Non booting MBA

omniscient_toad

Someone dropped a friends MBA and when it subsequently refused to boot they asked me if I'd take a look at it. It's the old early 2008 model (A1237) and hangs at the point the Apple appears against the background. I assumed the (mechanical not ssd) disk drive had gone kaput but it was still picked up as a selectable boot option, and I've run verify/repair disk permissions from an OSX Lion loaded USB stick.

I was about to swap out the hard drive for a spare 2.5" one I had before realising the thing not only takes 1.8" drives but alos uses annoyingly odd ZIF connectors. Before I attempt a full reinstall on the disk is there anyway of backing up the contents? On a Mac with more than a single USB port I'd use disk target mode but that won't work here, and the annoying connector means removing it and putting it in an enclosure/second machine is a pain. With only the one USB port or wireless is there anyway to back up the thing if the data is readable?

muggyog

Use a USB hard drive that has OS X installed. I would have it formatted in two partitions (OS & Data) for neatness.

I would be very cautious of reusing the hard drive.

omniscient_toad

Cheers, just did exactly that, oddly the internal drive seems to be fully readable, despite resolutely refusing to boot. I'll backup everything and create an image and see how stable (if at all) it is with a reinstall. On the plus side it seems the fall at most damaged the hard drive and nothing else since it seems to run fine off the external drive.

omniscient_toad

Just looking at replacement drives if it does turn out to be dead/unstable, does anyone have a suggestion as to where to find a compatible drive for a decent price? It requires a rather niche 1.8" size with ZIF connector which I can only find 2 or 3 obscure makes of at fairly high prices!

muggyog

Just a point on your query regarding non booting but able to read data. You will find that if you run Diskwarrior on this drive it will have major problems fixing it. Also you will probably find issues with copying some files. I have had this problem myself and it is because certain system files are damaged ( head gouging disk surface does that! ).

omniscient_toad

muggyog wrote: »

Just a point on your query regarding non booting but able to read data. You will find that if you run Diskwarrior on this drive it will have major problems fixing it. Also you will probably find issues with copying some files. I have had this problem myself and it is because certain system files are damaged ( head gouging disk surface does that! ).

Thanks for that, this is apparently my friends second drive after killing a previous one previously, I think I'll be suggesting a solid state one as a replacement given his capacity for hard drive destruction!

Duck Soup

I had a MBP that refused to boot up. Ran DiskWarrior with an external HD hooked up to the MBP and got to bit where it tells me that the HD is doomed and save all the files.

You can do this with DiskWarrior by going to the Preview screen when prompted. This is the Preview screen that usually lets you assess the 'Before' system with the 'After' system.

Uncheck the 'sync' option in Preview and you can navigate the Before screen to show the external HD and its contents.

You then navigate to wherever you want on the After panel and simply drag and drop files from the After Panel to the external HD on the Before panel.

Worked for me - saved my files and allowed me to do a Erase & Install knowing my stuff had been recovered.