My hard drive has failed

Hi My Computer crashed yesterday and the Genius bar was unable to retrieve any files from my hard drive. They said they didnt want to attempt because it was making a clicking noise and that I need to take it to a specialist. Any well- reputable recommendations? Can a Mac specialist store be able to help me out i/o having to send it across the country?
What options do I have! thats not going to cost me $1000 dollars

Once the hard drive starts making mechanical noise some of the parts are physically failing and the drive would have to be taken apart and rebuilt to get data off of it....that is why the Genius did not want to mess with it....when the Genius said it would need a specialist I do not think he was referring to a Mac specialist, but more a place that rebuilds drives....
.....there are a couple apps like this one....
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/10259/data-rescue
....but again they are more for badly corrupted files and not for a drive that is mechanically failing.....I believe it will be expensive....

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27 inch imac's hard drive has failed.

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No worries,
Any SSD should work I recommend either OWC or Crucial SSDs, but you will still need an aftermarket optical drive temp sensor or the software to slow the fans down.
I recommend:
For software: http://exirion.net/ssdfanctrl/
Temperature sensor:http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-iMac-21-5-A1311-Mid-2010-Optical-Drive-Temp-Sensor -Cable-922-9624-/151521177860?
You will also need a bracket to mount it on-http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer+Technology/ADPTADRV/
iFixit guide: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+EMC+2309+and+2374+Hard+Drive+Rep lacement/1634
You will just need to swap out the HDD bracket with the above one mentioned.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4S2l9neKM

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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
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     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 think my hard drive has failed, what do I do now?

My imac G5 failed to start properly today, just getting grey screen. I tried all the things suggested in the postings and managed to get it to the stage where I could reinstall via Time Machine etc but there was no disc to find on the imac to install the data too. Has my hard drive died? what do I do now?

Normally if there is no bootable volume you'll get a flashing '?'. It doesn't sound like you are getting that far. I suggest following the steps in this article to rule out some other common causes of gray screen.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570
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Intel 20" iMac hard drive has failed, what can I do?

Hello everyone,
My white 20" iMac (late 2006) has just died and I think the hard drive might be irreparable.
Yesterday it wouldn't boot up and froze on the grey screen, however it worked fine from a safe boot. But today it would not boot at all, not even in safe mode. So I booted from the original OSX Tiger discs and ran Disk Utility. I tried to repair the disc permissions but this failed and told me the disc needed repairing so I hit Repair Disk. This also failed, saying the disk could not be repaired and must be erased and to reinstall the OS.
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Or will I have to visit an Apple store for a genius to have a go?
Does anyone know what might cause this sort of failure? Is it just substandard parts reaching their retirement age?
Also, does anyone know how much a replacement HD is likely to cost me?
Thanks for any help and suggestions.

simon.goodwin wrote:
I'm afraid that in the end the hard drive was 'too old' as the genius put it.
Is it really too much to ask for a hard drive to last more than four years?
That's on the low end, but not entirely unusual. "Normal" lives seem to vary fairly widely.
Also, I was not at all impressed by the competence of the genius I dealt with. He didn't even know how to boot in safe mode or from an external drive.
Yeah, in my limited experience, they vary, too, but that's rather basic. Must be a newbie.
I am now up and running with two backups in place.
Yay!
Also, I have given the failed hard drive to a friend who will try and recover the last weeks data for me as the Apple genius said he didn't know how to do that either.
That's a specialty Apple doesn't do, at least not in most stores. See [Data Recovery|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Recover.html]. The services that do it have (expensive) specialized hardware and software.
Needless to say I am not happy with Apple's hardware or customer care.
I'd agree about the "Genius," but not necessarily the life of the drive.

HT1329 Hard drive has failed on PC, is it possible to retrieve my itunes library for my new pc?

Hard drive failed on PC. Now have new PC but don't know if/how I can retrieve all my music? Or do I simply connect my ipod to the new PC and sync it?

