Hard drive S.M.A.R.T. Status says verified tech people say hard drive needs to be replaced

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Level 1

9 points

Hard drive S.M.A.R.T. Status says verified tech people say hard drive needs to be replaced

So my macbook pro started giving me kernel panic at the beginning of the weekend. It would start up in recovery partition just fine. But would not even get past the grey screen when trying to boot on my lion installation. I took it to an apple reseller here(no apple store within 50 miles of me) and they ran diagnostics on it and said the hard drive is failing. I didn't want to pay about $365 for a 5 year old machine ( I have also changed a hard drive myself before) so I Brought the machine back. And I had a suspicion that the disk utility didn't show that the S.M.A.R.T. status as failing…so I booted up into recovery partition and ran disk utility. Sure enough, the Smart status was verified. Now I am wondering if there is something else I can do to verify if the drive is failing? Don't want to waste my time and money replacing the hard drive if it won't do any good.

macbook pro core2duo 2.16 GHz 3GB Ram, Mac OS X (10.6.6), LaCie D2 quadra external hard drive firewire800

Posted on Feb 20, 2012 6:24 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 20, 2012 6:30 PM in response to yashrgupta

Is the MacBook Pro using 10.6 or 10.7?

If it is 10.6 and can boot to the install DVD, that does not necessarily mean the HDD is fine when SMART is verified. If it is 10.7 and can boot to Lion Recovery, then the HDD is likely fine, but the possibility remains that it could be failing. Hard disks can fail without reporting SMART failure, so don't solely rely on the SMART status.

If it is a kernel panic, run the Apple Hardware Test. If it reports an issue, you know right away that you have a hardware repair in your future. If it doesn't report a problem, backup the computer if you don't already have one--try Safe Boot and backup the computer, or use Firewire to save your important files via Target Disk Mode to your other Mac--and then try an erase/install. If the erase/install fails or if the issue persists after the erase/install, then you have a hardware issue.

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Answer 2

Shootist007

Level 6

16,703 points

Feb 20, 2012 6:39 PM in response to yashrgupta

It could be the drive cable. This is a fail point and will give result like you saw.

Get a SATA to USB adapter. Take the drive out of the system and use the adapter to boot the drive when it is out of the sytem. Run it like that and see if you still get the panics. If not then the drive is good and the rest of the computer is good and the cable is bad.

If you get the panics then it could be the drive or the system.

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Answer 3

yashrgupta Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 20, 2012 6:40 PM in response to jgelements

It was running 10.7.2 the kernel panic happened when I was trying to install 10.7.3 combo update. The MBPwouldn't even boot up in safe mode. I am currently using a software I had called drive genius to scan the hard drive using my iMac 27" (Macbook Pro in target disk mode connected via Firewire 800)

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Answer 4

Feb 20, 2012 7:27 PM in response to yashrgupta

Knowing it has Lion then, I would say it is not likely a failing HDD if you can boot to Lion Recovery. It is still possible that an HDD component is failing, but at this time I would follow TS1892 for kernel panics on startup, especially since the issue arose after or during a software update.

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Answer 5

yashrgupta Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 20, 2012 8:38 PM in response to jgelements

I read the article and I think I will try a erase and install. I also have another hard drive that I wouldn't mind installing in the Macbook Pro and installing Lion on that. Thanks for the help.

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