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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > mbp took a spill

mbp took a spill
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iREZ
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Los Angeles of the East
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Sep 4, 2007, 08:25 AM
 
so im visiting my family up in montreal and without typing a novel on how it happened, i'll just stick with telling you the facts. it fell about 7 feet onto hard concrete with a rug over it and before it fell its screen was open but when i got to it after the mbp was closed. cosmetically NOTHING happened (i was pretty pleased seeing how after the thump i thought it was split in two, who says only macbooks are resiliant?).

heres my problem, when i picked it up and opened the screen up again, the screen lit up and the mouse moved for about 3 sec before turning off. this could be related to my battery as its lost its life and ive been too cheap and lazy to get a new one, or it could be from the fall, either way i KNOW the computer was working for about 3 sec after the fall. when i forced shut it off and restarted it back up i got the blinking folder icon with the question mark on my screen.

the computer chimes up but resetting the pram doesn't work as the computer never does the second chime. resetting the powerunit didnt help either. i tried holding down option to get the hard drive choice screen up and that got me a cursor to move around and sure enough my trackpad was still working but no buttons were shown on the screen to click on.

after reading the manual online ive come to learn that the blinking icon means that my mbp cannot find its system OS or hard drive and that i should pop in my install discs that came with my computer to try and use disk utility to diagnose/repair the problem or reinstall my operating system.

so heres my question. how likely is it that all ill need to do is pop in the install disc vs. losing all my stuff on my computer due to my hard drive taking a dump?
NOW YOU SEE ME! 2.4 MBP and 2.0 MBP (running ubuntu)
     
Big Mac
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Sep 4, 2007, 08:43 AM
 
The latter - it sounds like a hard drive crash. If you don't have a backup of your files, DataRescue II may be a good bet.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
iREZ  (op)
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Sep 5, 2007, 12:11 AM
 
after some fiddling around, it appears as though my hard drive is gone. it isnt recognized under disk utility and i reseatted it incase it had gotten loose and no luck.

any recommendations for a replacement hard drive? i think anything over 120gb will do, the more storage the better but faster wouldnt hurt either.
NOW YOU SEE ME! 2.4 MBP and 2.0 MBP (running ubuntu)
     
thetman
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Sep 7, 2007, 08:32 PM
 
lucky

i recommend wd2500bevs, 250gb sata 5400rpm drive. its nice to have about 100gb for each windows and os x after formatting
     
jamil5454
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Sep 8, 2007, 01:20 PM
 
Depending on how important your data is, I would consider yourself lucky to only have your hard drive damaged as a result of a 7 foot fall.
     
   
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