MBP HDD failing. I NEED YOUR advice ASAP!

[Vegeta-san]

God, I feel like such a Mac noob right now. But I desperately need your advice.

Backstory:
Yesterday, at around 6pm ish, I'm flicking thru Coverflow in iTunes on my MBP, looking for any albums w/o cover art and then looking up that album using Google images to get high quality art (since iTunes couldn't find cover art for all my albums). A couple albums in, I get the spinning wheel of death while "Getting Info" on a whole album. So I'm like "Meh" and wait it out. 30 seconds in, I hear an awful "klunkin" from the left frontmost side of my MBP (where the HDD is). I'm like "Oh my God, it's too early for this", and freak out and hold down the power button till it force shuts down.

So then, I leave it off for like 1 hour while I'm freaking out left and right and planning what else I need to back up ASAP (since I'm a moron and only back up "My Documents" folder weekly). So I turn it on after an hour, and at this point, I'm kinda iffy about if this really means a hard drive failure is imminent. So it loads up find into OS X. I surf the web for a bit. Do other things. Then, I use my white 60gb 4G iPod (the only real backup device I have) and the program "iBackup" to start backing up alot of things (not movies, videos, or music since I can pull that off my other iPod using iPod to computer programs). 30 minutes into it backing up, I first hear this "beep" that I could have SWORN came from the HDD area and not the speakers as I had no program open that would make that sound, followed by a horrible screeching sound from the HDD. So I'm like "Oh sh*t" and proceed to force shut it down again. This time, I leave it off for the night and go to sleep, telling myself I'm gonna call Applecare in the morning and request service.

So I make it to work in the moring, take out my MBP, put in the OS X install disc, boot from the disk, and verify and run repairs on the MBP's hard disk. It failed the verification, but after repair, it said "Repair Successful". So I should be able to back up to my white iPod now right? WRONG. I still can't. It makes the horrible screeching sound I can't bear to let go on so I force shut down again. It's almost like it just makes this sound when I start to copy a massive amount of data to another disk, not regular usage (like checking in folders, or browsing the net). So I get on the phone, talk to Applecare, he says they are gonna ship out a box but that I should backup. I tell him my situation and that I have been trying (albeit late in the game). He tells me I should find a friend with a Mac and boot my laptop into target disk mode (which I didn't know of before).


So now my question for you is this...Today, like in 2 hours, I'm gonna go to Compusa and buy this (http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=338831&pfp=browse&tabtype=rv#review). I'm also gonna buy a Firewire cable so I can hook my MBP up to my friends MB. But beyond that, what should I use? Ideally, I want to be able to get my MBP back from Apple with the new HDD and hook up the external to it and seamlessly get it as identical to my old HDD as possible. I take it I should make a bootable disk image right? With that, will I be able to tell the new HDD in my Mac to take all that info and just reproduce it? Will the backup program "SuperDuper" be able to do this for me easily? Using "SuperDuper", will i be able to hook up my Mac in target disk mode to my friends MB, and then hook up the 500gb external HDD to his MB, and just siphon an image from my laptop, thru his laptop, and into the external HDD? Do you think this will still cause the horrible "screeching" sound? Thank you so much for your advice!

 

[aristobrat]

I want to be able to get my MBP back from Apple with the new HDD and hook up the external to it and seamlessly get it as identical to my old HDD as possible. I take it I should make a bootable disk image right? With that, will I be able to tell the new HDD in my Mac to take all that info and just reproduce it? Will the backup program "SuperDuper" be able to do this for me easily? Using "SuperDuper", will i be able to hook up my Mac in target disk mode to my friends MB, and then hook up the 500gb external HDD to his MB, and just siphon an image from my laptop, thru his laptop, and into the external HDD?

I did something almost like that relatively recently for a friend. His MBP drive was failing also.

I booted his into Targeted Disk Mode, connected it to my MBP via FireWire, then connected an external USB to my MBP and used SuperDuper to make a bootable image of his MBP (via my MBP) to the external USB drive.

He got it back, and we did the exact opposite, and it worked.

The only hitch was that SuperDuper would stop copying when it hit a physical disk error, so we had to manually drag some files from his MBP to the backup ourselves.

 

[filmgirl]

OK - first off, your drive is dying, and that sucks - but you need to get as much data off of it as fast as you can. Tip: Put the drive in the freezer for about 15 minutes before hooking it up to your friends Mac in target mode or trying to connect it to the external WD drive for Super Duper.

If you can successfully clone the drive with Super Duper (assuming the drive lasts that long), then yes - you can completely restore that onto the new drive once it arrives.

Really though, when time is of the essence, save what is necessary and most important first - worry less about keeping all of your settings/programs intact.

At least now you'll have the external HD so you can make full weekly backups of the whole drive with Super Duper.

