I ran a bunch of drivers I thought I needed. I uninstalled all and moved files. For some odd reason I'm not getting sound of of my hdtv/monitor.HELP? I uninstalled all the drives and apps I download. I moived files either to trash if not needed, and others to other external drives. I went into disk utility and did a repair disk permission and verify disk. Clean out junk files. Now my hdtv/monitor does not give me any sound, nor does my mac mini. Can someone please tell me what to do?

What drivers?

Help! I think my hard drive just bit the dust

Hello all. Hopefully someone will be able to help me answer this so i can stop bashing my face against the keyboard.
My parents own a Macbook Pro 13" from about 6 years ago. They told me that one day they turned it on and all it would do is come to the grey loading screen with the apple logo and load and never reach the desktop. I put my snow leopard disk in, booted it from the disk to get to the disk utility options. I did a repair disk to see if it was corrupted and sure enough it was. I erased the partition they had on there to make a new one to start fresh. only problem is now i cant format the hard drive and create a new partition to install OS.
http://i842.photobucket.com/albums/zz346/am_main/IMG_6806_zpse9915621.jpg
http://i842.photobucket.com/albums/zz346/am_main/IMG_6807_zps9bc0abd7.jpg
http://i842.photobucket.com/albums/zz346/am_main/IMG_6808_zps378a9e2d.jpg
http://i842.photobucket.com/albums/zz346/am_main/IMG_6809_zpsb47ba830.jpg
Any help would be appreciated...
To me, I think the hard drive is hooped but I don't really know. Like I said, the computer is 6 years old, nothing has been modified all original hardware.

Do you recall answering a question about letting iTunes manage your music library the first time you started iTunes? It's probably now copying (not converting) or moving all the files to the iTunes Music directory based on their ID3 tags.

How do I de register Photoshop from 2 computers that I no longer use? Both computers hard drives have died and I need to use Photoshop CS4 on another machine

How do I de register Photoshop from 2 computers that I no longer use? Both computers hard drives have died and I need to use Photoshop CS4 on another machine

You will need to contact Activation Support:
http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/activation-deactivat ion-products.html
Click the Chat Now button at the end of the page and talk with a live agent who would resolve it ASAP.
Regards,
Ashutosh

Hi guys i have an macbook 13 late 2007 and does not work when i start it up all u can see is blank white screen and after that its keep bepping high peech tone 3 times i was thinking the hard drive but im not too sure please guys help.

Hi guys i have an macbook 13 late 2007 and does not work when i start it up all u can see is blank white screen and after that its keep bepping high peech tone 3 times i was thinking the hard drive but im not too sure please guys help.

Try to reset the PRAM first then go from there.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

I need to free up space on my hard drive. How do you move photo's to my external?

I need to free up space on my hard drive in order to complete a new update. How do I move photo's from my macbook air to my external hard drive?

