Clicking hard drive on a 13" macbook?

[Pooptacular]

As the tittle says when I turn on the macbook I hear three clicks coming from the hd and now I get a white screen with a folder that has a question mark inside it. I can no longer go into the OS at all and I have a picture collection that I would like to salvage if I can. Does anyone know a fix for this that wont erase my pictures? and also can I get an enclosure with a usb connection and get the pics out like this? thanks in advance.

 

[TheStu]

Using an enclosure should probably work. Also, you should be able to drop the restore disc into the mac, hold 'C' while it is booting to boot from the disc, and then you should be able to select the option to install but save all the old stuff.

I would suggest the enclosure though, then take it to an Apple Store.

 

[timswim78]

- Stop using the drive. The more you use it, the more likely you are to damage it.
- Try booting from a Live linux CD and see if the drive mounts. If so, copy your photos to a USB thumb drive or external hard drive.

- If you use an external enclosure, be sure that it works with SATA 2.5" drives. Also, some people report having good luck by putting the drive in the freezer for about an hour and then plugging it into the case and using it right away.

 

[n0cmonkey]

If taking the macbooks apart is anything like taking older iBooks/powerbooks apart don't bother with the enclosure. Restoring the pictures from your backups is your best bet.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
If taking the macbooks apart is anything like taking older iBooks/powerbooks apart don't bother with the enclosure. Restoring the pictures from your backups is your best bet.

Pulling the hard drive from the MacBook requires you to pull the battery, remove 3 screws, and then pull out the drive cage... easy peasy. It's the same thing to get at the RAM since they are hidden behind the same door whatever you want to call it. The instructions are printed on the bottom of the laptop, revealed once you remove the battery.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: TheStu

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
If taking the macbooks apart is anything like taking older iBooks/powerbooks apart don't bother with the enclosure. Restoring the pictures from your backups is your best bet.

Pulling the hard drive from the MacBook requires you to pull the battery, remove 3 screws, and then pull out the drive cage... easy peasy. It's the same thing to get at the RAM since they are hidden behind the same door whatever you want to call it. The instructions are printed on the bottom of the laptop, revealed once you remove the battery.

Wow, I wish it was that easy to pull the drive on an iBook... Maybe mine would be alive right now.

 

[Pooptacular]

Thanks for all the response guys, I did pull out the hd and it was as east as stu put it, took 2 min atmost. I did not see anything wrong physically with the drive so I slapt it back in and now the mac wont detect it, perhaps I didnt put it in all the way. I'm dowloading a live cd version of ubuntu and im going to give that a try, thanks again gents, I'll let you guys know how it goes.

 

[Tegeril]

...

You wouldn't notice anything physically wrong with the drive from the outside. It has most likely failed beyond easy recovery.

 

[Scott66]

The clicking is a sign of a failing drive and unfortunately I think your drive has failed on your macbook.
A nice thing with Apple machines is what is called Target disc mode. You need a firewire cable and it allows you to access a mac's hardrive from another mac. This is used if you want to transfer from an old mac when you set up a new machine, but it is very useful when need to get files off a machine with dead video or just transfer files.

 

[Pooptacular]

yea the hard drive was shot and I could not retreive the pics I needed. I took it to the mac store and they replaced the hd and formatted for me which was nice considering I was not expecting them to do much. so yea no pics but apple support at the mac store was awesome. thanks for all the help guys. BTW saw the macpro with LED backlight and that shit was awesome.