Apple MacBook – Dead Hard Drive and Disc Drive

So this is totally off topic and will only interest those looking for Mac repair tips. Beside my interest in photography, I’m also a bit of a tech geek and enjoy building computers, fixing them and reading about technology in general.  Two of my favorite sites include Engadget and Wired.

The other day I was handed a non-booting 2006 model MacBook running OS X 10.4 and asked to see if it could be fixed.  Right off the bat I knew this thing was going to be trouble.  Upon boot, the classic Apple chime would sound, but the screen would only display a folder icon with a flashing question mark.  A quick Google search revealed an Apple Support article that suggested the computer couldn’t find the software on the hard drive and just needed to be reminded where the operating system is located.  There were several methods provided to fix this, such as booting with the system restore disc, using the start-up manager to select the hard drive and resetting the PRAM.

I tried using the restore disc, but the combo drive would attempt to read it and then eject the disc.  Also, resetting the PRAM didn’t work and the Macbook doesn’t have a start-up manager, which is only available on some older models.  Another trick up my sleeve was to attempt to access the MacBook’s hard disk using Firewire target mode, but that also proved futile.  I came to the conclusion that both the HDD and combo drive were broken.  How they managed to die simultaneously, I’ll never know.

With this information in hand, I visited Newegg, my favorite computer component store and ordered up a new 160GB Western Digital hard drive as well as two 1 GB Kingston memory sticks.  Fortunately, I ordered soon enough in the day and they were able to ship overnight, with my order arriving at 11:27 a.m. the very next day.  Way to go Newegg and FedEx!!!

Accessing the MacBook’s hard drive and memory slots are very simple and Apple even provides instructions online.  Inserting the new components was straightforward enough, but how to install the operating system without a functioning combo drive and no access to an external DVD drive?  Firewire Target mode of course and that’s why so many people are disappointed to see Apple has eliminated the Firewire ports from the latest MacBook.

The computer I was using as the host is an older G5 running OS X 10.5.  Using the G5’s DVD drive with the MacBook’s original restore discs failed, due I think, to the fact the MacBook uses an Intel processor and the G5 uses the older PowerPC chip.  Next I used a retail version of OS X 10.5 and selected the MacBook’s new hard drive as the target.  The install process worked like a charm…albeit a little long at around 2 hours.

My next step was to reinstall the iLife suite from the restore discs, but at first that didn’t work, because Apple has a small software program that checks whether the restore discs are for same model computer.  Since I was using the G5 DVD drive to attempt the install on the MacBook, the program recognized the incompatibility and wouldn’t let me complete the install.

After a little brainstorming, I realized that I could create an ISO of the disc and copy that over Firewire to the MacBook.  There is a handy little tool in OS X called Disk Utility App that does just that. To create an ISO from a CD/DVD run Disk Utility and select “CD/DVD Master” as the image format. The resulting file will have a .cdr extension. Just rename .cdr to .iso and you have a functioning ISO of the CD or DVD.

Next, I copied over the file to the MacBook’s hard drive and then used the following command in terminal to mount the disc:

hdiutil mount filename.iso

Filename.iso should be replaced with the name of the actual file. But it worked and I was able to reinstall the old iLife suite on the fresh OS X 10.5 install, thereby giving the MacBook and new lease on life. As for the old hard drive, well, it’s dead and gave the dreaded clicking noise when I attempted to read it using an external USB to HDD adapter. Let’s hope the user was faithful at running backups.