You need to backup your Iphoto library to Time Machine first (if you havent already done so)
THEN you need to copy your Iphoto library to another HD before deleting from your Macbook ,....because 1 copy only is = NO COPY in case of HD failure!
To move an iPhoto liobrary -
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 from LarryHN
As to your AIr and its SSD =
You need to change the premise of your SSD use.
see here:
Your Solid State Drive and having enough space inside your Macbook Air & Pro
Solid State Drive usage premise, or the “more space / upgrade SSD” question
There have been questions posed and positions taken by many people who are trying to use their Macbook Air or Pro’s solid state drive (SSD) as a mass media storage device, for either pictures, videos, massive music collections or all three combined; but this should not be the working premise of a ‘limited’ SSD and its use.
In which, it’s the case of those users with either 128GB, 256GB, or even 512GB of internal SSD space, that have or are running “out of space”, that questions are raised. The immediate premise of some users can sometimes be “(how to / if) upgrading my SSD” when in fact in nearly all instances another approach is the logical and sensible one that needs to be looked into and exercised.
Any Macbook containing a SSD should be idealized as a ‘working platform’ notebook containing all your applications, documents, and weekly or bi-weekly necessary files. All collections of media files such as pictures, music, and videos, unless directly needed should be kept off the notebook and on an external hard drive or likewise. While the ‘working platform’ premise is also the case with larger internal conventional hard drives of 1TB+, its implementation isn't as critical except in terms of data protection.
Realistically, you should at most coordinate roughly 20 to 25% of your total SSD space to all audio-video personal use media (picture / music / video collections), leaving the remaining amount on an external HD.
Nobody should consider any notebook a data storage device at any time under any circumstance, rather a data creation, sending, and manipulation device; and in the case of a SSD, this is more important for purposes of having sufficient working space on the SSD and reducing SSD ‘bloat’ in which cases someone is wrongly attempting to use the SSD space as a large media storage nexus.
The rare exception to the collective usage and premise of SSD use in which a much larger SSD is truly needed are for those in video and photography professions that require both the extremely fast speeds of the SSD and the onboard storage for large and or many video and photography files. However this also falls under the premise of a ‘working platform’ for such peoples rather than the intent of many who are using the SSD as passive and static data storage for media files very infrequently needed or accessed.
All on-notebook data collections should be logically approached as to necessity, and evaluated as to whether it is active or passive data that likely doesn’t need to be on the notebook, allocations of space-percentages to as-needed work and use, apportioning space for your entertainment media, and questioning whether it should it be on the notebook for more than short-term consumption.
Considerations should be made in the mind of any user in differentiating the necessary system data (System hub) comprising the Mac OSX, applications, necessary documents that both must and should be on your internal SSD, and that of the users personal data (Data hub) comprising created files, pictures, music, videos, PDF files, data created or being created and otherwise, that likely unless being used soon or often should be parked on an external hard drive for consumption, or temporarily loading onto the internal SSD.
You both can and should purchase whichever SSD size you need or see fit, but even in the case of the largest of SSD, unless use-considerations are made, and SSD spaces are allocated as should be the case indicated above, one can easily and immediately run into this quandary of “needing more internal SSD space”, in which instance a different approach in usage must then be implemented.
However it is almost always the case, that such large media files are wanted to be stored internally rather than actually needed, in which case the external HD is both prudent as well as necessary. Additionally costs per MB are infinitely less on an external HD than an internal SSD in any consideration of data expansion needs.
A Professional Example
In the case of a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro Retina with ‘limited’ storage on the SSD, this distinction becomes more important in that in an ever rapidly increasing file-size world, you keep vital large media files, pics, video, PDF collections, music off your SSD and archived on external storage, for sake of the necessary room for your system to have free space to operate, store future applications and general workspace.
You should also never be put in the position of considering “deleting things” on your Macbook SSD in order to ‘make space’. This is especially what your external HD is for.
Professionals who create and import very large amounts of data have almost no change in the available space on their notebooks internal SSD because they are constantly archiving data to arrays of external or networked HD.
Or in the case of the consumer this means you keep folders for large imported or created data and you ritually offload and archive this data for safekeeping, not only to safeguard the data in case your Macbook has a SSD crash, or gets stolen, but importantly in keeping the ‘breathing room’ open for your notebook to operate, expand, create files, add applications, for your APPS to create temp files, and for general operation.
Slim USB3 1TB external hard drive
External Hard Drives
External hard drives are both extremely cheap and regardless of the size of your internal SSD (or even internal hard drive if the case), you need an external hard drive with your SSD equipped Macbook for several reasons:
1. Data backup and protection.
2. Redundancy for important data.
3. Necessitated ideal space for large media files for collections of pictures, videos, and music etc.
While ever changing in price, typical portable 2.5” external hard drives in USB3 run roughly $65 for 1TB or $120 for 2TB small portable USB3 hard drives. Such drives range in thickness between 5mm and 15mm, with recent improvements in storage of 500GB drives in 5mm profiles.
There is almost no premise in which a small 12mm thick 1 Terabyte USB hard drive cannot be taken along with any Macbook as an external large storage extension inside any Macbook carry case or pouch. Typically such external HD profiles are not much bigger than a deck of cards.
External hard drives are a foregone necessity for purchase with any Macbook for at the very least Time Machine backups, data redundancies, and ideally for large media storage.

