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+--- Thread: This drive has a hardware problem and can not be repaired! (/showthread.php?tid=195352)
This drive has a hardware problem and can not be repaired! - Jack D. - 09-25-2016
Came home yesterday to the wife complaining about a spinning beach ball and hangs on the Mini (late 2009, C2D 2.0, 8gb RAM, Snow Leopard). Firefox was open so I asked if she had the usual 300 tabs open and she said no, only 6. So I did a hard shutdown and rebooted. It took a good 6-8 minutes to get the desktop up and immediately I started getting little 3-4 second beachballs.
When I fired up Disk Utility the internal drive was listed in red text and the message "This drive has a hardware problem and can not be repaired!". I tried to run a scan but the machine froze again and this time when I restarted it just kept grinding away with no desktop. We've been having little issues with the Mini for a few months now but I was attributing them to running Parallels and Win 7 with Mac OS on only the 8gb RAM. I had to allocate 4/4 to each side and I thought it might have been taxing the Mini. Now I think it was the drive failing. Note: SMART status never said there was any issues with the drive.
In the past I'd be busting a vein when this happened because backups were for squids and real computer geeks never backed up their files. I was a charter member of that stupid club but since then I've turned in my membership card and now have a full Time Machine backup AND a spare bootable drive! Now I can focus my full wrath on the drive manufacturer!
I bought this drive from Newegg on 4-15-2015. It's an HGST Travelstar H2IK10003272SN (0S03563) 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" High Performance Mobile Hard Drive with a 3 year warranty. I thought these HGST's were supposed to have the lowest failure rate of the major mfr's? Maybe I just drew the short straw on this unit.
Well I submitted a support case for a replacement and we'll see where that leads. I was thinking that this may be the perfect time to drop in an SSD but the cheap bastard in me says the replacement hard drive is free and I should spend the cash on hookers and booze. I could put the drive in a case but I don't really need another small 1TB drive hanging around collecting dust.
While I have the case open, does anyone have any cheap sources for a replacement optical drive? DVD just keeps spitting the disc out and won't mount.
Re: This drive has a hardware problem and can not be repaired! - Ken Sp. - 09-25-2016
Maybe just a generic USB External Optical. Less money, easier to replace.
Re: This drive has a hardware problem and can not be repaired! - Racer X - 09-25-2016
It's good you are considering the hooker and booze component.
Re: This drive has a hardware problem and can not be repaired! - Onamuji - 09-25-2016
Jack D. wrote:
When I fired up Disk Utility the internal drive was listed in red text and the message "This drive has a hardware problem and can not be repaired!"...Note: SMART status never said there was any issues with the drive.
The Disk Utility will not report a SMART problem until a drive is practically dead and gone. You need to run a 3rd party utility to get a useful SMART status report.
Jack D. wrote:
In the past I'd be busting a vein when this happened because backups were for squids and real computer geeks never backed up their files. I was a charter member of that stupid club but since then I've turned in my membership card and now have a full Time Machine backup AND a spare bootable drive!
miley-gen013:Jack D. wrote:
Now I can focus my full wrath on the drive manufacturer! ... I thought these HGST's were supposed to have the lowest failure rate of the major mfr's? Maybe I just drew the short straw on this unit.
HGST averages longer lives than other drives. Some still die young.
Re: This drive has a hardware problem and can not be repaired! - jdc - 09-25-2016
All drives fail. Not a matter of if, but when.
If I were in your shoes I would order a SSD today. Assuming 500 GB is plenty, then $100-120 is a average. (like the mx 300 I posted below)
It will make the mini feel new again.
Then use the replacement drive as a new TM drive.
Re: This drive has a hardware problem and can not be repaired! - hal - 09-25-2016
HGST is a pretty quick and painless RMA process.
For the DVD, try a DVD lens cleaner first. Might just be a dust bunny in the wrong place. This kinda things fixes about 1/2 of the problematic drives I've seen.
https://www.amazon.com/Maxell-DVD-Lens-Cleaner-190059/dp/B00000JPPI