Dead Air

[jam.]

I have a Macbook Air (2008). It is good.

Once upon a time, the hard drive started crying and just gave up. So I replaced it for an identical model. This was around a year ago.

Today it's done it again; just get's stuck at the loading apple screen for ever. Disk Utility basically tells me to get everything off it (how?), and replace asap. What am I doing wrong? It shouldn't be eating harddrives like that, shirley?


I also haven't backed up because I like living on the edge. Because that is how I ro...ahh shite, Football Manager..

 

[Adam.]

I had one of these at work the other day. Air original and it is on its 2nd hard drive.

Absolute pita to find a new one aswell so it will be getting written off.

I managed to get a backup by booting off a usb hard drive and doing a disk clone.

 

[Addicted]

What sort of drives are they?

 

[Adam.]

80gb ata 1.8" iirc. Custom ZIF connector too.

 

[jam.]

Theres loads on't the bay. Might just get one and start from scratch. AGAIN.

How would I get the stuff off the old one? I'm certain theres nothing that I'm too bothered about stored on there, but I'd prefer to have it how it was before.

Or might just sack it off and get one of the new iPads when they arrive..

 

[Adam.]

All the ones on ebay are slower RPM than normal ones.

 

[coxy777]

I've had this issue with my 09 Air. HDD failed so I bought Disk Warrior which recovered all my gear and told me the drive was duff. Bought a new drive and an external enclosure. Took my old HDD out, put it in the enclosure and downloaded everything off it. Stuck the new drive in and hey presto all is well (if a little slower) Also means I now have the old drive in an external enclosure. Not the most reliable thing in the world but good enough to move the odd thing about. All in all was under £100 IIRC.

 

[Silent_Scone]

hasn't an SSD always been an option with these? For something like an Air I'd always opt for one tbh

 

[jam.]

I've had this issue with my 09 Air. HDD failed so I bought Disk Warrior which recovered all my gear and told me the drive was duff. Bought a new drive and an external enclosure. Took my old HDD out, put it in the enclosure and downloaded everything off it. Stuck the new drive in and hey presto all is well (if a little slower) Also means I now have the old drive in an external enclosure. Not the most reliable thing in the world but good enough to move the odd thing about. All in all was under £100 IIRC.

That sounds ideal tbh.

Does disk warrior run from startup? as I obviously can't get near OSX at the minute. Thinking about it; I've still got the old (dead) HD from when it died last time, hoping to come across something like this. Despite that probably being loaded with pointless crap.

Any chance you could link me up with the stuff mentioned?

hasn't an SSD always been an option with these? For something like an Air I'd always opt for one tbh

It has, but mine was second hand and only had a boggo HD in it to start with, so I just replaced it like for like when it died. I'll possibly replace with a SSD this time though.

 

[Tom]

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura_Pro_MBA

 

[coxy777]

Disk warrior is like an advanced version of disk utility with more features for restoring drives and allowing you to remove data from them.

This is disk warrior

http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/

This is the enclosure I got. Be sure to find out which drive you have as the zif and lif drives are not compatible. Can't remember which way around it is but the 1st and 2nd gen Airs have different drives.

http://www.memoryc.com/storageprodu...sdenclosurefor18sataiilifsolidstatedrive.html

I then got a HDD from ebay from Hong Kong. Does the job well enough although it is a little slower.

Like I say do some digging on those things above to find out exactly what you need as the may not be 100% correct for your application.

Can't remember 100% the exact method I eventually used to sort mine but it went something like remove this. Removed old hdd, place in enclosure and connect to a MacBook Pro. Run disk warrior on the MBA hdd using the MBP. Everything points at MBA hdd being dead, so remove all data from MBA hdd to MBP. Then new hdd in MBA, reinstall OSX and transfer all data back from MBP.

Hope that gives you some idea.

Oh and I couldnt justify $$$ for an SSD!

 

[Silent_Scone]

Really does make a massive difference in some scenarios. Even on crusty old hardware adding an SSD is a massive improvement...If you do a lot of traveling it's great also. Saves usual abuse