I think my hard drive is about to die, can I get some help?

Hello! Well, I have an iMac (I believe it's a mid 2007 model?) 20 inch, Core 2 Duo, and I believe my hard drive is failing. It's a long story, but its more or less exactly how it played out, so bear with me.
I noticed a few things going wonky a little while back, and started to back up data piece by piece. Well, eventually, I decided the best thing to do was to find a way to back-up my important files (I would have simply made a bootable back-up image of my HD on my external drive, but I have too many video and audio files on there to risk losing should I make it a dedicated back-up drive). Well, in transferring my files into my external drive I received Finder Error -36 (or something, may have been 036). After researching the error, it seems it commonly pops up with one of two possible cases:
in transferring files between windows and mac formatted drives and causing an error, or
a potentially failing hard drive.
Fearing the worst, I ran a verify disk on Disk Utility, and it said the disk needed to be repaired. Booted from my DVD, and ran the Repair Disk. It said the disk could not be repaired, to make immediate back-ups, and reformat the drive. Well, I hurried back over to mac to continue to attempt backing up my data to prepare for the reformat, the computer simply would no longer boot up the disk. It would go to the white screen and begin to boot, then immediately shut down. My BootCamp partition worked fine, however, except for a very similar transferring error. So I went ahead and reformatted (a quick one the first time) and Mac OS X refused to install (I am not sure if this was a DVD error as my optical drive is shot and very stubborn about reading a disc once I get one into the drive). I reformatted again, this time doing a 0 write out option.
After an excruciating week to reformat on a 0 write out, I installed Mac OS X (Leopard this time as to opposed Snow Leopard, in case it was a scratched disc). Well, thinking I had cured the problem, I tried to update to latest version, and upon doing so, encountered an error telling me the OS could not be updated. After rebooting the system, the computer seemed to go into a permanent status of a looped reboot. It would literally restart just as soon as the disk was loaded. So I reformatted again, installed Leopard, and ran disk utility. It told me that the disk could not be verified and needs to be repaired (after passing the verification test when booted from the DVD). Now when I am on the mac, it is incredibly slow and sluggish, and takes anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour to load iTunes, or even check e-mail on Safari. This was cause for my original concern before the Finder Error I encountered and believed it was just ram dying, but decided to get a head start on backing up files in case it was something far more serious. Is my hard drive simply dead and needs to be replaced, or is there something else I could do? It is currently running basic Leopard from the install disc without further updates, as it seems updating the system tends to kill it.
Thanks for any help at all greatly appreciated.

To be honest your post is rambling and difficult to read due to the lack of proper punctuation I only read it part way however...
The first thing to do is a proper backup. Your system has Time Machine built into it, here is the Time Machine Tutorial. Look that over, get yourself an external HD to use as a TM drive and backup properly! This will backup all of OS X however it will NOT backup MS Windows!
If you think your HD is failing then run Apple Hardware Test in Extended Mode and if it reports errors you can post them here.
Roger

Think hard drive is dying- please help!

