Disk Utility not progressing/Mac not booting up

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Hello,

My Macbook Pro wont boot up :?

It was working fine this morning, packed it away for the daily commute and opened it up when I got into the office. When I typed in my password it wouldn't go past the spinning colour disk. I switched it off and tried booting it back up but was left with the grey screen, apple and spinning time disk.

Got it home and booted it up again to be greeted by a grey no entry sign. Switched it off and booted it up again using my Snow Leopard CD and went to disk utility. Asked it to repair and although it progressed around 3 percent it's been saying it's going to take 2 hours to repair for over half an hour now and not moved. Is this common?

EDIT: It's now moved to 7 hours but not got any further along the bar. It's dead, isn't it? :(
 

chscag

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Welcome to the Mac Forums.

It appears your hard drive may have died. Rather than continuing with the disk repair, shut it down for now. You're probably looking at having to change the hard drive for a new one.

Several questions first: Is your MBP covered by warranty or extended Apple care? If it is, take it to Apple and let them change the drive for you.

Do you have a backup, Time Machine or otherwise?
 
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My Macbook Pro is over 2 years old and I didn't get extended Apple Care. I backed up my files last weekend but have two files that I have been working on this week that didn't get put on there.

I'm doubting there is any way to get these back?
 

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It may be possible to get your data off the drive. One way is to remove the drive from the machine and install it in a USB carrier. (has to be a SATA carrier) Then, after installing a new hard drive and restoring from your backup, you can try to use data recovery software to scan the dead hard drive. I recommend "Data Rescue 3". Download their trial version first.
 
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I will check them out. In the meantime are there any other tests I can run to make sure the hard drive is completely dead?
 

chscag

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I will check them out. In the meantime are there any other tests I can run to make sure the hard drive is completely dead?

If Disk Utility is responding the way it is, it's very likely the hard drive is either defective or is failing.

If you feel up to it, run the Apple Hardware Test. I'm sure that it will give you the same result as Disk Utility did but it may be worth a go anyway.

See this LINK.
 
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Thank you very much.

In the space of typing this the Utility has moved and is now almost a third across and estimating 4 hours to repair. Would this still indicate a failure?
 

chscag

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It shouldn't take no more than 30 minutes or so to run a verify and repair even on a fairly large hard drive. If you have the patience, let it finish and see what happens. You may be able to get access to the files you need before the drive completely fails. In any event, I would replace the drive.
 
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Thanks for all your help. Currently searching HDD websites now. :) I may even go SSD.

However, in the meantime the repair has stated 'The Volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK' which is a good sign, surely?!

It's currently telling me that 'Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required'.
 
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Update. After the Disk Verify told me the HDD was okay it decided to freeze when completing the verify and repair.

I then decided to reinstall Snow Leopard. I was able to choose the hard drive and get it to 99% before it told me the Hard Drive was full, which is impossible because I had over 160GB of my 320 available.
 

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It looks like that drive is about ready to die. I hope you were able to extract what data you needed from it before it's completely inaccessible.

Not much point in spending any more time trying to get it up and running. Salvage what you can and be prepared to install a new hard drive. If you need any assistance with that, post back to this same thread and we'll try to help you out.
 

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