Hi kazbam,
Thanks for visiting Apple Support Communities.
If you've purchased music from iTunes, there are a few ways to get it back on your computer. This includes transferring purchases from your iPod and downloading past purchases from the iTunes Store.
This article has some good information about the available methods for transfering your media:
iTunes: Transferring media from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or iPod
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1209
Regards,
Jeremy

5 months...and hard drive has failed

Hello, two days ago my Lenovo Twist S230u laptop started to freeze a lot, especially when I tried to multitask (like switching to a separate window). It probably took ten minutes each time for the computer to unfreeze and continue.
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I previously sought support on the Microsoft Answers website. They said that my 'hard disk is failing' and I will need to have my HDD replaced.
I just want a second opinion here. Is warranty valid under this circumstance? From what I remember, 'Lenovo Solution Center' said I still had a few hundred days of warranty left on the machine.
Thank you for your time.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Never mind. I've contacted Lenovo and they said they are able to replace the HDD under the current warranty agreement.

I have an iMac 21.5 late 2009, the hard drive has failed.

Instead of spending £200 replacing the internal hard drive, is it possible to run Lion off an external firewire 800 hard drive. If so, what are the negatives. The employee at western computers told me that it will run slower than it would with an internal hard drive, and I don't want that. So I would like to know what the implications of using a firewire 800 external hard drive to run my OSX from.

PappaSmalls wrote:
Instead of spending £200 replacing the internal hard drive, is it possible to run Lion off an external firewire 800 hard drive. If so, what are the negatives. The employee at western computers told me that it will run slower than it would with an internal hard drive, and I don't want that. So I would like to know what the implications of using a firewire 800 external hard drive to run my OSX from.
You can take your machine to other AASP's for cost estimates if you are not happy with the one you recieved. However the answer to your question is yes you can install Lion on an external HD. The downside will be speed because FW800 isn't as fast as SATA. In short you were being told the truth. I'd recommend two things, get the internal HD replaced and next time purchase AppleCare to protect your investment. Had you done this the cost of AppleCare would have more than paid for itself and you would have a new HD installed by now. AppleCare will extend the warranty to 3 years and also include 3 years of telephone support. You can buy AppleCare within the first year of ownership of a new Mac, currently you can find it on Amazon for as low as $125USD and yes it's an international warranty.

MacBook Hard Drive has failed, how can I backup my information?

Ok, my macbook's HDD has decided to fail 2 days before my 10 hour Photography Examination, in which I'm supposed to be spending 10 hours creating a final piece on Photoshop using it! :/
It's still in warranty, so before I send it off to Apple to be replaced, what methods can I use to backup my MacBooks data, I have ALOT of important information that I CAN NOT lose!
I've tried repairing the disk through Disk Utility on my OS X disc, but no joy. Is there a method I can use to backup all my data or clone the HDD? I have another MacBook (2006) and a Windows 7 IBM laptop if their any use for the backup? I also have an external HDD (320GB). Thanks

AdamNoakes wrote:
Ok, my macbook's HDD has decided to fail 2 days before my 10 hour Photography Examination, in which I'm supposed to be spending 10 hours creating a final piece on Photoshop using it! :/
See [Data Recovery|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Recover.html].
Once this is sorted out (or not), it should now be clear that you need to do regular backups before your HD fails, or something else awful happens to your Mac.
You already have Time Machine on your Mac. All you need is an external HD, or perhaps a Time Capsule. You might want to review the [Time Machine Tutorial|http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#timemachinebasics] and perhaps browse [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum).
There are other options, too. See Kappy's post on [Basic Backup|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12366915#12366915], complete with links to the web sites of each product.
Message was edited by: Pondini

My Zen Vision M 60 gig hard drive has failed....can i replace it with a toshiba 1.8 60gb

is is possible to replace hard dri'ves?

