Dropped my Macbook - have I finally killed it?

mikester

mikester

mikester

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Long story short - I accidentally knocked my Macbook off a table yesterday. It worked fine the rest of the evening, but locked up this afternoon and subsequently fails to boot.

There's a little denting in the plastic moulding, but nothing too serious. What does seem serious is the repetitive "clicking" sound I assume is coming from the hard drive.

I only bought this used a few months ago, and haven't had a problem since. I am completely and utterly broke until pay day, so I can't bring it to the nearest Mac Store for the so-called "geniuses" to look at it.

Help? Suggestions?

Please!
 
The clicking sounds like a hard drive that's had a go at a few gees too many. How far does it get when you power it up? Does it actually seem like it's trying to load OSX or does it not even get that far?

All in all, the drive is the only thing that is really susceptible to fall damage, so there shouldn't be too heft a price to replace it when/if you want to do that. :)
 
I replaced a HD in a laptop (although windows) yesterday, the HD only cost £30 and took 10 mins to do, but longer to reinstall the OS. You'll be perfectly capable of repairing it.
 
Assuming it turns on, does it show the folder with a question mark at all? If so then there's a good chance it's just the HDD.

Buy a new HDD and go here to find out how to fit it:

http://www.ifixit.com/Browse/MacBook

Little hope for your data from the sounds of it, hopefully anything important was backup up!
 
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Assuming it turns on, does it show the folder with a question mark at all? If so then there's a good chance it's just the HDD.

Buy a new HDD and go here to find out how to fit it:

http://www.ifixit.com/Browse/MacBook

Little hope for your data from the sounds of it, hopefully anything important was backup up!
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. Well, bugger. I never got the chance to back things up. Is there any way to recover data without having to pay a ridiculously high fee? It's nothing too big, just basic documents and pictures.

Seems funny to have only owned the thing for 6 months. Karma.
 
If you have a drive caddy you could try using Recuva on a windows machine. Or connect it to a Windows machine as another drive. Though I'm not sure if it will be able to read the OS X filesystem.
 
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Am just now running off the Install Disk in an attempt to run drive repair.

Boots up fine, but when I get to the install options screen I can't seem to select the Utilities menu at the top. I can tab-scroll through the various options, but can't select using the touchpad (my mouse button was already broken when I bought it).

I'm starting to fear the motherboard itself may be compromised. Any way to be sure?
 
On another note, if I simply re-install OSX from the disk would I recover any of my previous data? I have never installed OSX, so am not sure if there's an option to simply replace the operating system.

Sorry, complete newbie questions here.
 
Okay, I promise I will stop posting now.

Ran the Apple Hardware Test and now have a 4MEM/1/40000000 error, which is (obviously) a memory issue.

Could the clicking simply be attributed to a loose memory stick? Because that would be fan-fracking-tasting.
 
Open it up, reseat the RAM and the hard drive, then try. If you're still getting issues, you may just have to get a new hard drive; it's rare to be able to easily recover data from a clicking hard drive.
 
Well I pulled out the RAM and it seems fine structurally. The hard drive, on the other hand, sounds like a piece is loose on the inside as I shake it a bit.

Am I safe to assume the worst?

On a side note, assuming I do have to buy another HDD what is the largest size I can get for a Macbook A1181?
 
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mikester said:
Well I pulled out the RAM and it seems fine structurally. The hard drive, on the other hand, sounds like a piece is loose on the inside as I shake it a bit.

Am I safe to assume the worst?
Click to expand...
Yes, the hard drive definitely sounds like it's gone to me. If you've got a 2.5" sata one to hand try putting it in the macbook and install os x to see if it works alright.
 
But does this model have a max capacity hard drive? I remember when I fixed my old Dell I was limited by what the motherboard or BIOS could handle/recognize.
 
mikester said:
But does this model have a max capacity hard drive? I remember when I fixed my old Dell I was limited by what the motherboard or BIOS could handle/recognize.
Click to expand...
Not that I'm aware of - I put a 500GB in my first-gen macbook and it was fine. As long as you get a 2.5" sata model you won't have a problem, but it'd be worth borrowing one off a friend first to check nothing else in the macbook is broken - no point spending £40 on a new HDD if you use it for 20 minutes and it shuts off because the logic board is damaged.
 
Good point. Guess I have some messing around to do with old HDDs tomorrow.

Thanks for all your help, guys. Appreciate it.
 
woodpigeon4 said:
No problem. In the event of it being seriously broken, I sometimes buy these things for parts so let me know :)
Click to expand...

Well, you may be in luck.

Replaced the old HDD with a 200GB SATA Toshiba I had lying around from an old upgrade. Formatted using the Install disk without a problem, and solved the memory problem by replacing the third-party 2GB stick with two stock 512MB sticks. All passed the hardware test and seemed fine. Happy days.

For some reason wow that the drive is formatted I can't complete the install process. There is a little red icon above the HDD icon (looks like a stop sign), and I'm not allowed to continue any further.

I read somewhere that since I have an Intel machine that I'd have to do something involving a GUID Partition Scheme. The newly formatted drive came from a Windows machine, and I formatted it under the Mac "Journaled" Scheme as I was told to. How to I format to GUID?
I'm so close to getting my Macbook back - any suggestions?
 
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