[nickw311]

I just got a new harddrive for my MacBook about a month ago - I partitioned it and installed XP on one partition and 10.5 on the other partition. After using it for about a month, it stopped working.

I think that what happened was I left the computer on and the battery abruptly died without going into sleep mode. Anyway when I turn the computer on the Apple image comes on with the spinning image below it. It will stay on this screen for about 60 seconds and then restart, chime again, and then do this process over and over again. After about 4 tries it will go to a flashing hard drive with a question mark. When I try to boot into XP it freezes up, I see the blue screen of death for a second and then turns back off.

I booted off the OS X DVD and did a verify and repair and it did not find any errors but it also would not mount the hard drive (it was greyed out).

I now put my old hard drive back in the MacBook and it is working fine and I ordered an external enclosure to see if I could mount the hard drive that way. Also, when I gently shake the hard drive I hear a little clicking sound but it doesn't sound serious like there are broken parts inside the case.

Any suggestions?

[Cold Warrior]

Sounds like the drive is physically broken. Are you sure the OS X DVD verify and repair? If it can't mount the drive in any way then it usually can't read it to test it.

[nickw311]

yeah, I thought that was weird - it did do a verify and repair twice even though the drive was greyed out (my 1394 drive was attached and not greyed out) - I then tried to do an archive and install and it said the drive was unmountable.

I hope it isn't physically broke since it is only about a month old and hasn't undergone any more physical abuse than is normal for a laptop.