Problem with replaced hard drive on macbook (late 2008, 13" aluminum)

i replaced my macbook (late 2008, 13" aluminum) hard drive and get a blinking folder upon reboot. I can't seem to reboot from the original disc that came with my macbook. What do I do next? I tried holding "c" down but still get the blinking folder

With the disc inserted try starting up while holding the option key. That should take you to the boot panel where you can select the dvd.

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Where can I buy a larger hard drive for my late 2008, 15" macbook pro? From reviewing questions and answers on the support community it would appear that having Apple remove the old and install the new hard drive is recommended. But how/where?

Where can I buy a larger hard drive for my late 2008, 15" macbook pro? From reviewing questions and answers on the support community it would appear that having Apple remove the old and install the new hard drive is recommended. But how/where?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
You can install the new hard disk yourself if you want to. You just need a 2'5" SATA II hard drive, which is compatible with your MacBook Pro. You can buy one at OWC > http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/ You can filter hard drives by computer, so press a "Click to view all...", choose your computer in the sidebar and it will give you the compatible hard drives.
There are different brands for the MacBook Pro. The most recommended are HGST and Seagate, which have good reputation. A 7200 rpm hard drive will give you extra performance

How to replace hard drive in macbook pro?

How to replace hard drive in macbook pro?

Hi S,
If you have the newer unibody style, it's very easy. If it's one of the earlier models, it's considerably more difficult. Go to Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Info > Hardware and find your Model Identifier. Then go to ifixit.com, or powerbookmedic.com or macsales.com or youtube or others and there are illustrated, detailed directions. Good luck to you and post back if you have further questions.

I/O timeout all the time on console - what can I do with my hard drive? Macbook pro late 2011

My macbook has been extremely slow for a while and after looking on this site I discovered I should look at the console - and noticed I had I/O timeouts all the time which I gather are a problem.
What can I do with my hard drive? If I back it up using time machine and erase the disk with zeros will the problem continue if I simply restore from time machine?
Or should I invest in a new hard drive - but if I buy a new hard drive is there something on my computer that will wreck that one as well? i use final cut pro/studio a lot and it's got to the stage where I can barely use it - do I need a 7200rpm hard drive? My current one is a 500gb 5400rpm.
I have 16gb of RAM in but since upgrading this from 4GB it made a difference to the speed for all of two seconds then the computer returned to its normal slow speed.
Would appreciate any help on this issue as I'm not particularly technical.

I wouldn't worry too much about what the Console logs are showing... although I/O timeouts, if related to reading/writing to your disk may be a problem. I would have to see the whole Console message to know for certain...
Your hard drive is sure to be slowing you down with FCP. Your best bet would be to upgrade to an SSD, if you can afford it. It's the only way you're going to see a real speed increase in FCP as so many large temp/cache files are written to the drive.
If you can't afford a SSD, you may want to look at a 7200rpm SATA III drive (if your MBP supports SATA III - which model do you have? 2011 or later, I'm assuming, since you note that you've 16GB of RAM?).
You should also update your OS to 10.7.5 if your profile reading of 10.7.2 is correct. Won't help speed, but will be more reliable -> http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1582.
Clinton

I replaced hard drive in macbook pro and when turning on i get a blinking question mark

just replaced hard drive on my '09 macbook pro and rebooted to get the blinking question mark. what do i do? not sure i have the installation disk. i had this happen once on an older macbook and was able to figure it out but i can't remember what i did.

Schedule an appointment with a Genius the SSD is gone.

Need help with replacement hard drive

My hard drive has stopped working on this computer and since i only purchased it on 10/2012 I really don't want to replace it just yet. I am trying to buy a new hard drive but I would like a Seagate. I want to upgrade from 1 TB to 2TB. I was wondering if there is a Seagate product out there that would be compatable with the original hard drive but in 2 TB.The original hard drive is a HDD GNRC 1 TB SATA 3 ECO 7200 rpm 3.5". I was looking at a Seagate 2TB SATA 6.0 but I do not know is the SATA 6 will work with the original SATA 3. Can you please help me or guide me in the right direction for a replacement. I also have the HP recovery CD's coming to me in the mail.Thanks,GinaCee

Hi Big_Dave,Thank you for your help. I found this hard drive at Newegg and I was hoping you could tell me if it would be compatable.Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive. Or is there any Seagate product you could reccomend? I have a Seagate external hard drive and I like thier product, so I was hoping that they made something compatable for my HP. I will be installing this drive myself. I have all the instructions from the HP website and it doesn't look that difficult. Just waiting for my restore CD's and a replacement hard drive so I can start this project. Thanks again!Gina

