Will Not Recognize Hard Drive

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Yesterday, my girlfriend's MacBook (OS X 10.4) decided to have a kernel panic. Being a PC user, I had no idea what was going on so I did a little Google searching and came across this forum. Following the advice given by many members in regard to kernel panics, I tried resetting the nvram and pram. Nothing.

I next tried starting her laptop in Singler User Mode in order to run a diagnostic but her laptop would not recognize that I was pressing Shift+S. I checked her RAM to make sure it wasn't third party. It was the original RAM (two 512 MB) installed when she received her computer so that shouldn't be the problem.

I decided to go for broke and to just reinstall Tiger. Placing the cd inside the laptop and pressing the C key did not boot from the cd. It wasn't until I rebooted and held down the OPT key that it rebooted. The screen shows two boot options to choose from: the hard drive or the cd. If I choose the hard drive it goes through its normal set up screen that it gets stuck on and after a few minutes it shows the "You need to restart you computer..." screen in multiple languages. If I try to repair the generic hard drive using the Disk Utility using the instal cd it gives me an error message everytime first saying that there's an Invalid Volume Header and then it says that First Aid failed because there was an Invalid Node Structure and then the Volume Check Failed. It reads "Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit."

Now when I try to just reinstall Tiger and I have to select a destination, the installer does not even recognize that I have a hard drive to install to. ??!!

Help!
 
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late 08 macbook 2.0 4gig 320hdd10.7.3 32 gig iPhone 4s
Sure sounds like a catastrophic hard drive failure.
 

chscag

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clayneal is correct. Her hard drive has failed. The only cure is to replace the hard drive with a new one and then install Tiger from the original install DVD.

If there were no backups, all her data and applications are lost. You'll have to reinstall everything again.

Replacing a hard drive in a MacBook is an easy do it yourself task. If you need help with that, post back.

Regards.
 
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Hard drive failure. I was afraid of that. Any idea where I can get a hard drive for a MacBook?
 

chscag

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Her MacBook uses the same type of hard drive that is found in a typical PC notebook computer. Basically she needs a 2.5" SATA notebook drive either 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM.

Most folks in this forum, myself included, recommend either a Seagate or Western Digital drive as the replacement. You can purchase a drive from an internet supplier or from a local Best Buy, Office Depot, Staples, Office Max, Fry's, etc.

As I said, replacing the drive is easy. Post back later for details and procedures if necessary.

Regards.
 
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I doubt it, but is there anyway to recover any of the files on there or are they gone forever?
 

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