MBP 2009 HD dead-ish - what to do next?
So apparently the hard drive in my mid-2009 MacBook Pro is near death.
I was having troubles with it the other night and after restarting it I received a kernel panic, basically "unable to find driver for this platform ACPI". You can see the full screen athttp://i.imgur.com/DHFg9PUh.jpg
I tried going into Recover mode and using Disk Utility to verify/repair to see what would happen. I forget exactly what happened when i first ran it, but now I get a message that it can't be repaired. Example screen here:http://i.imgur.com/O57e6NBh.jpg
At one point when I booted into single user mode (or was it verbose mode?) I received "SATA warning: enable auto-activate failed". Usually running fsck doesn't have good results. Here's the screen from the last time I did that in single user mode: http://i.imgur.com/C6S2gCph.jpg
When I try to boot into Safe mode it eventually gets about 1/5 of the way through the progress bar and then shuts down.
This drive is about 6 years old and has been used a lot (and didn't have lots of space on it left, I know..) so I'm not surprised it's having troubles.
I'm confused though what I my next steps should be.
- Would something like Disk Warrior conceivably be able to repair any corruption or other issues?
- Am I able to use the Reinstall OS X feature in the Utilities section of Recovery to install a new copy of Mavericks? Would that just be a waste of time even if I can do that?
- I don't have access to other macs and only have the original 10.6 install DVD. Would I need to install 10.6, update to 10.6.8 and then re-download Mavericks (or higher)?
- I realize the current contents on the drive may be toast. I have a time machine backup from a few months ago.
- I currently have no bootable external drive/device.
- I was going to ask if there are any files I can modify while in single-user mode that may help, but when I try to mount the drive I get errors:http://i.imgur.com/U2QIhPul.jpg
- Ideally I'll replace this dead-ish drive with a ssd, although I'm still wrapping my head around exactly what kind I need. (i.e. do most ship with the spacer? How do I format it once installed and put on the OS as I think I can't use internet Recovery? Would something like the crucial MX200 500GB 2.5" ssd work in this machine? I have the screwdriver for the back screws and also a T6 for the drive.)
Specifically, it's a MBP 13.3" 2.53Ghz, 8GB ram, 250 GB HD - MB991LL/A
thanks. sad face.
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009), OS X Mavericks (10.9.3), 8 gb ram