Upgrade SATA drive for macbook late 2008

Hello!!
I am here to ask for help. Let me tell you a bit more about my Mac:
Late 2008 silver 13" MacBook 250GB 2GB RAM 2.4GHz IntelCore2Duo DDR3 MB467LL/A, currently at 10.5.8 OSx system (yes I know I need to update the software as well!)
I currently bought 4GB kit (2x2GB) RAM to upgrade on my silver MacBook (late 2008), and would also like to update my hard drive.
I have looked around on online shops for 2.5" 9mm SATA drive, and came across to 1TB for not too bad a price (between £85 to £100).
Anyone know whether if this is ok for my laptop?
Samsung, WD Scorpio Blue and Toshiba, all are at 5400rpm for 1TB. (However there is 750GB Seagate 7200rpm 16MB - recommended???)
Large memory/drive are usually much needed with me as I do use a lot of design work e.g. Adobe InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop...you get the drift .
Any advice would be much appreciated!
Looking forward to hear from you soon!
Thanks again,
ejburton.

If all the technical specs (like SATA, physical dimensions, power usage etc) all match then you can use any drive of any available size in your MBP. Right now it appears that the largest available is the Western Digital 250GB 5400rpm drive where as the fastest is the Hitachi 200GB 7200rpm drive. Fujitsu and Toshiba have annonce 300GB drives though I've not heard that either are yet shipping.
I have to say that I'm very pleased with the Hitachi 200GB 7200rpm drive.

Problem with upgrading hard drive in 2009 Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard

Current drive is 320gb with fresh install of OS SL updated with some other programs installed. New drive is Seagate Momentus 750, same brand and model as the old, just bigger.
I install the new drive, boot off the OS SL CD and go into disk utility. Partition and format with GUID and Journaled. Install starts and ultimately fails every time.
Tried to clone the 320 by putting it in the macbook, use the 750 via usb/sata. Drive restores, but it is unreliable in loading and stability. When it gets to the grey screen, it alternately flickers the Apple, Folder and NO sign. Sometimes it loads, sometimes it just keeps spinning. When it does load, it's slow and programs that take more power crash.
Brought it to Apple. They said it was a problem in the SMART section, so I got a new drive under warranty. This is the THIRD drive i've gotten from Seagate. Still doesn't work.
I've countlessly repaired and verified the drive. Helps to load sometimes, but not all the time.
If I put the 320 back in, everything works great.
Thanks.
-Ben

Is there a quality external enclosure to put the large drive in, one that has its own power supply and not rely on the port power in the MacBook/Pro? If it is a viable drive and can actually run a bootable OS X version, I'd begin to wonder after all that.
{I'd also looked up your computer in MacTracker to see what if any limits on hardware upgrade may exist. Nothing said of direct interest to the HDD. Also in everymac.com, so there should be no surprises. Yet to have those problems is troublesome and a surprise. New drives can fail. Maybe in batches?}
And a clone of a working system for backup could be made with a utility such as CarbonCopy cloner or superduper, etc then tested as a bootable clone, with the hard disk drive tested thoroughly before use. It also is odd that a drive of that size would act up, I see drives of even larger size offered online by reputible resellers and Mac specialist companies who have been around awhile, such as OWC. I just looked to see if there was a ceiling on support of larger size HDD capacities, and 750GB is not the largest. Maybe the series you chose could be among a troublesome batch or brand.
http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgrades.cfm?model=302 has a variety of stuff, including RAM, HDD, SSD, etc. And their staff has people who know what they sell. Well, some of them do. I had called them on a topic several years ago and they didn't really have an answer (I was given an OWC dual HDD external drive & it had issues, but had never been used. It still is sitting as-new, w/o support; now obsolete.)
I'd try a different brand and put it into an enclosure that has its own power supply, ports for USB2.0/3.0 and FW400/800, and so on. Perhaps even an OWC line item, not that I've had any valid experience with them here in AK. And ask their people about their products, get names, finger prints, mug shots...! LOL
Good luck & happy computing!

My MacBook Pro 13 inch makes a clicking noise from the hard drive and can not start up in safe mode and normal. I then ran disk utility in recovery mode and disk utility shows no problems with the hard drive. What is the problem?

Please help me, I have a mid 2010 Mac book pro with a toshiba mk3266gsxf harddrive. It started making a clicking noise and then my computer crashed. I proceeded to boot in safe mode, but it doesn't work. When I ran disk utility in recovery mode, it showed no problem with my disk. Does any one know what the problem is?

