Is my hard drive dead?

September 4, 2006 12:47 PM

I'm guessing my hard drive is dead?

I have a 3 month old macbook running tiger. This morning I was just doing the normal surfing around and I got the spinning beachball. Everything was frozen. My macbook restarted but took forever until I finally got a grey screen with a folder with question mark. After reading around I restarted with the setup disk to try and repair the disk. Although it shows the hard drive in the list, highlighting it does nothing. The 'repair' is greyed out. I tried to reinstall OSX but it can't find the hard drive to install it on.

Lastly, the hard drive is making some weird noise, almost a clicking, every few seconds.

I've used computers for 15 years but never had a hard drive crash, so I just want to make sure I'm correct in my assumption. I did call apple support but they're off for labor day. I'm just assuming I'll be sending it in for repair and will be without it for a while, and would like to know if I'm correct sooner rather than later.

The good news is I bought an external backup drive a month ago so I do have a reasonably recent backup.

posted by gtr to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Yep. The clicking is a sure sign of toastiness.
posted by SpecialK at 12:51 PM on September 4, 2006

Jesus, thanks special K.

I thought that would be the answer. New laptop, didn't drop it, just thought it was strange. Oh well.
posted by gtr at 12:54 PM on September 4, 2006

Well, you did buy applecare, didn't you? Hie thee, to the Mac Store! They might be able to do the work on the spot to put a new drive in.
posted by SpecialK at 1:07 PM on September 4, 2006

Well, you did buy applecare, didn't you?

Not yet, but it's still under the one year warranty. Sadly, I'm 6 hours plus from the nearest apple store.

Yep, it sucks.
posted by gtr at 1:17 PM on September 4, 2006

I had the clicking and a question mark at startup a couple of months ago, and fixed it by resetting the PRAM as a last resort before taking my iBook in to get fixed - started up fine after that, and it has been fine since. (YMMV, obviously, don't want to get your hopes up - that clicking is normally a death rattle.)
posted by jack_mo at 3:54 PM on September 4, 2006

Thanks jack_mo. I had reset the pram but forgot to mention it. Not as lucky as you.
posted by gtr at 9:44 PM on September 4, 2006

When this happened to my iBook, I called the support folks and they told me to bypass the, ahem, "geniuses" at the Mac store. I despise the black-shirted doofi, but the official explanation was that it might be a fool's errand -- since they might not have a drive in stock -- and in any event would take longer than doing it thru phone support: I got a box with return Airborne postage on my doorstep 36 hours later, and a new HD in 72.
posted by turducken at 11:04 PM on September 4, 2006