Best of luck - and seriously - FREEZER!

 

[Vegeta-san]

The only hitch was that SuperDuper would stop copying when it hit a physical disk error, so we had to manually drag some files from his MBP to the backup ourselves.

And I take it, it let you know what file it couldn't copy instead of just giving you some weird error code so that you could actually manually know what files to drag?

 

[Vegeta-san]

OK - first off, your drive is dying, and that sucks - but you need to get as much data off of it as fast as you can. Tip: Put the drive in the freezer for about 15 minutes before hooking it up to your friends Mac in target mode or trying to connect it to the external WD drive for Super Duper.

Wait. Are you telling me to put my MBP in my freezer? Cuz that's the only way I'll be able to put my HDD in a freezer...

 

[filmgirl]

NO - do not put your MBP in the freezer. I was under the impression (wrongly, sorry!) that you knew how to take the drive out of your laptop. If you don't feel comfortable doing that (and you probably aren't - and that's fine) - forget about the freezer and just focus on getting as much stuff backed up via Target disk mode and Super Duper as you can.

 

[aristobrat]

And I take it, it let you know what file it couldn't copy instead of just giving you some weird error code so that you could actually manually know what files to drag?

SuperDuper was working thru his home folder when it hit a disk error and stopped. We saw that it working alphabetically, so we knew where to start.

But yeah, when SuperDuper stopped, we looked at the log and it showed on exactly which file it had a problem with.

 

[Spoony Bard]

NO - do not put your MBP in the freezer. I was under the impression (wrongly, sorry!) that you knew how to take the drive out of your laptop. If you don't feel comfortable doing that (and you probably aren't - and that's fine) - forget about the freezer and just focus on getting as much stuff backed up via Target disk mode and Super Duper as you can.

Heh... It's a good thing he asked.

The HDD/freezer trick certainly has its uses, but you should never stick an entire laptop in the freezer. ^^;;

 

[Vegeta-san]

Ok guys, so I'm currently at my school, using a Power Mac G5 to hook up to my mac via Target Disk mode. Using SuperDuper, it literally works for like 1 minute, and then approximately 1500 files in, the sound start happening on my MBP and the file progression bar of SuperDuper just stops an won't go anywhere. Meanwhile, the HDD of the MBP has stopped making the sound and now sounds like a normal hard drive. Even target disk mode is not working for me! What the hell do I do now? I NEED this to work? Anymore advice? I've tried restarting it and doing the SuperDuper thing again, but it pauses again somewere between 1000 and 2000 files. Currently, I've restarted my MBP from the OS X boot disk and am verifyin and repairing the disk...Please give me more advice as I am doing this now!!! Thx!

 

[Grape]

I would like to point out the importance of making backups nightly, or at least weekly, to an external drive.

 

[Vegeta-san]

I would like to point out the importance of making backups nightly, or at least weekly, to an external drive.

I would truly like to thank you for the previously unstated greatest understatement of the year. Now, please stop trying to make an example of me and help me!?!? Thanks!

 

[Ninden]

Powerbook G4 15" - I had hard drive failure. It would sometimes boot to the desktop, then lock up completely.
Target Firewire mode would only work for a minute or two, depending on what files I tried to access, then it would lock and I'd have to force shut down the machine. I was only able to save a few things.

I ended up replacing the drive myself and tried to go on from there, but after getting my new MacBook Pro I decided to pop it back into the Powerbook and try to transfer more stuff to the MacBook Pro. Unfortunately it was the same thing as before.

Then I tried Disk Warrior 4. I cannot stress how amazing this program is. I was able to recover the contents of the entire drive. Even with the hard drive having physical failures it doesn't stop trying to read it. I left it for a few hours and it was able to resort the drive.
I plugged in my external drive and was able to copy everything off.

Try target firewire mode first, get what you can. But if you find it's not working out, I extremely recommend you try DW4. I really can't sing praises for it enough.

 

[Grape]

I would truly like to thank you for the previously unstated greatest understatement of the year. Now, please stop trying to make an example of me and help me!?!? Thanks!

I would have but everyone has already suggested what you should do—access you HD in target disc mode and salvage what files you can.

If the information is really valuable to you, say, if it has the only copy of a book you've been working on for years, or some cherished photos of deceased and much loved relatives, then get it worked on by a professional data-recovery outfit.

 

[thegrandmaster]

I would like to point out the importance of making backups nightly, or at least weekly, to an external drive.

That's got to win the award for most helpful comment in the thread.

Now do you want to go somewhere else and sound righteous, or do you wan to make even more unhelpful comments, that are not gonna help this poor guy get his data back!

Good luck rescuing your stuff dude, I hope such a catastrophe doesn't befall my MBP any time soon.

Good luck!

 

[ataylora]

If you are concerned, perhaps you should make regular backups. Grape is quite right.