MacBook Pro 2009 - Progress bar slow then black screen....Won't boot Elcapitan

[Tweedy37]

Hi Please some clever person help!

Just bought a 2009 Macbook Pro 2nd hand from a so called reliable source for my boys 18th. It came with a 500 hdd, 4mb and Elcapitan. At first all well working beautifully really swift. Went to start it but now this.

1. Grey screen, slow progress bar (really slow) then switches off and black screen.

To resolve this I have tried to reset PRAM - doesnt work. I have gone to Disk Utility to check for problems but it shows me several things, see attachment. .

I am not sure what to do next. I Can't understand why it worked perfectly then just isnt now.

Hope you can help.

 

[harryb2448]

G'day and welcome to the forums.

That message is telling you it has a failed hard drive. Arrange to send it back, but first try a reboot into Sfe Mode and see if that helps. Here is how to do that:-


http://www.howtogeek.com/236978/how-to-repair-disk-and-file-system-problems-on-your-mac/

 

[Tweedy37]

Tried fsck ......see result

Hi....Thank you for your reply. I have ran the /sbinfsck -fy command and have taken a picture of the result which may help....not sure its fixed anything.

I think the man who I got it off intalled a new hard drive upto 500gb. Is it possible this has become dislodged physically..like I say it worked fine for fortnight.

I dont have a back up of this macbook (learnt lesson although nothing on it really) but I do have a time machine backup of my imac which runs on Yosomite. Would putting my backup on the macbook help or do I need a physical repair ie install a new hardddrive.

Thanks in advance

S

G'day and welcome to the forums.

That message is telling you it has a failed hard drive. Arrange to send it back, but first try a reboot into Sfe Mode and see if that helps. Here is how to do that:-


http://www.howtogeek.com/236978/how-to-repair-disk-and-file-system-problems-on-your-mac/

 

[chscag]

As Harry said, your hard drive is toast. And no, you can not use the Time Machine backup from your iMac nor any other backup. Your hard drive needs to be replaced and while you're at it, you might want to replace the SATA cable which connects the hard drive to the logic board at the same time. You might also want to contact the seller and tell him about the hard drive failure. He might make it good. ??

 

[Tweedy37]

Reply

Hi, Thank you for your reply....

Yes i was dreading that was the case...my lad is so disappointed. Anyway I will have to either mend it or get it mended. I do have a bit of know how in that I can repair iphones etc but never delved into the back of a mac before.

Is it a physical take the hard drive out, put a new one in and all will be well. I suspect I have been had because the man said he had installed a bigger hard drive but I dont think he will honour a repair. Is it possible he could have known the hard drive was U.S and partitioned it somehow to get round it.

Is this likely to be very expensive.

Thank you already

As Harry said, your hard drive is toast. And no, you can not use the Time Machine backup from your iMac nor any other backup. Your hard drive needs to be replaced and while you're at it, you might want to replace the SATA cable which connects the hard drive to the logic board at the same time. You might also want to contact the seller and tell him about the hard drive failure. He might make it good. ??

 

[IWT]

@Tweedy37

Welcome to our Forums; nice to have you along.

This is hurting you a lot, and very understandably so, and your young lad must be very disappointed.

My minor contribution is not so much on technical front, but more on the practical side:

You have a 7-year old Mac with only 4GB of RAM running El Capitan on a Hard Disk Drive which has failed. The claimed new HDD may or may not have been the correct one for that Mac, may or may not have been installed properly, and there might be issues with the SATA cable.

If, after discussion with the vendor, you find you are forced to bear the cost of whatever repairs are needed consider:

(a) can it be returned to the vendor? (b) depending on what you paid for the Mac, is it worth the cost of the repair (HDD, SATA, possible labour costs if you're not doing it). (c) Ideally, for El Capitan or higher, 8GB of RAM is usually advised. I can't recall how easy it is to install extra RAM yourself nor the maximum that Mac can take. (d) The Mac is 7 years old

I'm not trying to appear negative, merely trying to prevent more pain & disappointment. These are reasonable points for careful consideration, I think.

Ian

 

[MacInWin]

HD's do suffer early failures sometimes. See if the vendor will repair it, or send you a replacement HD for you to put in. If not, HDs are not terribly expensive these days. You didn't say where you live, but you can check at macsales.com (OWC) to see the right drive to get. They also have videos for you to see what it takes to replace the drive. Even if you aren't where they can ship you a new drive, the videos are helpful. Right now they show a 500GB HGST drive for US$49.99.

One other thing is that the cable to the drive is fairly fragile and can break with repeated connection/disconnection. www.ifixit.com may have replacement parts if changing the drive doesn't work.

As Ian said, I would not spend a lot of money on this one, as it is 7 years old, but if a drive for about $50 fixed it, or a cable for a few bucks, it may well be worth it.

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/

https://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/