Macbook Hard Drive Issue

[Bryan47]

I recently acquired a macbook:
1.83GHZ intel core duo
512 MB RAM
60GB Hard Drive

The owner had dropped the laptop and the screen was broken and they told me I could have it if I replaced the screen and just got the data off of it for them. I purchased a screen for it and replaced the screen and when I booted the display functioned perfectly. The mac however was VERY sluggish when operating. Even clicking simple programs or opening files would take anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes with the multi-colored wheel just spinning.

I put 2 gigs of ram in it from another computer and it was STILL slow.
Ran Apple Hardware test and it checked out. So then I ran TechTool Pro
and twice on the S.M.A.R.T check it registered and error on SPIN RETRY COUNT.

I was wondering if any of you have ever had this problem? I think when the system goes to get info from the HD the HD motor is not booting up so it has to try multiple times. The motor in the HD may have been damaged when the laptop was dropped. I'm going to order a new 500 Gig HD and hopefully it solves the problem. I also tried a fresh install of OS X but the install fails on disc 2 I assume the HD is not healthy enough to get through the entire install?

What do you guys think? Does this sound like the HD is probably the problem?

Thanks for taking the time to read

 

[andr3wkim]

I'd try installing a new copy of Mac OS X with minimum software and features enabled. There should be a "customize" button during the installation setup.

Also, not sure which model you have but you might be able to get it replaced for free from Apple. [Link]

 

[EndlessMac]

It sounds like the hard drive is the problem. You might want to try backing up as much data as possible onto another drive, but since I just read that you tried a fresh OS install you might have lost all the data on the hard drive.

In the future if you suspect a hard drive problem the first thing you should do is get as much data backed up as soon as possible. Constantly using a damaged hard drive is not the best thing for it.

If it is still under warranty you can bring it to Apple or try installing your new hard drive once it arrives and see what happens. There could be other damages from the drop but I suspect it's the hard drive.

 

[Bryan47]

Thank you for your timely responses.

I'm going to look into that apple program, my product is from 2006 so hopefully that will be promising. The drive is not dead but clearly with such a low rating for that SMART status it's on its deathbed.

I managed to get all of the data off of the drive luckily, once in a while it will
run at a normal speed for a short period. The HD motor is clearly shot.