Cannot Reboot with Installation CD

[shllparker]

Big time help please

MacBook 10.4
SMART status: Not Supported

Computer crashed and I installed the OS X installation CD but all options grayed out. I select the HD in the left panel, but can access nothing under the tabs "First Aid", "Erase", "Partition" - but i do seem to have options with the "Restore" tab.

My guess is the hard drive has failed and needs to be replaced, but I'm hoping if that is NOT the case, there is some super cleaver way to diagnose. Any suggestions? THANK YOU!!!

 

[chscag]

Welcome to the Mac Forums.

Sorry, there is no "super clever" way to proceed with diagnosing the machine. Your hard drive is likely dead and needs to be changed out for a new one. Unless you've been making backups, your data has probably been lost. Your MacBook is an older model if it was running Tiger. Might be a good time to upgrade it to Snow Leopard when you change out the hard drive.

 

[shllparker]

Thank you very much for this fast reply!

I have an iMac and MBP running snow leopard. This older MacBook belongs to a friend I am trying to help out. I'm hoping someone in this forum and explain to me what "Not Supported" for SMART status means, because I'm reading that "Failed" means the HD is "bad" and needs to be replaced. I'm hoping to find a solution like firewire to my MBP and boot from that installation disk or use terminal to gather more info. Can someone help me get to the bottom of this situation?

 

[chscag]

SMART status not supported means the self monitoring ability of the drive is not supported as is usually the case with a hard drive that's being used externally (USB, Firewire, etc) or a drive that's defective. As I said in my first reply, the drive is likely dead. Not much sense worrying about SMART status anyway. The drive needs to be replaced.

BTW, here's a good definition of SMART from Wikipedia.