Macbook Pro hard drive failed, data recovery possible?

Hi everyone,
I have a 13 inch MBP i purchased in 2010. Late last year I experienced some issues with the computer generally slowing down and one day it would not start up, getting to the gray screen with the apple logo and loading wheel. Contacting apple support I was talked through the process of copying my hard drive contents onto an external harddrive, re installing the operating system, and then copying the contents from the external hard drive back to my internal hard drive. Then after up dating the operating system (I think to snow leopard :S) I took it to a genius bar appointment and the guy did a few tests and said my hard drives looks ok and suggested upgrading the RAM from 4gb to 8gb, which I did with no noticable improvement. But seemed to work ok for another 8 months or so.
So last week after using my MBP alot during end of semester, it suddenly turned off while using google sketch up. I tried restarting a few times which did not help. Then I searched through apple support to find an answer. I managed to get into disk utility, which told me the disk was OK. I then tried to re install my operating system which took a very long time and failed twice before getting no response at all I booked another genius bar appointment.
The guy did some tests a very quickly came to the conclusion that it was my hard drive that had failed. He gave me the option to replace the harddrive for $200, which I think I will do, however as STUPIDLY did not have any of my data backed up, I am desperate to try and recover a few important documents and my iphoto library, so have put off replacing the hard drive until I try to recover my data.
So the apple guy gave me two programs to try and recover my data. He said its a confusing an tedious process especially with no experience but I am willing to give it a go. The two programs are DISC WARRIOR and EASEUS. I know disc warrior costs money and easeus is free. He should me how to boot my MBP into target disc mode, and sold me the appropriate cable (initially a firewire cable, but then told me a thunderbolt cable would be more efficient and was cheaper.. Im sure they are right but can anyone confirm that a thunderbolt cable can be used for what I am trying to do) to connect my MBP in target disc mode, to another macbook pro, and it should connect as an external hard drive. Then with one of these programs try to recover some of my files
He said what I can recover just depends on the extent of the damage to the hard drive and what sections have failed. I am waiting for a friend to use their MBP in a few days to download one of these programs and connect my MBP.
Does anyone have any experience or advise with using either of these programs recommended by the apple guy or anyother programs that I could use? Or any advice at all in how I should go about trying to recover my files by using another Macbook pro and target disc mode? or anything else that might be helpful?
ANY help would be much appreciated guys!

If you think you can handle your own repair. your welcome to check out my User Tips on the subject
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Most commonly used backup methods
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https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/?p er_page=50

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MacBook Pro hard drive failure- data recovery possible?

Hi everyone, I have a June 2009 MBP that stopped turning on the other day and it just sits on a gray screen when trying to boot up. I had it taken in to a small little authorized Apple repair shop since I am living out in BFE and they said it has a hard drive failure which is causing the problems. They said there is no way to recover the data. Is that right? I'd imagine there has to be someway to recover it. Is there somewhere I can send it in or something? At this point even if it were to cost a lot I'd like to get the data off of it if there is the possibility.
Inb4: should've backed it up!

You may be able to boot from an external hard drive and repair the disk enough to copy the data from it, even if it will no longer boot. There are a number of hard drive recovery services. Apple even lists a couple of them (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3974) that are authorized to recover data from hard drives without voiding the warranty. The warranty is not an issue with a machine from 2009, but those are high quality, reputable companies.
Most such companies have you send them the hard drive and they will give you an estimate of how much it will cost to recover the data, if possible. Some people have reported that Data Rescue 3 comes with a coupon for free diagnostics and $100 off data recovery from The Data Rescue Center. That was a couple of years ago. I don't know if the same deals are in place now.

Macbook Pro Hard Drives Failing

Hi all,
I've been having massing problems with my Macbook Pro 15" 2.53 Ghz laptop. I got one brand new with apple care in December of 2008. The hard drive was the standard 320 Gb @ 5400 RPM.
Within approximately two weeks of operation the computer failed (froze and after a hard shutdown wouldn't boot). It turned out the hard drive failed. Two weeks! So I took it back to Apple and they replaced the hard drive (took them one week so I lost a week of productivity).
One week after receiving the laptop back, the hard drive failed again! This time I believe the OS got corrupted somehow as the symptom was that it would not boot.
So back to Apple and they straight out replaced it with a new one. One week later, guess what? Failure. So back again and they replaced it.
I'm now on my 3rd laptop from Apple and this hard drive is failing. Luckily I was able to back everything up. I downloaded a utility called SMART Utility and it tells me 60 some sectors are bad on this disk.
Is anyone else having issues like this? Its absolutely ridiculous. Currently the computer is working despite the failed sectors and horrible sounds coming from the hard drive but I expect failure soon. I'll be taking this back to Apple and showing them the results of the SMART Utility, but I'm at the end of the rope here.
I've owned multiple Macbook Pros before and absolutely loved them. But now I am so disillusioned by this... To Apple's credit they have had great customer service, but now I'm at the point where I need to be able to rely on my machine.
Has anyone heard anything?