You need to check what kind of interface the .8" hard disk on the ZVM uses first. There are some units fitted with ZIF connector hard disks while other shipped with laptop hard disk connectors. Google around for information on taking apart the ZVM and then make sure you buy a hard disk with the same kind of connector as the ZVM. Also, try to get your hands on some extra ZVM parts like the top/bottom plastic plate. Those may snap off during removal.
Personally tho, I'd try to get a 64GB Samsung .8" flashdri've on instead if I can afford it and if the connection fits, since it's more resistant to shocks and knocks, plus the extra 4GB can easily mean an extra season of one TV show if I encode the video with my preferred settings.Message Edited by RAMChYLD on 09-25-200702:9 AM

My external hard drive has failed

Naturally all our music and photo's are on it. Can I reverse sync our iPods? I want to recover as much of our music as I can.

See
Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod or iPhone to a computer
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store
There are also a number of third-party applications for doing the job of copying from the iDevice to your iTunes library on the computer. Check out:
Pod To Mac
Disk Aid
Phone Disk
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My iMac G5's Hard Drive Has Most Likely Failed

So my hard drive has been having problems since November 2005, but the computer has been barely holding out, until now. The computers just dead. I got this message from
It happened at the most random time. Yesterday morning, I turned on my computer and opened Safari. Everything went just fine, and about 3/4 way through loading the apple startpage, the entire computer froze up.
I tried disk utility but it froze while verifying and repairing disk permissions (about 1/8 started and it froze) and when I did verify disk, it came up with a popup window stating:
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
And then in the Disk Utility information window where it says the status that its at (Checking....) it said this:
Checking HFS Plus Volume
Checking Extents Overflow File
Checking Catalog File
Invalid Sibling Link
Volume Check Failed
The underlying task reported failure on exit.
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error
Then I ran fsck in single-user mode, and i got this:
#fsck -fy
disk0s3: I/O timeout
(4, 7808)
I'm not sure what the coordinates mean. I'm thinking they might be the coordinates to a bad sector that may be screwing EVERYTHING up because the computer failed to recognize the bad sector, and close it off of any further use.
After that I ran diskutility in single-user mode thinking maybe the GUI version was corrupted... but I let the diskutil verifyPermissions /dev/disk0s3 run for an hour and nothing showed up on the screen so i just decided to stop, shut down, and go to bed.
So now i've figured, my iMac has given me enough trouble as it is. ive had so many problems with it... ever since november 2005 (5 months into owning it) it has had the following hard drive error code show up in extended test for the Apple Hardware Test ever since... and about 1 hour ago, i retested it, and sure enough this came up:
**ERROR*CODE***ERROR*CODE**
2STF/8/3: S-ATA Bus O-Master
**ERROR*CODE***ERROR*CODE**
I'm really not happy with mac right now. I think their 1 year warranty is useless and they pretty much leave you screwed if you dont buy their applecare protection plan.
I have a windows 98 (upgraded from 95) that i bought way back in 1997, and its still functional... with the same hard drive... same everything... and it works just fine... except for the memory is small because back then 128 GB was the biggest it got) :P
so a 5 GB hard drive going on its 10th working years, and this 150 GB hard drive failed after 14 months... all i've gotta say is: Apple, thats pretty pathetic... especially after you mock PC in their commercials for "breaking down". Ive actually had less problems with all of my 3 PCs combined then I've had with this **** iMac.
So now heres what i'm trying to figure out. i'm wondering, what kind of hard drive i shuold buy to replace it... i tried the DIY hardware replacement ordering page but it says that the apple website couldnt find it (http://www.apple.com/support/imac/g5/diy/).
I wasnt planning on buying from the apple DIY anyway, but I wanted to see if it would specify a type of hard drive. Where is the popular website to go to buy these things, and how expensive will it be for me to replace it with a hard drive about as big as my current one).
Or should I not throw my hard drive away yet, and invest hope in it somehow. I heard DiskWarrior could do the trick, but I dont want to have to spend $80 on a piece of software that might not even work out right. And all the free ones you have to download to your mac... but too bad for me, my mac wont even start up... (well it does but when it gets to the desktop, its pretty much unfunctional... just a moving mouse that wont do anything).
Is there some renouned website (as crucial.com is for memory) among these forums that you might suggest?
I'm open and desperate for any input i can get. The sooner the better
Thanks in advance
-Mark

