SMART status: verified...Partion Map Scheme: Unformatted

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Level 1

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SMART status: verified...Partion Map Scheme: Unformatted

My hard drive on my Macbook Pro (HItachi HTS723232L9SA62) took a nose dive yesterday. I thought it was gone, but now that ive done more testing, I think It might be recoverable. I have yet to visit a genius bar over it. (Friday appointment). Perhaps someone can make more sense of the test results.

I noticed something was amiss when I tried to save a text file and it would not let me. I did a hard reboot and got the blinking "?" folder on startup. It could not find the system disk. My friends who have had problems with their macs in past

1) Logic Error: The motherboard cant find the hard drive and is toast

2) Power cable: the cable from the batt to the hard drive is bad and so it is not being detected.

3) Bad hard drive: the hard drive is toast and needs to be replaced

When I got home, I ran the AHT which found nothing.

I then ran the Disc Utility. It actually FOUND my hard drive. That seems to rule out "#1".

The utility is able to detect information about the drive. Perhaps that means I can rule out the power issue?

What baffles me is that in most threads I've read where someone has a toasted HD, the SMART status comes up as "unverified". My S.M.A.R.T. status is labled "Verified". The error I do get is that my Partition Map Scheme is "Unformatted".

It's as though my HD might be OK, but my partition went bad. Is that possible?

The disc utility does not allow me to verify or repair the disc in any way. It does allow me to ERASE it, PARTITION, RAID or RESTORE (I have no restorable image). If I PARTITION, will that restore my partion without damaging my data?

Here is the total information on my drive:

Description: Hitachi HTS723232L9SA62 Media

Connection Bus: SATA

Connection type: Internal

Total Capacity: 320.07GB

Write Status: Read/Write

S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified

Partition Mab Scheme: Unformatted

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jan 4, 2012 10:43 PM

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Answer 1

fane_j

Level 4

3,704 points

Jan 5, 2012 5:40 AM in response to Xero_slave

Xero_slave wrote:

If I PARTITION, will that restore my partion without damaging my data?

Absolutely not. Any of the actions you listed will destroy your data practically beyond recovery.

What baffles me is that in most threads I've read where someone has a toasted HD, the SMART status comes up as "unverified"

SMART is fallible, like everything else fashioned by human hands.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but IMHO your drive is toast. (It is possible that only some crucial sectors are damaged, and reformatting with surface verification would map them out. However, given the price of mass storage these days, it's not worth the risk.)

If you have an up-to-date backup, replace the drive, restore from backup, and move on.

If you don't, stop any further attempts to use the drive. Organise yourself an external boot drive (partitioned in at least two volumes, one for OS and apps, the other, which must be at least as big as the damaged drive, for copy and recovery), and then try to recover as much as you can (but don't get your hopes up!). I suggest Christophe Grenier's TestDisk (free, but a tough learning curve), which was designed for such situations. Read this recent thread SOS: How can I get back the important files that had been deleted? for suggestions of other tools.

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Answer 2

samberl

Level 4

2,007 points

Jan 5, 2012 5:49 AM in response to Xero_slave

If you are one of the fortunate, it may be the sata cable/controller rather than the hard drive.

I suggest removing the hard drive and placing it in an external enclosure or docking station and then see if will bootup your MacBookPro.

Also, if you boot from your install DVD and can see the hard drive in its external enclosure you can run Disk Utility at that time.

Certainly, you can purchase another drive in preparation for a recovery and restore. I would suggest you consider a 500gb or 750gb drive to allow for future growth.

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Answer 3

Xero_slave Author

Level 1

0 points

Jan 6, 2012 4:20 PM in response to samberl

Thanks for your responses.

I hit the Genius bar today. The tech agreed that it looked like the HD was readable by the MB and so we went ahead with the attempted re-partioning of the hard drive, but for some reason, it failed. We began to conclude that the HD was probably bad and I would have to replace it. Before I went out to buy a new hard drive, I insisted that he check with a good HD just to make sure the problem was isolated there.

I'm glad I did.

It turns out the test drive did not boot either. So in order for him to conduct the test he would need to replace the existing eSATA cable which, he admitted, is also prone to go bad. My drive was then accessible after replacing the cable, but the data was damaged beyond [reasonably affordable] repair.

I did not come out unscathed, but It's not as bad as it could have been. Once I got home, I checked the HD again for bad sectors and it seems OK.

I am still a bit confused about how a bad eSATA cable would damage the partition of my HD. But after some searching, I see that others have had similar problems with eSATA in general damaging disk data.

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