MacBook HD seems to hang upon startup

[J-F Desfossés]

Hi,

My GF has a MacBook dualcore 2.0, 1.16 Gig Ram, 100 Gig HD, OS X 10.4.11. & a 15 gig Windows XP partition.

Today upon startup, it hanged on the Apple logo and spinning wheel for over 5 minutes.

I did the following:

1) Hard reboot: Still hangs
2) Reset PRAM-NVRAM: Still hangs
3) Reset PMU: Still hangs
4) Reboot in safe mode: Still hangs
5) Reboot while Forcing Mac OS X startup: Still hangs
6) Start up in Single-User mod: Getting a message: SATA WARNING: completing a zero block transfer.
7) Start up in Verbose mode: Getting a message: SATA WARNING: completing a zero block transfer.
8) Start up in open firmware: Still hangs
9) Boot from Original system disc in order to reinstall OS X: Still hangs
10) Boot holding T as a target firewire disc connected to my firewire external HD & my PowerBook: I can see all of my GF'S drive, libraries, applications and partition on my PowerBook.

I tried repairing her disc through my disc utility, no luck: It tells me 2 error messages (i need to translate from French to English):
a) the number of mach files is incorrect (usually 1 instead of 0)
b) The amount of blocs of mach.sym file is incorrect (usually 151 instead of 48)
c) In red, it tells me that it could not verify the volume and that I have a non valid
d) The volume could not be repaired

My guess:

Her HD is fried so:

1) Buy a new laptop SATA drive
2) Make a disc image of her current drive configuration on my Firewire external drive ( I have enough space)
3) Replace the HD
4) reinstall OS X and her old HD configuration.

Except that I never did a disc image of a HD, and would like to keep the Windows XP partition as well.

QUESTIONS:
1) Am I right in assuming the HD is toast ?
2) How do I make disc images so I can put them back onto her new HD if needs be (including WIndows XP partition, although if impossible, I will forget XP) ?
3) How do I reinstall her old disc image ?

Thanks all...

The reason it's so important to keep the data is that we're getting married on July 27th, and she has a surprise on it that she needs to get back...

CHeers

JF

[bbloke]

I'd hold off on the replacement drive just yet... What bothers me is that attempting to boot from a system disk (CD/DVD) still resulted in problems. The hard drive should be bypassed during this. That makes me suspect a hardware issue, if it so stubbornly refuses to start up. On the other hand, you were able to boot from a Firewire disk...

For now, is it possible for you to try that drive in another (suitable) Mac, to see whether it causes the other Mac to hang too? Or: can you have the Mac looked over at an Apple Store or the like?

As for disk images, you may want to look at Carbon Copy Cloner.

Congratulations for your wedding day, I hope this issue can be sorted for you both before then!

[J-F Desfossés]

Well, I am in the process of using Carbon Copy Cloner to backup everything. Then I will proceed to do everything possible to fix the drive. I am just hoping it is not a bad SATA cable or worse, Logic Board failure.

[J-F Desfossés]

The fix...Long and hard road...

1) Tried booting again from the original discs...no luck, spinning wheel the whole time.

2) tried running disc utility by booting with the d key pressed...it would stop halfway and stall

3) I then booted from my PowerBook, using the MacBook as a FireWire Drive, scraped libraries I wanted to keep, and dumped them onto my external drive.

4) I proceeded to reformat the drive through a retail OS X Tiger, using my PowerBook. I then tried installing the original system disc from the MacBook...Still a no go.

5) I tried installing the OS through the PowerBook, which worked....however when I tried to boot from the MacBook...Stgill the same issue. It would not startup and I would get the folder and question mark icon.

6) Again, with the MacBook, I used the system disc, and reformated the drive a second time.

7) I tried installation AGAIN, after running Apple"s hardware test which detectd no issue. ( I ran the extended test which took 1.5 hour), after I made sure the RAM and hard drive were properly connected.

7) I reinstalled through the MacBook, using original system discs, and oddly enough, it worked.

I am now installing additional software I had (Office 2004, Antidote, etc, as well as Music, photos and files...)

I am not sure what worked and what not, but it saved me a drive

Thanks to all...