Macbook pro hd is failing

The harddrive in my 15" macbook pro / 2.53 ghz / 4gb / 250gb (runs snow leopard) is failing... there is no apple store on the hawaiian island that i live on.
does anyone know if/how i can use a second computer to boot my macbook pro as a hd (w firewire?) in order to recover data before replacing the hd?

do you know if there is any advantage to either of the two modes of recovery?
Firewire target mode would be the preferable method, since it's more immediate if you have the right cable handy. However, I've had instances where an older machine and a newer machine were unable to connect this way. So, if it doesn't work, you'll need to fall back to removing the drive.
also... (not sure what the etiquette is on posting 2 separate questions on one thread) can you recommend a replacement drive? i'm thinking to go with a 1tb? hitachi? or maybe solid state drive?
It's a related question, so no problem. I tend to like buying from Other World Computing, I trust the stuff they sell. Here's the appropriate page:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/
I have no afflilation with them, just a satisfied customer.

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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 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.
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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!

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Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

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.
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I bought a firewire-firewire cable, and couldn't access my laptop through target disk mode.
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Start the MBP with the original Leopard OSX install disk holding the C key.
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