Hello All,

I have an early re-furb 2010 MacBook Pro, 2.4 GHz running Lion 10.7.8. Last month I was carrying it in a sleeve and it slipped out of the sleeve and hit the floor from about waist height (don't ask why I had the sleeve upside down, I'm still upset about it). The machine was working fine until I noticed that it has been running extremely hot for the past couple of weeks. Used activity monitor to see if anything unusual was showing up.... nothing out of the ordinary. Yesterday, Safari started beach balling with every page load. Same thing with Firefox. There are faint "ticking noises" coming from the machine.... so to my limited expertise, I'm suspecting I'm in the middle of a hard drive failure. I'm currently running a Drive Genius 3 scan and it currently shows "190 bad blocks" in the status update with about 50 % of the scan complete. My last back up (Carbon Copy Cloner to an external) was about 2 weeks ago. I have a couple of questions:

1) Can I stop the DG3 scan as it seems to be "stuck" at 50 % or should it run until the end?

2). Should I attempt one more backup?

3) Since it looks like I need a new hard drive, I will be going SSD... but should I have it checked out by Apple in case there are other issues from the fall? The machine is out of Applecare (not that it would cover issues from a fall anyway) so I'll be paying out of pocket.

Any advice is appreciated

Spudmac

You can try another backup with CCC, but be careful to not run a block-level clone. This FAQ (http://help.bombich.com/kb/explore/the-block-level-copy) from the creator of CCC has an explanation of why you should run a file-level copy.

The overheating might have been caused by damaged fans. You might want to make sure they're running optimally. Fan Control (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23137/fan-control) will let you see if they are.

Thanks digitddog, I finally quit DG3 as it had been running for about 6 hours. It was at 54% completion and was up to 319 bad blocks. Upon quitting, the program informed me that the drive was failing and to replace immediately. I take it the best thing to do would be to clone my backup to the new drive and then install in the MBP?

The reports you're getting on your MBPro hard drive "failing" may just be due to a corrupt file system and bad partition blocks which can often be fixed.

Clone your MBPro to a backup drive, then using Disk Utility, wipe/erase the MBP drive and re-partition/format the drive but use the optional "zero out" option that should map out any bad blocks, and when finished and partitioned/formatted, then clone the backup you made back to the MBPro's HD.

Then test again if you want, but I'll bet that you see an improvement, unless of course the HD really is failing.

The reports you're getting on your MBPro hard drive "failing" may just be due to a corrupt file system and bad partition blocks which can often be fixed.

Clone your MBPro to a backup drive, then using Disk Utility, wipe/erase the MBP drive and re-partition/format the drive but use the optional "zero out" option that should map out any bad blocks, and when finished and partitioned/formatted, then clone the backup you made back to the MBPro's HD.

Then test again if you want, but I'll bet that you see an improvement, unless of course the HD really is failing.

Thanks pm-r... interestingly, I'm currently trying to do one last CCC backup to my external. Things are going slowly, but surely. I've had one error pop up that says...

CCC has detected a physical problem with one of your volumes.

CCC will proceed with the backup task, copying as many files as possible. Please note:

*The first error occurred while trying to access:

*/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player.plugin/Contents/Plugins/Flashplayer-10.6plugin/Contents/MacOs/Flashplayer-10.6*

CCC then goes on to say that I can quit and it will continue next time where I left off. I didn't quit, just hit "continue" and it's still copying. I thought my last backup was about two weeks ago but it's copied over 3.4 GB so far.

Keeping my fingers crossed. If the clone goes well, I'll take your advice.

Spudmac

If you're able to get the hard drive up and running again, assume that it is unreliable and save your files to another drive for a week or so of regular use. I wiped a drive and reinstalled from a backup. Disk Utility gave it the all-clear but bad sector problems arose again within a day or less.

It may very well be that the drive is fully resuscitate-able -- and I sure hope it is -- but don't risk your work and data until you're confident it's robust.

If you're able to get the hard drive up and running again, assume that it is unreliable and save your files to another drive for a week or so of regular use. I wiped a drive and reinstalled from a backup. Disk Utility gave it the all-clear but bad sector problems arose again within a day or less.

It may very well be that the drive is fully resuscitate-able -- and I sure hope it is -- but don't risk your work and data until you're confident it's robust.

I think that's what they're attempting to do, make a current clone, and I wouldn't worry about their Flash cloning error.

But did you use the "zero out" option with Disk Utility new partition/format before you cloned your backup data back?

That can make a huge difference, but won't help much if all the 'available' spare blocks have previously been used up and mapped out for proper use, and done so on the Mac the HD is to be used with is preferred.

But did you use the "zero out" option with Disk Utility new partition/format before you cloned your backup data back?


If I recall correctly, I believe I tried it both ways. Just a straight "Erase" and, when my bad block errors re-arose, with the zero-out option. (I was trying to avoid replacing the HD on an iMac, my first such home repair.)

My main concern for spudmac is that his MBP was dropped and shortly thereafter his problems started. This would make me very cautious of physical damage to the drive, even with the Sudden Motion Sensor working properly.

pm-r, I defer to your expertise, but I hate, hate, hate losing work for any reason. And in this case, my Spidey senses would be all a-tingle.

Replace the hard drive. Trying to salvage it is a terrible idea at this point.

Replace the hard drive. Trying to salvage it is a terrible idea at this point.

Yeah, I've decided to replace the hard drive. I have a universal drive adaptor and figure my best route is...

Boot from my external backup... plug in my new drive via the universal drive adaptor.... initialize and then clone over. Boot from the new drive to make sure all is OK. Install into MacBook Pro. Anyone see any issues with the above or any advice to make sure all goes well. I've taken the machine apart once to up the Ram to 8GB, so in that regard I feel comfortable. My only question really is whether the clone to the new drive will make it an exact copy of my original pooched drive (minus the few errors that CCC reported). I know when I installed Lion it added a recovery partition to the drive. Will this come over to the new drive as well with the clone?

Spudmac

After cloning the back-up to the new drive I installed it and lo and behold it booted! This is my first experience with a clone/swap out and things seem to be working fine. Machine is "snappy" and no beach balls. I ended up putting in a Western Digital Scorpio Black 500 GB (no SSD just yet). Other than needing to find my serial number for Microsoft Office things seem to be working fine. Many thanks to all of the above advice - I appreciate it. It made it easier to take the plunge to do it myself.

Spudmac

Oh... and the lesson here... back up, back up, back up (and don't drop your laptop)

Congrats! Glad it turned out well.