Started the G5 today and heard clicking/ cludding sounds. I believe they came from the top of the tower, which is where the hard drives are (I have an extra one for video storage). The OS would not start up but instead I got a “?” flashing on and off and I believe it was inside a small folder. I had been noticing sounds that sound like shifting to me from a hard drive (impossible to tell which one) for a while now. Last time I heard sounds like this was on my PC and the drive was dying.
Told all this to the AppleCare rep who went through some stuff then concluded that it was a software issue and I should try removing one of the 2 programs she was unfamiliar with: Little Snitch and the software for my Contour Shuttle (like another mouse for video work). I told her this was unlikely as these were very common aps and everything had been fine for quite a while. She said I was welcome to take the G5 to a service center where they could test if it was in fact a hardware issue.
What I’m wondering is 1- does this sound like a hardware issue & 2- is there a way to backup the whole drive?
I may have another SATA drive I could use to back it up and have a TrayDock external FW800 case that allows you to use internal SATA drives. I’ve taken drives from the TrayDock and used them on the G5s other internal slot w/o issue. So it seems to me all I would need to do is get all the info on to the backup, and set the jumper setting correctly. Am I right? If so, how do I get all the info onto the backup and how would the jumper need to be set when it becomes the main Macintosh HD?

I read a report Google did on hard drive failures. It is available in pdf format and quite interesting.
I use Applejack religiously along with Disk Warrior 4 and Carbon Copy Cloner 3. I also use Intech Speedtools to handle bad blocks, defrag, zonebench/quickbench. And I regularly zero my drive before using and again on yearly basis or as needed.
I am not sure why having 4.5 GB RAM would be a factor unless running Memtest or Rember or the Apple Hardware TEst in Extended/Loop Mode.
The best way to "defrag" is quite simple, old-fashioned. It is called *backup and restore* with an erase/zero drive in the middle (dump simultaneously to two tape sets would be very old school!).
DW4 - hold down option and the Rebuild button changes and lets you do a deeper 'scavenger" run which is helpful. I would run the test files first too, but it always opens to the directory rebuild.
When dealing with a problem drive, I start by throwing away stuff I don't need, have backed up, and can replace. From newest to older. Peeling an onion to unravel any cross-linked files in the process.
If it is a boot drive and early on, consider using Single User Mode and fsck along with Applejack. You want to delete all the cache and swap files along with any temp files or logs. It works. And restart into Safe Mode.
SMART is not very smart and does not "predict" failures. That was just one of the conclusions of the Google study where they use thousands of drives and need to know about reliability.

Please Help! I think my hard drive might have died (iMAC G3 600)

Hello Everybody
I'm really desparate for some help.
Directly after downloading Security Update 2007-006 my iMac G3 froze. It was switched off at the mains and since then won't get past the grey screen with the apple and the spinny thing.
I know very little about how computers work, troubleshooting etc so have spent hours searching the forum and the apple support pages, following which I have tried -
start in safe mode - no change
Boot from install disc and run disc utility. This appeared to be working but disc utility can't repair the drive and comes up with the following - 'Error - the underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)'.
So I decided to have a go at starting up in single user mode and use fsck. But to no avail, it starts up in single user mode but never gets as far as the command line prompt. The final 3 lines of text say -
'disk0s5: I/O error.
Load of /sbin/mach_init, errno 2, trying /etc/mach_init
Load of etc/mach_init failed, errno 2'
and the screen is frozen, no chance of typing any commands in.
So HELP please! What does it all mean? Is my hard drive dead? Can I do anything else to try to save it? Is there anyway I can retrieve the contents of the drive if it is dead?
Sorry this is so long, I thought it best to try to explain methodically what has happened. If anyone ot there can help I will be made up.
Cheers
Tim
iMac G3 600 Mac OS X (10.3.9) 512m Ram

"'disk0s5: I/O error"
I've seen this error when the read/write arm on a hard drive becomes inoperative. It looks like you need a new drive. Don't buy anything larger than 120GB, and the 7200 RPM drives work fine. Drive replacement pictoral - Takeapart for swapping drives - slot load. When you get to the step that advises taking out the drive cage, you don't really have to do that. Just loosen the 4 drive hold-down screws and slide the drive out.
Unfortunately, anything on the old drive is gone. This is how we all learn to make backups.
David

