2010 Macbook Pro

[Mike McCall]

While I own Apple products and work on them from time to time, but I don't do a lot of it. So, when a client brings me a 2010 Macbook Pro with the flashing folder with question mark I start the recovery process. However, when it gets to the disk utility it says it's "Untitled" and first aid seems to have no effect. I then reboot using the Option key and when I try to find a startup disk it's unable to find anything. I pull the drive for testing and the 2010 Hitachi drive shows astronomically high g sense error rates and free fall sensor rates, but no other indications of problems.

From what I'm reading the hard drive cable on these is notorious for causing problems. My suggestion to the client will be to replace the cable along with the drive. Once done, should I be able to repair the "Untitled" drive without wiping the client's data in the process? I seem to recall that OS X will allow one to reinstall the OS without touching the customer's data or programs but I'm not sure.

 

[Markverhyden]

If the information is that important you really need to image the drive immediately. Now can that image be removed/repaired? Yes. But remember that an image brings along the good, bad and the ugly. Sometimes you can't fix things. And I agree, the drive cable is an issue on many models. Since they are new clones they should work well.

By repair I'm guessing you mean the "new" drive imaged from the old one. And actually a copy of the image as if you only make one image and it goes south you're left with praying that another disc image won't tank the patient.

Yes, just doing another "overlay" install usually does not loose any data. Some apps, like Office, will have to be reregistered if it sees a new drive..

 

[sapphirescales]

You need to extract the data using another Mac (or her own Mac once you've replaced the hard drive and the hard drive cable). Don't try to "fix" the disk. Just get the data off.

 

[Mike McCall]

You need to extract the data using another Mac (or her own Mac once you've replaced the hard drive and the hard drive cable). Don't try to "fix" the disk. Just get the data off.

Who said anything about fixing the disk? Please don't put words on my fingers.

If the information is that important you really need to image the drive immediately. Now can that image be removed/repaired? Yes. But remember that an image brings along the good, bad and the ugly. Sometimes you can't fix things. And I agree, the drive cable is an issue on many models. Since they are new clones they should work well.

By repair I'm guessing you mean the "new" drive imaged from the old one. And actually a copy of the image as if you only make one image and it goes south you're left with praying that another disc image won't tank the patient.

Yes, just doing another "overlay" install usually does not loose any data. Some apps, like Office, will have to be reregistered if it sees a new drive..

So, I might have to reregister some apps, but other than that it should be fine? I'll have to look and see about how to do that without reinstalling the app as many customers don't retain the original media.

I really don't know what it is about my posts that seems to give the impression I'm trying to work with a drive that has problems. Do I really need to include a sentence saying, "...at this point I stopped what I was doing and put the drive aside and promise to never touch it again."? I don't see others being challenged on every freaking post involving a drive the way I seem to be. Ugh!

While I own Apple products and work on them from time to time, but I don't do a lot of it. So, when a client brings me a 2010 Macbook Pro with the flashing folder with question mark I start the recovery process. However, when it gets to the disk utility it says it's "Untitled" and first aid seems to have no effect. I then reboot using the Option key and when I try to find a startup disk it's unable to find anything. I pull the drive for testing and the 2010 Hitachi drive shows astronomically high g sense error rates and free fall sensor rates, but no other indications of problems.

From what I'm reading the hard drive cable on these is notorious for causing problems. My suggestion to the client will be to replace the cable along with the drive. Once done, should I be able to repair the "Untitled" drive without wiping the client's data in the process? I seem to recall that OS X will allow one to reinstall the OS without touching the customer's data or programs but I'm not sure.

So, in the first paragraph I outline some basics for context and to state what I've done so far. In the second paragraph I state that I'm reading about cable issues, and that my suggestion to the client will be to replace both the cable and the drive. The very next words, "Once done" precede the question I have about repairing the drive name or whatever other software issues might arise, specifically recalling an option to reinstall the OS without wiping data and thus my question.

@Markverhyden did answer my question, but seemed to be unsure if I was still working with a troubled drive. What is it about my posts that has people always thinking I'm working with a problem drive? What is it I say? Do I need to be more explicit than others that I'm not working with the problem drive? If so, why? Do people just not take the time to actually read my posts? I don't get it, and I suppose I'm getting a bit testy about it.

