My nasty experience with a broken HDD.

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This is a thread just stating what happened to me and how I eventually solved it, for anyone that has a similar problem and has been as silly as me :D

It started as many have also experienced with my CAT!!!
He was going crazy! Running around me on my sofa, so I had to try and stop him. I had my laptop on my lap while the crazy cat was chasing shadows so I popped it on the floor so I could get my cat and put him outside. He ran away before I could get him and knocked my empty (Thank God) mug off the coffee table and it landed straight onto my MBP.

The mug landed just on the right of the trackpad (right above the HDD), I removed the mug, and found there was absolutely no external damage, not even a scratch to that glass trackpad so I thought I had got away scott-free.

I then started to use the MBP flicking around on the web everything seemed fine. The trouble started after I closed Google Chrome. Tried to open a folder and I got the "beachball of death", ran my mouse over the dock and the dock froze just as it magnified.
So I did what anyone else would do, force-quit would not work and leaving it to do it's thing did not work either, I force-shut down.

When turning the laptop back on booting took around 5 minutes (instead of about 30 seconds), tried to log in but after pressing enter after entering my password it showed a blue screen then back to the logon screen again.

Next I tried to zap PRAM/ NVRAM/ SMC to no joy, tried replacement RAM I had lying around and no joy. It started to dawn on me that my HDD really was the unfortunate culprit.

After a few more attempts I was able to log back in to my account. But opening a folder took around 5 minutes and attempting a Time Machine Backup threw up more errors than you could shake a stick at.

I should now point out that I have an external HDD that has a backup of absolutely everything except for my photos of which there are a good 100gb worth of them in iPhoto. I had gotten another external HDD a couple of days before the incident to back them up but never got around to it. (If only time-travel was possible, unfortunately the backup were not made using Time Machine).

I now bit the bullet, not caring about the data on the external HDD nearly as much as my photos, I took the HDD out of the external casing and to my delight found it was a perfect match 2.5" SATA drive, only 5600rpm instead of my 7200rpm but beggers can't be choosers. I replaced the HDD in my MBP with this HDD, breathed very deeply and formatted it Mac OS Extended, I then re-installed Snow Leopard, installed iLife then all updates from Software Update.

I placed my old HDD into the casing I removed the new one from, connected to my MBP via USB and started to drag and drop everything I could from my Photo Library. I had to do this manually as the damage was pretty clear with massive artifacts across some pictures and some could not be copied. (Alas it took a fair while to complete).

I ended up losing around 5-10gb worth of photos but it could have been alot, lot, lot, lot worse...

The morals of this story is:-

1: Like me you may think it will never happen to you, but here I am living walking typing proof that it does happen. Backup your using Time Machine or another alternative that keeps a backup of everything at regular intervals!!!
More about Backing Up here... http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/switcher-hangout/196606-backups-backups-backups.html

2: Cats are evil and WILL try to ruin your life ;P

3: Don't put your equipment anywhere near liquid, items that can easily drop on it, or any other high-risk area.

4: Don't put off backing up!!!


Backing up could have been done in the background for me, but instead it took a fair few hours of my life away because I did not set it up. Heade my advice.

- Simon
 
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Thanks for that story! I'm glad you were able to save most of your pics. I think I'll go back up my stuff right now...
 
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Geez! That was scary. I felt like I was reading a thriller novel or something. ;)
Glad you got it sorted out and mostly recovered your data. I hope you sold the cat and backed up the photos on that newer HDD.
 
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It was certainly a discussion ;P

- Simon
 

RavingMac

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It was certainly a discussion ;P

- Simon

With the cat? ;)

Seriously, glad it turned out mainly well. Amazing though the continued appearance of Cat-involved problems.
Might be interesting sometime to do a comparison and see if there are anything like comparable numbers of Dog caused Mac issues.
 

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I know you folks aren't going to believe this, but it's all a huge cat conspiracy. Not only here in the US, but as you can see they have now expanded their sphere of power to the UK! Like Garfield, they're trying to take over your life. Today it's your Mac, tomorrow it's........:p
 
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I know you folks aren't going to believe this, but it's all a huge cat conspiracy. Not only here in the US, but as you can see they have now expanded their sphere of power to the UK! Like Garfield, they're trying to take over your life. Today it's your Mac, tomorrow it's........:p

My cat is now curled up on his bed "asleep". Really I know he is plotting his next move!!!
Did you know (and this is scientific proof ;P ) that when your cat pads down on you, he/her is trying to find weak spots!!!
:D

- Simon
 
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Stay one step ahead of your cat! Backup online. He'd need quite the army to break into any provider's datacenter(s)!
 

BrianLachoreVPI


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2: Cats are evil and WILL try to ruin your life ;P

This is my primary takeaway from this lesson ;D Especially combined with several other "my cat knocked my drink into my MBP keyboard" threads...
 
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This is my primary takeaway from this lesson ;D Especially combined with several other "my cat knocked my drink into my MBP keyboard" threads...

I'm glad everyone can take something away from this ;)

- Simon
 
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Get a dog and save yourself some work;D
 

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Get a dog and save yourself some work;D

Actually, I just saw a thread a while ago where a dog knocked a drink over onto a MBP (though I think a cat really did it and pinned the blame on the dog).
 
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Actually, I just saw a thread a while ago where a dog knocked a drink over onto a MBP (though I think a cat really did it and pinned the blame on the dog).

I've seen my cat dipping its paw in mud then making dog prints on the sofa!!! ;D

- Simon
 
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wow, what a story. Glad there were no real casualties (MBP included). And I have TWO cats, a dog, and most importantly, a 23 month old (who reaks havoc on all things mechanical these days). My 5.5 yo has evaded this listing, as he is a computer-responsible citizen now (more or less).
 
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Haha that's quite the household there, as stated I have my Cat but i'm started to get more and more wary about my other half around the computers ;)

- Simon
 

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