HELP! Hard drive is dying

Hey folks, I have a hard drive that's not cooperating anymore.. here's what happened
I was working in Final Cut Pro. I was taking some video that was rendered for dvd video and trying to use it in a timeline... anyway, the mac froze up bigtime, all I could do was restart. All of the data was on an external 500 gig Western Digital drive.
When I restarted, the OS asked me if I wanted to reformat the new disk, so I said no, unplugged the drive and plugged it back in, then the drive icon was there and all. I started up final cut pro again, and it said there was a problem with my scratch disk, which was the external. So, I opened up the drive folder and everything was there, I could open files and all, but when I tried to copy stuff over to it, it gave me an error saying the file name was too big (test.txt was too big?). I opened up Disk Utility and it tried to repair the drive, and it gave me an error, something about it being unable to unmount the disk. I repaired permissions on my main drive, tried again and nothing.
So, I rebooted again. Got the same reformat dialog, clicked no. unplugged the drive and plugged it back in, then the icon didn't come back. The lights went on on the drive and it made the same old start up sounds it always did. I ran Diskwarrior (version 3 not 4 but I doubt that mattered) and it got errors when it would scan for the hard drives. I rebooted from the DW CD, and it crashed and rebooted itself.
A while ago I had something similar happen where the enclosure died, and when I got a new enclosure it worked. So, I cracked open the new drive's enclosure, and this one was a SATA drive, so I stuck it in the mac instead of buying a new box for it. Anyway, there's no hard drive icon, but Disk Utility is showing the drive if I let it sit for a long time to think about it. It just shows the drive itself and doesn't have another icon under it with the drive's name, the way my main drive is set up, and the name is all in red. It says the drive is failing and back up what i can asap. Well I can't back anything up if I can't mount it
So, anyone have any ideas? I can go buy a new external to back up the stuff onto, if I can just get to it. I know the data is there because the last time I was able to browse the drive I saw everything and it was all working, I just couldn't write to the drive.
Also for my system info, I'm running OS 10.4.11 on a dual 2ghz G5 (the original one). My main drive works fine, I have this drive connected as the 2nd drive now. Again I tried Diskwarrior and also something called Boomerang, neither seemed to do anything...

Can you access the drive when you connect it to another computer?

If my hard drive has died can I reinstall Indesign CS4

Hi
I purchased CS4 and both myself and my partner downloaded no problem, this week however the hard disk has died on the laptop - how if at all can I download onto a new mac?
thanks

Peter, FYI, I'm not sure that link is as good as you may think.
I recently wiped my HD and installed a new OS (from 10.4 to 10.6). I had backed up my CS3 download installer to DVD when I got it in 2008, but for some reason, I couldn't get the installer to work when I put in on the newly-wiped drive. I remembered that you had suggested this particular link recently, so I tried it, but it didn't work for me. I clicked on the link for Mac CS3 Design Standard, and after signing in (as requested), it took me to the Adobe downloads page where only CS5 was available.
Fortunately for me, I tried loading from my backup DVD again and got it to work. I'm not sure why it didn't work the first time, but I probably just made a mistake. I suppose I could have made a similar mistake in trying the download from this page, but if you would care to give it a try, maybe you can verify that it really works.

I think my hard drive is broken and I need a backup - urgent!

