Late 2009 MacBook (White; Unibody) Fails To Boot

[Chris H.]

Help.

After securely emptying the trashcan, about 2/3rds of the way through the process, my Mac froze, and had a beachball. I could still move the cursor around, but absolutely nothing on screen was responding to clicks, I couldn't even use the Force Quit command or even Spotlight.

I'm not entirely sure why it froze.

Considering that the only other thing I could do was force the computer to shutdown, I did.

And now, I get a folder with a question mark.

When I booted Recovery (gives you the option of restoring from backup, using disk utility etc.), and went into Disk Utility, DU couldn't see the internal hard drive; just my Time Machine. I should note that it could see the Recovery Partition, however, I don't know if that is an indicator it can see the internal hard drive.

———————————————
On a side note, the subject in my household came up about possibly replacing the internal 250 GB hard drive with a 240 GB solid state - will this work?

———————————————

Mac OS version: 10.10.1
Late 2009 13" White MacBook Unibody

 

[chscag]

It sure sounds like your hard drive failed. I had the same symptom with a 2011 iMac that I had and it was a failed hard drive. Apple replaced it as the machine was still covered by Apple care at the time.

As far as replacing the 250 GB hard drive with a 240 GB SSD, yes that will work. However, if you're going to replace the drive with a SSD, I would go for a larger one. Prices have come down considerably.

 

[Chris H.]

My father purchased a 240GB. I never really fill the storage on this MacBook anymore, seeing that I prefer to use my Mac minis for storage space (500 GB in the 2009 model; 1 TB in the 2011 model).

It's running lickety-split now.

I really wouldn't be surprised however to see this machine make it another year or two before I replace it with a MBP.

 

[Rod]

Chris I have one question for you. I don't suppose you were trying to trash Time Machine backups by chance?

 

[Chris H.]

Chris I have one question for you. I don't suppose you were trying to trash Time Machine backups by chance?

Nope!

I keep my TM backups on an external (like you should). And that's not always connected and it wasn't yesterday morning.

 

[Rod]

No worries, just that another user had a similar issue as yours and I just wondered. I typed that reply before seeing the above reply from you. Obviously didn't refresh.
Cheers,
Rod