Can a bad hard drive still boot via Safe Boot?

[EDF]

Long story short, I have a Mac Pro desktop. It is the 3.0 Ghz "Quad Core" from 2007 and all of sudden I get the gray/white screen with the rainbow spinning wheel.

I've tried reinstalling Snow Leopard, but still no luck.

Would a bad hard drive also make reinstalling an issue?

Sound wise the drive seems good, age and use wise, the drive has been used.

Any suggestions?

 

[k-hawinkler]

Long story short, I have a Mac Pro desktop. It is the 3.0 Ghz "Quad Core" from 2007 and all of sudden I get the gray/white screen with the rainbow spinning wheel.

I've tried reinstalling Snow Leopard, but still no luck.

Would a bad hard drive also make reinstalling an issue?

Sound wise the drive seems good, age and use wise, the drive has been used.

Any suggestions?

Can you boot from another drive and run Disk Utility on the bad drive?

 

[matty1551]

A bad drive could definitely prevent you from installing the OS. A bad drive is a bad drive, doesnt matter if youre reinstalling an OS or not, you may have problems.

Like K said your best bet is to get another drive in it so you can boot up and examine your old drive.

If you can't do that you could even install OSX on a thumb drive and boot from that temporarily so you can examine your drive.