In OS X Utilities I am unable to erase the hard drive.

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In OS X Utilities I am unable to erase the hard drive.

This morning I was using my macbook pro watching a film, and i don't know if it will have mad an effect i droped a fairly storng magnet on it where the hard drive is. Anyway after about 30min it suddenly frezzes up and for about 15min i couldnt even force shut it down. Anyway I rebooted it and it went into OS X Utilities, so went to repair my hard drive and I couldnt it said that I needed to earse it so, I selected the partition and selected earse and it got to about a 1/3 of the bar then said unable to erase. So then I go to try erase the hard drive itself same problem so i can not reinstall Mac osx mavricks because my mac does not give me the option to select it. Help Please!!

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Apr 17, 2014 8:05 AM

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Melophage

Level 5

7,213 points

Apr 17, 2014 10:07 AM in response to caldrift

caldrift,

exposure to a strong magnetic field is bad news for a hard drive, as is physical shock (such as dropping something on it). It would probably be easiest for you to purchase a replacement hard drive to get you up and running as quickly as poosible, and then you can experiment with getting the old hard drive erased as an external drive at your leisure.

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