Sounds like a mechanical problem with the drive and it ruined the sectors where the Macintosh HD partition (and OS X, and files and programs) reside, but not your Recovery HD partition.
If you held command option r while booting, that's Internet Recovery and it's loaded via the Internet, not via the Recovery HD partition on the boot drive, so that could mean the drive is dead mechanically or there is another issue.
In either case the drive will likely have to be replaced, it's a matter of what occured to where and the drive state if you can recover data or not. If you made recent backups then your fine.
My computer is not working, is my personal data lost?
Most commonly used backup methods

Problems with S400 Hard Drive replacement

Hello Lenovo!
I'm new here so please bare with me.
A little about me: I have been in IT support for over 25 years, both hardware and software side.
I recently purchased a Lenovo ideapad S400 Touch and I am enjoying it. The one issue I have with this computer is that the hard drive is not a solid state. I happen to have a spare solid state drive earmarked for this laptop so off I went to upgrade it.
The plan was to simply replace the hard drive with the solid state and reimage the drive with a factory restore USB key.
These are the issues I am encountering:
1. Lenovo support recommends a windows recovery USB key which does not contain an image of the OS, it is only useful for recovering windows or installing a wim.
2. One Key does not create a bootable backup, nor a wim file, it relies on a hidden special onekey hidden partition created by special software that lenovo does not offer (to my knowledge) and I have not find a workaround.
It's just a hard drive replacement, any assistance would be much appriciated.
Thanks.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi frosted,
Welcome to Lenovo Community Forums!
I believe these guide from neokenchi's post will help.
These are migration options,
Option 1:
1. Insert the original HDD and create a recovery drive (you will need a 16GB flashdrive or higher)
2. Remove the HDD and insert the SSD drive and boot from the recovery drive by pressing F12 to reset the preloaded OS (with softwares and drivers).
Option 2:
1. Use Aomei Partition Assistant Home Edition or EaseUS Disk Copy Home Edition to clone the HDD to the SSD. (Freeware)
2. Use a migration tool like Paragon Migrate OS to SSD (requires a license)
Best regards
Solid Cruver
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MacBook freezing and crashing/running slow, problem with external hard drive

I've been having some issues for the past couple months with my laptop randomly freezing, usually when I have a lot happening. I've ended up having to hard-restart it several times because it will just hang and I can't get into the menu at all to force quit things. In the past couple days, it's now started crashing completely, although restarting okay. This last time, though, it crashed while I was trying to empty the trash and since then it's been crazy slow and not very responsive.I tried running disk utility and ccleaner, and although they repaired some stuff they didn't fix the problem.
I think iTunes might be the issue. I was trying to move my music library when this last thing started. I have it all on an external hard drive, and I was trying to move it from one folder to another. I tried repairing the external hard drive with disk utility to see if that was the issue, but now my files have all vanished and the external appears blank.
I also recently installed BootCamp, if that makes a difference.
I'm mostly just really unsure what to do. I don't want to do anything to the external because I need to recover the stuff that was on it, but I also need my laptop to be usable.

Thanks for the response. I tried booting in recovery mode and running disk utility again and that seemed to help. It's still hanging when I plug in the external hard drive but otherwise seems to be working okay. My main issue now is the invisible files. I tried booting in Windows, planning to install Recuva to try and get the files back. However, they show up fine there. This is a relief but I'm not totally sure what is happening. I'm guessing the disk has somehow mounted incorrectly on the mac portion but I'm not sure how to fix that. I'm about to restart on the other partition and see what's going on there.

Backup problems with external hard drive

I bought a WD passport external hard drive and copied my itunes library onto a file there. I re-set the location of the library on itunes to the drive on the external hard drive. So far I have not deleted anything from my computer hard drive. However, when I am in itunes and click onto a song, nothing comes out of my speakers. Everything looks normal, as if the track is playing, but nothing is happening. I tried buying a new track off of itunes online, downloaded it, and installed it on my ipod; it plays fine, on my ipod, but will not play on the computer. Something is obviously wrong, but I can't figure out what has happened. Any help out there?
Thanks!
Delany

It sounds to me like your iMac is on it's last legs....at least the internal hard drive. If you can't make a new Time Machine backup I would advise you replace your iMac as soon as possible.
Assuming your three-week old backup is sound you should have no problems moving everything over to a new Mac. I would recommend you use the Setup Assistant that appears when you start up the new Mac (and note: It only appears the first time you start the new Mac; you can move everything over later on via Migration Assistant, but you may see issues with accounts if you opt for that route).
I don't think you need the Genius Desk for Setup Assistant. You only have to power up the new iMac, answer a few questions....select "....From Another Disk..." When it asks how you want to move everything over....connect up your Iomega external drive...and wait for it to finish. (Could take several hours depending on the amount of data you're moving).
A couple of notes:
1. If your Iomega is a Firewire drive you'll need a Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter to connect it to your new iMac.
2. If you need to load CDs or DVDs remember the new iMacs don't contain an optical drive. You would need to get an Apple SuperDrive or third part external burner if you need that functionality.
I'm puzzled by the comment made in Seventy One's post questioning the reliability of the new iMacs. I upgraded from a 24" early 2008 model to a 27" model and everything works flawlessly. I hardly ever see the beachball anymore.

