Stinkin' MacBook...

**jennielynn1970** · 06-20-2008, 05:36 PM

Well, my hard drive has crashed.

At least I think that's what happened, lol. It was acting wonking for about 2 weeks, and then I went to try some data rescue stuff, and the whole thing decided to die on me. I start it up and all I get is a folder on the screen with a big old flashing question mark in the center. It's like the laptop is saying "Who am I??"

So, until I can figure things out, I'm stuck at the public library. Yippee.

They don't even let you pick your terminal, and most of them don't have chairs. I'm not a happy camper. I was so spoiled with my laptop, lol.

Anyway... wish me luck, and hope that's it's not too $$$ cause I can't afford that, but you know Macs, they're never cheap.

**Karen** · 06-20-2008, 05:49 PM

That folder with a question mark means that it just cannot find a working system on your hard drive. The hard drive itself may still be okay.

When you start up your machine, hold down the option key, and see if it gives you a menu, where then you can show it the hard drive.

If that doesn't work, restart the machine and hold down Command, Option and the letters p and r.

Do you have the original system CD you can start up off of? Then you could at least back up your data if the hard drive appears.

If those don't work, try to find a friend with an external drive that has the Mac operating System on it that could help you out.

Sometimes, if there is an Apple store near you, you can take it in, particularly if you call ahead, and they will fix it for free. I would not, though, buy a new hard drive from the Apple store. Almost everyone can sell you a hard drive for much less money, if you need one.

You should also check the Apple website, to see if there's some known defect that Apple now fixes for free.

**Hellow** · 06-20-2008, 06:07 PM

Well, if you have a Mac OS cd, try booting with that to recover your files. Then reinstall Mac OS, if you have the cd. Or, if you dont have the original cd, order a free cd from ubuntu.com so you can at least recover your files. Ubuntu is what i run on my computer, if you like it, install it. But before you do that, is your laptop a older PPC computer because the default cd for ubuntu will not work on a PPC.

**Suki Wingy** · 06-20-2008, 10:49 PM

Well good luck! I don't know enough to help you, mine hasn't done that yet.

**Randi** · 06-21-2008, 07:03 AM

Karen is probably the one here who knows the most about Mac's, so I'd take her advise.

Then, if you get it up and running, you should try some of these below.

I run Disk Utility frequently, and some time ago, I ran Disk Warrior, that repairs directory damage and optimizes the directory. I’ve heard good things about Apple Jack, but hasn’t used it myself yet.

Good luck!

Data Rescue II

Prosoft’s Data Rescue II is a tool that is designed to do one thing, data recovery, and designed to do it extremely well. Data Rescue II is for situations in which you need to recover critical data that has either been deleted or is stored on a damaged drive. It can work with drives that are failing because of corrupted directory structures (the most common hard drive problem) or because of physical problems with the drive.

Unlike hard drive repair tools, which work by attempting to repair or rebuild corrupted directory structures, Data Rescue doesn’t make any modifications to a drive. This enables it to have a greater chance of recovering data from a drive than the process of actually trying to repair the drive. Repairing a corrupted hard drive can often be successful, but if it fails, it can also result in further data loss. Data Rescue’s read-only approach means that it often has a better chance of recovering data than other tools.

Data Rescue ships on bootable CDs for both Power PC and Intel Macs, and it provides both an easy-to-use guided interface and an expert interface for advanced users. When attempting to recover data, it can sort available files by type, making locating and recovering specific items easier. It can be used to clone the contents of a damaged drive during recovery or to allow you to select only the files you need. The one requirement to be aware of is that Data Rescue II will require a second hard drive or partition to recover data to—this is required for its hands-off recovery approach.

If you are looking for a tool simply to recover data, there is no better tool than Data Rescue II. In fact, the ability to recover data and then simply reformat a problem drive using Disk Utility could provide consumers with a complete disk toolkit solution. The fact that it also offers you the ability to recover deleted files is icing on the cake, particularly for support professionals who often get asked to perform this type of miracle.

Drive Genius

Also by Prosoft, Drive Genius is a comprehensive hard drive utility. It can be used to verify and repair disk directory structures; it can also be used to rebuild directory structures from badly corrupted disks. Like most third-party tools, Drive Genius provides a better chance of recovering corrupted disks than Disk Utility.

NOTE

Repairing a directory structure is the process of comparing it with the contents of the disk and then making corrections where possible. Rebuilding a directory structure replaces the damaged directory structure with a new one based on the location of data found on the disk—a process often attempted if repair fails.