 

[calldrdave]

I find about 80% of the time it's the cable and 10% of the time it's the drive AND the cable. If it's the drive, hooking it up to another Mac should verify it. Conversely using a good known hard drive internally to boot the Mac should fail if it's the drive.

 

[Mike McCall]

The drive is eight years old and showing screwy SMART information. The main problem you have might be the cable but it's just as likely to be a failing drive, and if you're not already treating it as "troubled" then you should. Drives are cheap, even SSDs, and if anyone's prepared to come out and say that you'd be crazy to reuse that drive then I'd go out on a limb and agree with them.

If there's any possibility that the drive is faulty (and there is - see above) then you need to clone it and work with the clone, and that's all everyone's saying.

Who said anything about reusing the drive? I sure didn't. Why all the assumptions? It's not what I said.

 

[Markverhyden]

@Markverhyden did answer my question, but seemed to be unsure if I was still working with a troubled drive. What is it about my posts that has people always thinking I'm working with a problem drive? What is it I say? Do I need to be more explicit than others that I'm not working with the problem drive? If so, why? Do people just not take the time to actually read my posts? I don't get it, and I suppose I'm getting a bit testy about it.

I completely understood you knew you were working with a problem drive, I wouldn't doubt your analysis unless you question it yourself. That's not what precipitated my comments related to imaging. I, and I'm sure many others here, never assume when it comes to drives and data. I regularly make comments about imaging if the OP, even if they are experienced, did not specifically state they had or will image the drive. That's all there is to it in my case. Maybe a simple statement that you'll be working with drive images will suffice, certainly will with me.

Any rate you're on the right track. If you have the time there's nothing wrong with trying to resurrect an image from a failing drive. My personal experience is that, relatively speaking, it's more successful than in a M$ environment. On the subject of apps and license keys. Older versions of many apps allowed recovering license keys from the patient in the OS X ecosystem. But for several years, saying the last 8 or so, it's not viable.

 

[pcpete]

The first thing we would have done is pulled the drive and tested it with gmartcontrol. If it tested okay, we would indirectly test for a bad cable by seeing if the computer would boot from the clients hard drive using an external USB. Assuming it booted okay we would assume it is a bad cable then offer the client the following. For example, if the client was using 100gb total we would highly recommend they update the computer to high sierra along with a 240GB SSD along with a new HD cable. We would quote it at $309 plus $50 to transfer their user files and programs using the migration assistant. We would also ask if they want to go for a larger 500gb SSD for an additional $70. We would offer a cheap option of $169 to just do the cable but would recommend against it as the computer would run properly with the newer version of OSX with an SSD.

Assuming the problem was with the hard drive and the cable was fine we would first make a bit by bit image of the drive, sometimes make an image of the image. Then we would run Disk Warrior on the image to make a clean recovery of the software and files more likely. We would then offer the client $259 to upgrade the computer to a 240GB SSD and $70 extra to go to a 500gb drive. Then we may charge a higher amount to recover the data, say $99 for a total of $358 (259 + 99). To do the actual data/application recovery we would use the migration wizard from the drive we ran Disk Warrior on.

 

[Mike McCall]

I completely understood you knew you were working with a problem drive, I wouldn't doubt your analysis unless you question it yourself. That's not what precipitated my comments related to imaging. I, and I'm sure many others here, never assume when it comes to drives and data. I regularly make comments about imaging if the OP, even if they are experienced, did not specifically state they had or will image the drive. That's all there is to it in my case. Maybe a simple statement that you'll be working with drive images will suffice, certainly will with me.

Any rate you're on the right track. If you have the time there's nothing wrong with trying to resurrect an image from a failing drive. My personal experience is that, relatively speaking, it's more successful than in a M$ environment. On the subject of apps and license keys. Older versions of many apps allowed recovering license keys from the patient in the OS X ecosystem. But for several years, saying the last 8 or so, it's not viable.

I have always appreciated your assistance, Mark. I must admit to being a bit touchy lately when it comes to this stuff. Disk Utility seeing the drive as "Untitled" doesn't mean anything on it own as there's a number of things which might cause that. Not being able to see the drive at all when trying to select a startup disk is not define a bad drive either, especially on a machine known to have cable issues. It seems entirely reasonable to remove the drive to test it's condition. What's so difficult about that for others to understand?