Yesterday morning I used my computer: worked fine. 8 hours later, without moving my lap top, I got this grey screen and a question mark. I heard this little scratching noise. I followed the directions in the little handbook: restart pressing the C key; restart using utilities, first aid, but nothing but a grey screen appears. Can any one tell me what happened here? Is my non backed up data lost? Thanks for the comments, Gardiner
What happened to my hard drive?
- Thread starter gardiner
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ElDiabloConCaca
U.S.D.A. Prime
The scratching noise is particularly worrisome -- usually, a clicking, grinding, or scratching noise indicates a mechanically failed hard drive.
If that's the case, then your only option is to replace the hard drive then restore your data from the backups that you performed on a regular basis.
If that's the case, then your only option is to replace the hard drive then restore your data from the backups that you performed on a regular basis.
Dear Djacmac: thanks for your reply. Info about computer: Macbook OS X, about 4 years old; never had a single problem with it until this disaster. How can it work fine in the morning and 8 hours later not work at all? I don't get it
ElDiabloConCaca
U.S.D.A. Prime
Hard drives will always fail. There isn't a hard drive in the world that will work forever. The only question is: will my hard drive fail sooner, or later? Some hard drives will spin for 20 or more years (I have a few that are approaching 15 years of constant use). Some will die within a year (I have had this occur to me). Some will work for somewhere in between those two amounts of time.
Kind of like light bulbs -- more often than not, they'll work for a reasonable amount of time, then burn out. Some burn out quickly, at which point, you take the bulb back to the store and demand a replacement (which you can do with hard drives as well -- just not four years into the life of the hard drive typically). Then, you have some anomalies that burn and burn and burn, and never go out:
http://www.centennialbulb.org/
Unfortunately, no one has come across the magical "centennial hard drive" yet, and it would be foolish to expect that one's next hard drive will be the one that never fails.
Yours failed sooner (or, perhaps, later, depending on how you look at it). Sometimes hard drives fail slowly over time, sometimes they fail in a spectacular crash, sometimes they just quit working altogether and die a quiet death.
This is why your computer can work one day and be completely hosed the next. This is also why Apple makes it a no-brainer to keep an up-to-date backup by doing nothing more than plugging in an external hard drive and clicking "Yes" to the question of "do you want to use this drive for Time Machine?"
Your only option is to replace the hard drive and restore from your Time Machine backup (or whatever other method you used to back your data up). There is no way to "fix" or "repair" a hard drive that has mechanically failed.
Kind of like light bulbs -- more often than not, they'll work for a reasonable amount of time, then burn out. Some burn out quickly, at which point, you take the bulb back to the store and demand a replacement (which you can do with hard drives as well -- just not four years into the life of the hard drive typically). Then, you have some anomalies that burn and burn and burn, and never go out:
http://www.centennialbulb.org/
Unfortunately, no one has come across the magical "centennial hard drive" yet, and it would be foolish to expect that one's next hard drive will be the one that never fails.
Yours failed sooner (or, perhaps, later, depending on how you look at it). Sometimes hard drives fail slowly over time, sometimes they fail in a spectacular crash, sometimes they just quit working altogether and die a quiet death.
This is why your computer can work one day and be completely hosed the next. This is also why Apple makes it a no-brainer to keep an up-to-date backup by doing nothing more than plugging in an external hard drive and clicking "Yes" to the question of "do you want to use this drive for Time Machine?"
Your only option is to replace the hard drive and restore from your Time Machine backup (or whatever other method you used to back your data up). There is no way to "fix" or "repair" a hard drive that has mechanically failed.
Some MacBooks' harddrives are replaced under warranty even outside the usual one-year or AppleCare warranty, because they were found to be faulty parts in the first place. You can check your serial number on Apple's support pages or call AppleCare to check.
-> http://www.apple.com/support/macbook/hd/repairextension/
-> http://www.apple.com/support/macbook/hd/repairextension/