Last night I updated my Mac's (Macbook Pro from January 2012) software for the first time in a few months. I had three updates, one of which was a security update from this month. Everything installed, though it took a bit longer than usual, then the computer rebooted. While rebooting, my screen froze with a spinning colour wheel and the pop-up from the update; the progress bar was about a quarter done and it said "writing files..." underneath. I quickly Googled on my phone if it was safe to force a shut down and read that it was. Then I went to bed thinking, "I'll start my computer in safe mode tomorrow morning and be sure to buy an external hard drive this week." (I know, I KNOW I am an idiot for not doing this sooner; my excuse is that I didn't have the money and I always forgot about it when I went out to run errands. I thought about just paying for extra Dropbox but I recently moved countries and don't have a credit card anymore. I've already been beating myself up over this for hours.) I have been looking up a LOT of things and have read so much that could be relevant to my situation, but there is always something that is slightly different so I thought I would explain my own situation in detail. (And sorry about the spelling mistakes, with my Mac shot I had to switch to a laptop I can't stand using.)
Well, I woke up the next day and started the Mac in safe mode. It took a long time, but a quick Google search showed that was normal too. I clicked around a bit, thought about opening Disk Utility, but didn't because the Apple article I was reading about safe mode didn't mention it. I opened Finder, clicked the Apple and hit and restart, and that is when the trouble began.
When trying to start normally, there was a progress bar under the grey apple. I had never seen it before for a normal start-up. Eventually the Mac just shut down. I tried starting it in safe mode again, it also shut down a fraction of the way into the progress bar.
Next I ran Disk Utility. When verifying my Macintosh HD, I got errors such as "incorrect number of threads when running" and something about an incorrect catalog. At the end of the verification, I got the prompt that Disk Utility needed to repair the files. I clicked Repair, it started to fix things, but eventually red errors still came up and got the message "Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
At this point I raced to the nearest electronics store, money be damned, and came home and attached my new hard drive to the Mac. It was recognized on the left side when I opened Disk Utility again. When I selected my hard drive and clicked "New Image" and selected the destination as my new hard drive, I very quickly got the error "Unable to create disk image using disk utility (error -61)".
After a brief mental breakdown I shut down the computer again and rebooted in single-user mode. I typed "fsck -fy", a few lines of text entered immediately, then I hit enter. It started searching until it ended with the error "The volume Macintosh HD could not be fully verified." Now I've turned the Mac off and don't plan on turning it back on until I have a solution.
One suggestion that I have read on all of these walk-throughs is to insert the installation disk that comes with your Mac. Well, I definitely never had one and now I can't get on my Mac to put OS X Recovery on a USB.
I am ordering DiskWarrior later today when I can borrow a credit card, it should get here in less than 48 hours according to the German company that sells it here. Will that be too late for my files? Is there anything else I can try for getting my data off my Mac? I tried to use Time Machine when I first got the Mac but for some reason didn't, either it was too complicated for me as a new user or there were monthly payments involved or something. In any case, when I tried to restore a backup using Time Machine, no options came up.
Is it possible this was caused by the software update or is it just a horrible coincidence? I have never had any problems with my Mac before so I just cannot believe these two things are unrelated.

In case anyone comes across this thread while having similar problems, here is how the rest of the situation played out:
Alsoft did not get in touch by the time I had my Apple store appointment. At the Genius Bar, the Genius who was helping me tried Target Disk Mode as well as a few other tests to determine if it was the cable attaching the hard drive or the hard drive itself that was broken. It turns out the hard drive was the problem and there was nothing that could be done to recover the files. I asked if I could keep the hard drive and, being under Apple Care, I could buy it for 157 euros (about $225), which I agreed to do before I left.
By the end of the day I had heard from Alsoft, who said it's usually possible to "rent" the hard drive from Apple with a deposit and then return it to them after a few days. It is then possible to attach the old hard drive to your fixed Mac, run DiskWarrior, and make a report that can determine the state of your files (I think - didn't get a lot of details). In any case, the guy that emailed me from Alsoft said it was probable that the files could be retrieved despite everyone at the Apple store trying not to let me get my hopes up.
In any case, it all turned out wonderfully in the end - I went to pick up my Macbook a week later and Apple had been able to transfer everything (except a few pieces of music) from the old hard drive onto the new one! I didn't have to pay to keep the old drive either. And of course, the first thing I did when I started using my Mac again was make a backup using Time Machine. (And since then I've realised that I'm actually running Lion instead of Mountain Lion, oops.)
So if you find yourself in a similar situation, be sure to contact Alsoft as it seems like there are still other ways to retrieve your files.

I think my hard drive is dying, do you agree?

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