PLEASE HELP -- Kernel Panic, drive not being recognized

got the "you need to restart this computer" message on my macbook pro. called apple support, who told me it was a kernel panic and had me run off the install disc.

i bought the computer summer of '09, had leopard, then upgraded to snow leopard 10.6.3. the first time i talked to apple, they told me i can use the snow leopard disc reinstall what i need ssince i had lost the original install disc that came with the computer. when it said to pick a drive to install on, nothing came up, so they had me do a disk verify/repair thru disk utility. i clicked on Macintosh HD under 160 GB Hitachi, but it should be noted that the Macintosh HD option was faded as if it could not be clicked (but it actually could be clicked). after hitting verify, it said the disk had to be repaired. when i hit repair disk, the details of the repair said "volume repaired" right away, and then said something like "updating boot partitions as required". it stayed on this for over two hours, with the blue/white striped loading bar going the whole time.

i got disconnected from apple very early on. i then stopped the repair on my own and calld apple back. this time, they told me i needed the original install disk. i hung up w/ them and found it. went thru the same process as before--no drive was found while trying to install, so i went into disk utility. HOWEVER, this time it did not say 160 GB Hitatchi--it said 149 GB (pretty sure it said something else instead of "hitachi" also), and under that nothing was listed at all (no "macintosh hd"). and verifying/repairing just that general 149 GB disk is not an option.

will call apple tomorrow, but i was wondering if anyone here can help me. what do i do? its possible the hard drive is physically damaged--does this sound like that? how can i fix it?

The 160 GB hard drive is actually (real space) 149 GB so that part is OK. I would say from your description that the hard drive has failed or is failing. Time to replace it. You will need your original install disk or the Snow Leopard disk in order to prepare the replacement drive for installation of the operating system. Hopefully, you've been making backups.

Here's an article on why your HDD (sold in base 10) is being shown in your OS as 'smaller' (it's not, OS's just calculate in base 2)

Hard drive space usage distribution

well thats bad news haha. no full backups, just important stuff like itunes library and most important documents have been backed up. you think the apple store can restore my data? itd be annoying to lose all my safari favorites & stuff.

also, thanks for the info on drive space. i figured 149 was normal, just got confused that it was listed differently when using a different install disc

I think the GUI applications went to base 10 with Snow Leopard, I don't recall Leopard showing base 10 sizes.

Not sure about the data recovery at the Apple Store. If the disk is spinning, there's a chance you can pull it off with a recovery application

The genius bar at the Apple store will do their best to extract your data if at all possible.

I was just at our local Apple store this afternoon and the place was packed as usual on Saturdays. The genius bar was backed up from 2 to 4 hours. Folks were being turned away and told to come back later in the day.

What I'm getting at is make an appointment by phone before you take it in.

Next time - set up Time Machine. Better still, TM + Carbon Copy: Carbon Copy Cloner - Home