Beyond identifying and repairing corrupted directory structures, Drive Genius offers an array of more-advanced features not found in Disk Utility. The first of them is defragmenting and optimizing the layout of data on a disk. Although the Mac OS X Extended (HFS+) and related disk formats are not as susceptible to fragmentation problems as other formats, such as the PC FAT format, fragmentation can still occur, particularly on disks that are (or at one point were) about 90 percent full. Defragmenting a disk so that all the data of each file is stored in contiguous sectors can improve performance. Optimizing a disk so all related data is stored together (in particular, applications and Mac OS X boot and system files) can improve performance even more.

Drive Genius also offers a secure erase feature that can be used to securely erase all data on a drive or just the free space of a drive, which results in a secure erasure of any previously deleted files. This is offered in Disk Utility and using the Finder’s Secure Empty Trash feature as well. However, the ability to securely erase a disk’s free space is helpful because it ensures that any files not deleted using the Secure Empty Trash feature cannot be recovered without the need to erase the entire disk.

Hardware-level features include the ability to test the physical integrity of a drive, scan for bad sectors, and conduct performance bench marks. Drive Genius also offers two other advanced features.

The first is direct editing of a disk’s sectors (something only very advanced users should think about doing). The second is the ability to resize existing partitions on a hard drive without reformatting the drive (along with the ability to create/format new partitions and delete existing partitions, which exists in Disk Utility). This is a feature that was not available to Mac users until a few years ago. It is a very useful ability that is also provided by MicroMat’s DiskStudio (which is not included in this list because that is its only feature). This feature has also been added to the command-line version of Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.4.6, but it is available only for hard drives using the GPT partition table scheme—which cannot be used on startup disks for Power PC Macs.

Overall, Drive Genius is a great tool because it includes powerful disk-repair features and also because it incorporates a number of additional powerful and useful features. It is a good choice for support professionals as well as consumers looking for a multifaceted hard drive tool.

TechTool Pro

MicroMat’s TechTool Pro is probably the most comprehensive hardware testing and diagnostic tool outside of the tools Apple ships to authorized repair centers. It can test virtually every internal component of any Mac model. This is a great diagnostic tool for determining whether a problem is hardware-related and, if so, which piece of hardware is the cause of that problem. It can also verify the integrity of a hard drive’s directory structures as well as the integrity of the files stored on a hard drive and can be used to repair corrupted structures and files.

Like Drive Genius, TechTool Pro offers the ability to defragment and optimize the contents of a hard drive and to securely delete data (you can choose to securely erase an entire drive, free space, or specific files and folders). TechTool Pro also enables you to configure automatic testing of a given disk’s directory structures as well as to regularly query SMART status of hard drives, which can alert you to problems before they become drive failures. It also includes some data-recovery capabilities.

One of the most interesting features of recent releases of TechTool Pro is its eDrive function. eDrive creates a small emergency partition on your hard drive that can be used to boot a computer should the primary start partition fail due to corruption (in the event of a physical drive failure, this partition will not work any more than the main partition on the drive). The emergency partition includes files needed to boot the computer and a copy of TechTool Pro. This can be helpful in situations in which you do not have access to the bootable TechTool Pro DVD.

TechTool Pro is actually available in a variety of forms. In addition to the commercial TechTool Pro package, a version called TechTool Deluxe is included with AppleCare Protection Plans). MicroMat also includes a version on a small bootable Firewire flash drive called TechTool Protégé that is extremely portable and a version called TechTool Protogo that can be installed on an iPod, turning it into a portable and bootable diagnostic drive.

TechTool Pro is a very good all-round diagnostic tool. It is particularly helpful for support professionals because of its capability to test hardware. However, in my experience, its hard drive repair and data recovery features, while being more successful than Disk Utility when working with corrupted hard drives, tend to fall short of the capabilities in other tools—including Data Rescue II, Drive Genius, and Disk Warrior.

DiskWarrior

Alsoft’s DiskWarrior doesn’t offer the broad range of hardware diagnostics that TechTool does, nor does it offer the array features for things such as formatting, resizing partitions, and defragmenting drives that Drive Studio offers. It is designed as a drive repair tool and it can generally be considered the most powerful such tool. DiskWarrior can rebuild disk directory structures better than most tools; if it cannot repair a disk, it can usually build a replacement directory by examining the files on it. In fact, DiskWarrior is so often successful that many technicians respond in shock or surprise when DiskWarrior cannot repair a disk. In the process of rebuilding a disk’s directory, DiskWarrior also optimizes the layout of directory data for improved performance, particularly for tools such as Spotlight and the Finder, which rely heavily on disk directory information (DiskWarrior optimizes only the directory data and does not optimize or defragment the file data on the disk).