I would second Michael's comment. While hard drives do fail, the rate at which yours are failing would appear to be well beyond the statistical average. I would generally think the next level would be a problem with the MacBook itself causing the failures, but from what I can tell from your comment is that they have replaced your MacBook twice (and you're on your third?). So that would seem to rule out a problem with the MacBook itself. You mentioned that you've had other MacBooks before and it doesn't sound like you've had problems with them... so I wouldn't expect that you're doing anything unusual that would cause the problem.
You're either had a remarkable run of bad luck, or there's something going on that's out of the ordinary causing these drives to fail. I would imagine that when stores get machines, they're likely shipped from batches that are manufactured at similar times. If they had a batch of faulty drives from the manufacturer, it's possible a single store could have gotten several of them. That would still not really explain why your initially replaced drive failed as it would likely have come from a totally different batch than what would have been used in manufacturing at the time your notebook was put together. I guess it's always possible that they might put in a drive that that wasn't new.

Macbook Pro hard drive failing, how to recover data?

My 2 year old MBP refused to boot up this morning. I was told at the Genius Bar that the hard drive is on its way out.
It is still able to mount when hooked up to another machine but apparently the geniuses don't do data recovery. I was refferred to a data recovery service or another option was to "hook the drive up to another machine" via some sort of docking station to lift the data off myself.
I have no idea where to start with this, does anyone know how I could accomplish this myself? Thanks in advance for any tips.

I hope that will work out for you, but I have very little confidence that all will go well that way.
Your situation is one in which it makes very good sense to ignore the warranty on your hard drive, replace it yourself at your own expense, and thus be able to keep the old drive — which Apple will keep, if Apple replaces it. Once you have a new drive in your MBP and an OS up and running on it, then you can connect the old drive to it and see what can be recovered. If you hand the machine over to Apple for the replacement and lose the old drive, and then you discover that some of your files in Mac-only formats have been corrupted by being written to a Windows file system on your HP computer, you'll have no chance of recovering them.
The way to avoid all this, of course, was to keep up-to-date backups on one or more external hard drives so it wouldn't be necessary to recover anything from the failed drive. Once you get your new drive, do that.

Macbook - Dead Hard Drive? Data Recovery?

A friend has asked for my help - his Macbook (1st generation - about 4 years old) suddenly refuses to start but displays a grey screen, sometimes with a question mark. You can also (sometimes) hear a few clicks from the hard drive. I'm assuming the drive has died - is that most likely?
The machine will not start in target disc mode (my laptop cannot see it and there's no firewire icon on the screen) but it will start quite happily from an install DVD, Disk Warrior DVD (DW could not see the internal drive at all) and an external firewire drive. Can it be anything other than the internal drive itself - any other tests I can try?
Now, I have to whisper this bit - he has no backup! I'm comfortable with fitting a new drive for him but is there any way I can try to retrieve data other than a specialist company who are talking around £600.

The only other thing I would try is physically removing the drive from the Macbook and, if you have one, installing it in an external FW enclosure, connecting it to a Mac using a raw SATA cable, or using a (preferably read-only) SATA drive dock.
If that doesn't do the trick, I would say you've tried everything that a non-data recovery specialist should try, so at that point my professional advice for him would be to judge the value of what's on the drive, and, if appropriate, seek the help of the data specialists.
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Macbook Pro Hard Drive Failed

Hi Everyone, this is going to be a tough one, but please help me.
Two days ago, my computer slowed. So I decided to do a system update, but during the update it got stuck, so i hit the reset button.
Then the laptop did not want to boot, and would get stuck with the apple logo and the circling thing underneath.
So then I entered recovery mode, but the disk utility repair always ended in an error, and installing the OS online wasn't working as well. I inserted my original LION os cds and hit the C button during start up but it wouldn't boot from CD, instead it would end up in recovery.
I bought a firewire-firewire cable, and couldn't access my laptop through target disk mode.
Finally I used disk utility to erase Macintosh HD, restarted and nothing happened. I reentered target disk mode and now I can see my hard disk. This time I erased the GIUD partition table as well, which wiped out my recovery partition.
Now when I restart, its showing a flashing question mark. The command R key does not work. The ALT or C keys also dont do anything anymore, I just end up with a white screen. I can still reset NVRAM, and the good news is I can see the hard drive through the target disk mode from another macbook pro, but thats about it. I ran disk utility's repair disk from my working macbook pro on the non working one, and it comes up okay with no problems. But when ever I restart my computer, I just get a flashing question mark.
Please help me, I just want to have a wokring laptop.

