Mac Help

[Botswana Bob]

I have a friend who has a MacBook(I believe) whose HDD and memory have all been taken up with pictures. My question is how would I go about freeing up enough space so that we would be able to run the OS. Would I have to extract the HDD or is there another way to access the data. I've never really worked with Macs before, so I'm eager to be able to poke and prob and figure this out while also helping out a friend.

Any help you can offer would be most appreciated.

 

[dracken]

You have a couple of different options. If you have access to another macintosh you can do a firewire target disk mode. Connect the two machines with a firewire cable. Make sure the other macintosh is up and running. Power up the macbook, hold down the T key. A firewire logo should appear on the screen. The macbook hard drive should appear as an external firewire drive on the other machine. If that does not work, luckily the macbook is one of the few mac laptops where the hard drive is easily accessible. Remove the battery, there is a plate with 3 screws. Loosen them, (they do not come out )and take out the plate, the hard drive can be removed then. Would need another machine to transfer the data too, the hard drive in the macbook is a SATA drive.

 

[dracken]

Also you might want to check out the hard drive on the macbook. If it is a seagate hard drive, with a firmware version of 7.01 make sure the data is backed up. I have seen alot of macbook machines with that hard drive in shop. There seems to be a known issue with that firmware. The hard drives I have seen in the shop are unrecoverable, unless you send it off for data recovery. It seems the heads of the drive are scratching the surface of the drive and destroying the data on them. The firwmare version is listed on the drive itself or within Apple System Profiler.

 

[gunslinger]

I'm getting a Macbook next month. Has this issue been fixed with newer models?

 

[dracken]

I'm getting a Macbook next month. Has this issue been fixed with newer models?

That I am not sure about. Computers we sold in august, alot of them still had the same hard drives. Not sure with the brand new machines though.

 

[Botswana Bob]

Thanks, I'll be sure to try it. Now, will it work with any Mac machine, or do I need another Macbook?

 

[dracken]

Should work with about any other macintosh with a firewire port built in.

 

[dracken]

I'm getting a Macbook next month. Has this issue been fixed with newer models?

I am still seeing the issue on alot of the later models as well. Actually replaced a drive a week or so ago and they sent one of the seagate drives as replacement. It died two days laters. I would just check the system profiler when you get your macbook and find out the drive and firmware version it has.

 

[gunslinger]

Not good, i'm ordering in a week and the apple people blew me off when I asked about this issue.

 

[SDPCM]

Not good, i'm ordering in a week and the apple people blew me off when I asked about this issue.

Did you end up getting a Seagate with the 7.01 firmware? After a quick Google search I don't see any acknowledgement from Apple. Disappointing to say the least...

 

[gunslinger]

Actually I held off on getting it. I'm going to wait until something is done.