In its most recent version, DiskWarrior also offers the ability to verify and repair Mac OS X permissions as well as the ability to check for and repair damage to various types of files on a Mac OS X startup drive. It can verify and repair preference files, symlinks, and folder and file length limits—all of which can become corrupted and cause serious issues under Mac OS X. It also supports based tests of a drive’s hardware using SMART technology.

Although it doesn’t provide many bells and whistles, DiskWarrior is often the last-resort tool for problem drives and it more often than not can repair them successfully. It also has a very clean and easy-to-use interface that includes very good explanations of each feature and step in a repair process. When rebuilding a disk’s directory, it also offers the option to preview the replacement directory to ensure that it resolves problems and to copy data from a drive experiencing physical failures. If you are looking solely for a tool for resolving hard drive problems and checking for certain types of file corruption, DiskWarrior is an excellent choice.

AppleJack

AppleJack is the only open source tool in this list and it is the only one that isn’t focused on hard drives or hardware. AppleJack is a tool designed to resolve problems with Mac OS X that can cause failures and erratic behavior, including startup issues. It is a shell script that is designed to run only in single user mode. This makes it useful if you are troubleshooting a Mac that cannot startup properly.

Most of AppleJack’s features are actually easy to navigate access to existing command-line tools or troubleshooting techniques. However, placing them in an easy-to-use, menu-driven package that can be easily accessed from the single user mode command prompt is a great help to the troubleshooting process. AppleJack even offers an autopilot mode that runs through its core techniques automatically. The interface is also very user friendly for those not comfortable with command-line tools.

AppleJack provides access to the disk repair options that Disk Utility offers (the fsck command-line tool) as well as to the repair permissions function in Disk Utility. It also includes features for cleaning out system and user cache files as well as the ability to verify the system and user preferences files are not corrupt (this is done using the plutil command-line tool, which can also be done from the Terminal or using the Preferential Treatment application). It can also delete the virtual memory swap file, which is normally deleted when Mac OS X restarts but can become corrupted and that corruption can, in rare cases, remain despite a restart.

AppleJack also has a series of expert features that are listed as being experimental or still in development. These features include the ability test installed RAM using the memtest command-line tool, which can be installed along with AppleJack (memtest can also be run from the terminal or using the Rember application). Two other features include the ability to disable auto-login and login items for specific users (which can be helpful as part of troubleshooting failures that occur at login). There is also the ability to disable specific system configuration files if you suspect that they are corrupt.

AppleJack’s expert features also include several NetInfo tools, including an interface for easily restoring a NetInfo database, disabling NetInfo automounts, and deleting the local NetInfo database. Deleting the NetInfo database, a feature named "enable new machine setup" will cause Mac OS X to enter setup mode as though it were just installed. This can be for resolving problems associated with local user accounts, but without erasing the hard drive. It can also be used if you are giving away a computer and want to delete your user information but leave files in tact.
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**RICHARD** · 06-21-2008, 12:20 PM

A typical case of "one bad apple"....

I get scared when ANYThing goes wrong with my PC!

**jennielynn1970** · 06-27-2008, 11:56 PM

Ugh.. what a pain!!!

The hard drive did crash, and I took it to the Apple store, and since I had a non-apple hard drive in it (was put together by a techie when I bought it), they wouldn't touch it. Not surprised. Ended up at Staples, of all places, and got a new hard drive for 149.99 and and the one tech there installed it for me for 39.99 Best deal I found anywhere for install.

I had tried most other options to try to fix it (Disk utilities on the start up disk, and bought Data Rescue II last year), but hard drive was just shot. Just glad that I got it done now because of course my principal just had the secretary call me and say that he wants me to put a book order together... they took our school laptops away for inventory, and then the personal one being out of commission, not sure how I would be able to do it. Our school is closed because they are putting a new roof on it, so only option was my own laptop (of course all on my time, not school time/pay). Gotta love how they ask for this stuff over the summer when we're not contractually obligated to do anything.

Strangely enough, it was nice being without the laptop... was getting things done around the house, lol!