Start the MBP with the original Leopard OSX install disk holding the C key.
Proceed with the instructions until you see a menu bar on top of the display.
Select UTILITIES and from the drop down menu select Disk Utility.
Click on Disk Utility>First Aid and run verify and Repair.
What are the results?
Ciao.

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[Zevoneer's detailed instructions on getting music off an iPod|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9053179]
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"Any disk can fail at any time."
Over a large sample, the drives used are extremely reliable. You did not have a large sample, you had ONE drive.
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Apple provides an excelent backup solution called Time Machine, that can do hourly backups to an external drive without disturbing your current work. Buy yourself an external drive at least twice as large as the built-in. Turn on Time machine, make sure it is working, plug it in at least daily, and then don't worry about it any more.

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My macbook pro hard drive went bad and i bought a new one and installed it. Now i have the old corrupted hard drive in my hand and i am looking to recover my files from it, any suggestions please? too bad i never backed them up.

My macbook pro hard drive went bad and i bought a new one and installed it. Now i have the old corrupted hard drive in my hand and i am looking to recover my files from it, any suggestions please? too bad i never backed them up.

After you have installed the OSX on the new HDD in your MBP, install the old HDD in an enclosure and connect it to your MBP via USB. Then try to drag and drop your data to the new HDD.
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Ciao.

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My early 2008 MacBook Pro hard drive was reimaged (not by me) and they lost everything on there, and have now put in a new hard drive, saying nothing was salvageable on the original HD. I have an iPhone, iPod, iPad. When i get the MBP back, how will I be able to get those devices synced so that everything I've bought/have goes back onto the HD?
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I expect the MBP to get sent back to me in the next day. I have no idea how to put these pieces back together. I'm not even sure about data recovery, but am most concerned about iTunes/iPhone/iPod/iPad.
Thanks for your help!

suzannemacuser wrote:
Long story short: last time I backed up was 2 years ago, and it wasn't using Time Machine, but an external hard drive. That was also before I got my current iPhone, the iPad and made some additions to iTunes.
Two years ago??? Shame on you!!!
I found this the other day. It's old but still applies. This should be more than enough to help you get back on track. See the comments by Zevoneer
https://discussions.apple.com/message/7217190#7217190
You will have to check on each of these. Some of the links are outdated but there is more than enough to get you started. See this article about transferring purchases. The link is in the other thread as well.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1848?viewlocale=en_US
Backup! Backup! Backup!
Message was edited by: Demo

My MacBook Pro Hard Drive recently gave me the gray folder with the question mark of death. Even as

My MacBook Pro Hard Drive recently gave me the gray folder with the question mark of death. Even as a Mac Newbie/Novice, I successfully installed a new hard drive and the OS (10.6.8) software from my installation discs. I have, however, lost the ability to play video using the spacebar and I have no idea on the steps necessary to correct this seemingly simple technical blip. .Here's my system overview:Model Name: MacBook Pro Model Identifier: MacBookPro6,2 Processor Name: Intel Core i5 Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz Number Of Processors: 1 Total Number Of Cores: 2 L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 3 MB Memory: 4 GB Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s.
I am using the Premiere Pro CS5 NLE (with the 5.0.4 updates), and I have tried to reinstall the software (which is actually the Production Premium package) several times, but I still cannot use the spacebar (or any method) to play any of my imported videos.
PLEASE HELP in any way you can!
Prior to having to replace my hard drive, my software was working just fine. No problems at all. But now, it seems that I can't get it to play whatever type of file I import.
Again, I am a newbie to the Mac, so any and all correctional/repair assistance needs to be expalined as if I were a child : )
I would hate to try to revert to considering the sophmoric Final Cut Pro X editing software package, but I've got to do something to be able to get back to my editing activities.
zionhall
[email protected]

Jorge242 wrote:
@FatMac the internet recovery doesnt work. It goes into recovery mode and then when i try to reinstall it cant find a disk to install it to. So what would be a good choice to take now?
Recovery Mode presents you with, among other things, Disk Utility. When you open that, if the internal shows up at all, first try to "Repair DIsk." If that doesn't work but if the "Media" line is present, try to format and partition it with a GUID partition table (understand that you will be erasing the contents of your internal). Then try to reinstall the OS. If that doesn't work, and since your Retina MBP didn't come with a DVD drive or DVDs, you'll need to try a hardware test using these instructions from Apple (short version: shut down, press the power button and hold down the "D" key). If none of those things work, let's hope you either have AppleCare or your warranty has some life left because the SSD in your rMBP is proprietary and expensive. You'll need to bring it to an Apple Genius for evaluation.

Macbook Pro hard drive failed, data recovery possible?

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