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CrusaderSean · 12:11 PM

I was using macbook last night and all the sudden hard drive started making clicking noises. OSX froze right away and I couldn't boot up anymore. All I see is a folder icon with question mark flashing. I took out the hard drive this morning thinking I can put it in an external case. Then I realized it's a SATA hd, not IDE, doh! I ran hardware diagnostics from DVD and it didn't report anything wrong (I don't think it tested hard drive at all). So I'm pretty sure my hard drive is dead. I guess the next step is get a replacement from apple. Is there any way to recover data? I'm guessing the answer is no unless if I pay a ridiculous amount of money...

My MacBook is 2GHz White BTO with 1GB ram and 60GB hd. I bought mine the first day it came out. This is the second laptop that has died on me (first was ibook). Are laptop hd just less reliable than desktop hd or do I just have bad luck? I've used ~12 desktop hd and they're all fine even after 6-8 years. I don't carry macbook with me everywhere. It sits on a desk 95% of the time.

I do have an external firewire drive. Should I even bother with installing osx on that and see if I can read/retrieve data off of laptop hd?

archurban · Jul 31, 2006, 10:04 PM

I have exactly the same problem as you describe. icon folder, no recognition...... mine is Seagate sata 80GB HDD (customizing figure), 1GB memory. it seems to happen so many bad situation when you go to apple dicussion forum.

anyway it was just happened last night during working on important stuff. well, I can't even recover part of important data right now because of complete dead. like you said, recovery cost is very expensive. I didn't go to apple store yet. I am busy to finish something.

interesting thing is that Apple store sells upgrade model which has 1GB memory, 80GB HDD both for white, black. it's store only. so it is possible to replace my HDD. but not sure.

it's the first HDD failure inside macintosh in my mac life for 15 years. macbook has 24 different defective symptons which I've never seen this so many problem before previous macs.