I have a feeling my HD is failing. Today when I tried to restart my Laptop nothing appeared to happen, the power light bottom r/h side lit up and no start up chime only a very faint buzzing from the casing. I tried three times to start with no luck, disconnected all the cables and sat down and had my evening meal. One hour later I tried to start it and had success and it appears to be alright. Should I run the hardware test ?, I have run the hard disk repair program and it found no errors. Any advice please. It is a 15" Mac Book Pro 2.4 GHz with a 250Gb HD and 4 Gb of ram
Hi Doug, having a meal and taking time to think is really wise -- never rush in on a crisis, I still do sometimes, and it's a bad, very bad, approach !
First job is to back up everything on your drive that may be critical (emails, network settings, finance files, whatever) but, to avoid over-straining what may be a dodgy drive, don't worry about software that is already backed up, your OSX installation, etc.
If that has gone OK, do a full clone (cloners like Carbon Copy Cloner permit selective cloning).
Only then run hardware test (which stresses the drive).
Buy a new bare drive (subject to physical -- remember thickness too -- and digital size limits, S-ATA, plus drive speed/heat limit: 5,400rpm in an older laptop). It's useful to install a larger drive while you're at it, say 500GB, when partitioning comes in useful. As you are aware, drive prices have risen sharply due to the floods in Thailand and haven't yet returned to attractive levels. iFixit offers access instructions for people unsure what to do.
Remove the old drive, taking careful note how you did it (use a pile loop towel underneath to catch those pesky and very expensive screws). Install the new drive, reformat for Mac, partition if wished, re-populate the data.
If the dodgy drive seems OK-ish put it into an inexpensive (£10 - £15) USB2 drive container, and use it for temporary manoeuvres. If not OK take the lid off for home educational purposes and, if of a nervous disposition, use a cold chisel and hammer to discourage the data-curious.
Good point, Trevor. When booting the computer will want to ensure that a drive is present. If no drive then all is not well and there will be no chime -- that's my un-informed guess :-)
I can report that this morning the Mac started up as normal and appears to be alright. Time machine is running as normal. Will run a SuperDuper back up this afternoon. Hope it was just a hiccup
Douglas Cheney 