Problems with new Hard Drive

I've just fitted a 250Gb Samsung hard drive to my MacBook Pro. I'm trying to do a clean install of OS X from the DVDs. I've partitioned the new drive to a single partition using disk utility and whenever I verify it or try to install OS X it gets stuck on "Checking Volume Bitmap".
Any ideas?

New drives often need extended preparation:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disk. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
If you continue to have problems then either the drive is defective or it is not properly installed or it is not compatible with the MBP.

Permission problems with external hard drive

Hello there, I'm writting you from Paris but my french is just not good enough to really explain my problem. I'm no computer expert so i might not use the right name for stuff but i will try to be as clear as possible.
I have a macbook pro 13" from early 2012 and I'm currently running Mountain lion.
At home i use an internet modem that has an internal hard drive of 250gb. and it also gives you the possibility to conect other usb hard drives on it so you can access them through wifi.
I currently have to usb hd of 1tb each, one i use it for Time Machine and so far it works fine and i haven't had a problem with it, all back ups have been done ok. In the other one i have all my films and tv shows and stuff like that and it is in this one that i have the problem. In certen files and folders i'm not able to do anything with them, i tried to rename them but it says i don't have the permission to do it, i tried to delet another one and it said pretty much the same thing, some other time i tried to move the file to a diferent folder it it would ask me for my password and after type it and press enter it would just not move them, no error messager or anything it just didn't do it. Most of the times i have a messager saying stuff about permission or things like i can't read the file. The thing i can't understand is that as soon as i plug the HD on my mac it works fine i can rename and change stuff, I noticed that some of the files and folders have a little lock on the corner, but they aren't the ones i tried to move or rename before and i tried already unlocking all of them but eventhough i manage to unlock them when i plug the HD back to the modem it keeps the same, can't rename or move, not even to the trash.
Can anyone help me out here? I'll be really thankful
Cheers!

Drive was shot and could not rescue the information

Is it a hardware or software problem with my hard drive?

A few days ago, I was burning a dvd on my Powerbook G4. It was taking a few minutes and I left. When I came back the dvd burn had completed but my screen was filled with a lot of text and codes. It was also frozen, all I could do was force the machine to quit. It said I had a corrupt stack and system failure. When I tried to restart, the computer failed to find a start-up disk. Using an option key hold down on start and the OS 10.4 installation disk I was able to get started. When ran disk first aid, the internal drive had file structure problems with bit maps and trees not large enough(??), or something like that. So I asked disk first aid to repair the hard drive. It whirred, and after a bit it said the hard drive was repaired. When I restarted from the repaired drive, things seemed ok, but not for long. Again everything froze up. I repeated the option start-up and disk repair. Again the utility found problems and repaired them. Same story when I restarted.
So next time I installed the OS 10.4 on an external fire drive and used it as the start-up disk. This seemed to work fine. After checking to make sure all my data from the failing drive was backed up to another drive (I have two ext fire-wire drives connected), I thought I would erase the affected drive and reinstall the OS. I did that, and then updated the OS to 10.4.8.
My problem now is that whenever the computer seems to be using the internal drive, whether booted from it or not, eventually something will freeze-up. Also, I am sure this drive was s.m.a.r.t. enabled, but now it says it is not smart supported. What's happening here? I do not have a hardware test in my utilities and I do not know if I have a physical problem with the drive or a file structure problem that recurrs for some reason. What is my next move??

Thanks for the Seagate info eww. My pb is a 800 MHz so I'll stick to finding a 120Gig HD. After my last posting, I wanted to make sure this hd was faulty and so I was running the computer booted up from the suspect drive. Things were fine for a while and after I had left the computer running and was away, when I came back, the screen was black and unresponsive to any prompt. I then went through 15 restarts trying to get booted up. I tried everything to get booted from the DVD drive and the OS install disk but it would go to the first screen where you select the drive to boot from and I would only get that ticking watch cursor and could go no further. Finally, I tried the restart with the command-S key route and got a disk os3 I/O error and a hfs early jnl init failed to open. I typed in fsck -fy and it seemed to run a disk repair similar to disk first aid. After a restart, I got to the finder screen but it ran very slow with that spinning pinwheel. I reset the pram again this time it said diskoS3, major 14, minor 2, HD appears OK. It then ran a little better until I was finally able to get to preferences and select the ext hd to boot from.
So now I'm able to get back online to this forum and check on the postings. And again everything seems to work fine from the ext HD. So does that confirm that my int drive is "screaming Replace me!!"
It must appear as though I am a glutten for punishment but I just like sorting these things out. Thanks for your help.

Problem with replaced hard drive on macbook (late 2008, 13" aluminum)

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