Hey look, its my friend Charlie from my Disk Permissions Error -36 post.
Here's our thread from last time. Alot of the stuff there still pertains: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=620422&tstart=0
It turns out the reformat I did only worked for a little while. Then last friday, my kernel was corrupted, and so i did "Erase All" but skipped the "Zero All Data" figuring that it wouldnt be necessary since I wasnt discarding my drive, so there wasnt anything to secure from anyone recovering private data. It worked for 4 days after that, and now I'm here again. With problems.
Do you remember getting disk I/O errors on disk0s3?
If you remember way back then, I had gotten this error when I did diskutil list in Terminal:
Aug 30 21:42:08 mark-imac-g5 kernel[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
/dev/disk0
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *149.1 GB disk0
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 148.9 GB disk0s3
I'm running DiskWarrior right now (borrowed it from a friend... didnt feel up to paying the $80 & have it potentially not work) and its stuck at this message:
Rebuilding Directory Data
[ |||||||||||Solid Progress Bar||||||||||| ]
Step 5: Locating Directory Data
[\\\\\\\Barbershop-like Progress Bar\\\\\\\]
Speed inhibited by disk malfunction (Skip) (Cancel)
Its been stuck there for about an hour, and I'm assuming its not going to work as you suggested it wouldn't
It's too late to do any good now, but if you ever run the
hardware test and get an error code, you should have Apple
look at it. If you were getting that error code 5 months
after the computer was new, a replacement drive would have
been covered under your warranty.
I wish I had actually done so. I was a mac-noob back then so I had no idea what anything was, and I was still getting used to the actual working-with-a-mac thing (ive been a Windows user for most of my life except for working/helping teachers with their macs at school... i was always the computer-person in school... it was pretty awesome :P)
I have to disagree with the other posters. I don't think >DiskWarrior is going to help you. Data Rescue II might help >you to get some files off your hard drive if you have files >on there that aren't backed up. But my experience was that >when I got the error in the hardware test, DiskWarrior >didn't work.
Right now I have everything backed up that I need, so it's not like i'm using DiskWarrior to get my data back. I just want a program to be able to tell the hard drive that these certain sectors that are acting up and causing the hard drive to fail are ruined and to not use them anymore. If its not just 1 sector, but the entire hard drive that is failed, I'm not even gonna bother salvaging it (even though i'm sure if it was completely failed there would be no way of getting it back that deep into failure).
I read at this website about someone else who had a similar problem to mine (http://www.desktoppublishingforum.com/bb/archive/index.php/t-901.htmldiskwarrior+speed+inhibited+by+diskmalfunction&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2):
ElyseC - 07-14-2005, 11:52 PM
And now the latest reply from Marc the support tech:
There have been a handful who have seen success after four
or five days with the "speed inhibited by disk
malfunction" message. There have also been a few
up to a week. From there, admittedly, the state
of the drive has to be pretty damaged for DiskWarrior to
run so long, although the speed DiskWarrior can work is
also related to the speed of the processor, so four days
for a G3 is different than four days for a G5.
She later posted this:
,..for a variety of reasons I ended up letting DW chug away on my drive for a few days shy of an entire month.
*UPDATE MID WRITING THE POST*
Disk warrior finally unfroze! It's now Comparing Directories (recording any file or folder differences).
I'll post more when it's all done
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A message at beginning of start up that says my hard drive has an error and could fail soon.

At startup error message says error with hard drive could fail anytime please contact www.hp.com/go/techcenter/startup. How do I correct this? HP Pavilion Entertainment PC. Windows 7.

Hi:
Please reboot your PC and at the beginning of the HP welcome screen, tap the F10 key to gain access to the BIOS.
There should be a diagnostics menu in there. Select that menu and then there should be a hard drive diagnostics option.
Run that, and see what it reports.
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If you have not made recovery DVD's using the HP Recovery Manager, do so now. You will need recovery DVD's to reinstall the operating system and software that originally came with your PC>
Paul

My hard drive has failed

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