Ever thought that one-day you might have to replace the
Mac’s internal hard drive? I know, this sounds nightmarish to anyone but fact
is, many users have come across similar conditions, where replacing the HDD was
only solution to get going on Mac computer.
A HDD, that comes installed inside the Mac CPU is itself
tough and can be used for many years without any hassle. However, many a times,
the HDD develop any sort of faults that may force the user to call for another
HDD.
Another HDD is not only costly to afford but it also requires
an expert technician to complete the replacement. Until, you are an expert
yourself, one should always avoid doing the replacement on it’s own. Opening up
the CPU without proper knowledge and doing the replacement could be
catastrophic.
Gathering points that
leads to HDD failure & replacement: As I said earlier, a HDD may work for
years without any trouble but sometimes, below issues do bother & interrupt
its smooth working.
Early signs of troubles of a faulty HDD:
·
Random crashes of OS X leading to sudden shutdown and data loss.
·
Facing deep trouble while moving a file,
encountering cryptic errors.
·
Files, folders, especially system files become
to vanish.
·
Facing intolerable time to launch some apps,
folder or any activity.
·
Hard drive moves abruptly fast and then goes
into slow speeds.
·
Unpleasant noises from the hard drive hardware.
Immediate course of action: Once you
have realized to the early signs of drive failure, you could prepare yourself
for following activity.
1.
Try to find the make of the HDD and it’s serial
number. You will need this once you chat or talk with technical personnel.
2.
Try to avoid any new read/write process on the
faulty hard drive. Some drives create lot of mess if user tries to do some task
on the computer. In real, the fault of the HDD will make all efforts to block
smooth execution of the user’s task.
3.
If the hard drive is caught in early stages of
malfunction then make sure you copy all the necessary data, files & folders
to another source, which could possible be an external hard drive. The transfer
of files from the drive in question should be accomplished asap, as its
condition will be worsen and user may not be able to perform uninterrupted
transfer of files at later stages.
4.
If Time Machine has set on your Mac OS X, then
copy its data too. Since the TM partition is on the same drive, one cannot be
assured if it too not becomes damaged. If the Time Machine set up is on
external hard drive then it can be restored once it gets connected with the Mac
replaced with another (new) hard drive.
5.
In the absence of Time Machine space, you can
pick up any good cloning software that will assist you make the clone of the
faulty hard drive. Below are lifesavers cloning tools for Mac OS X.
·
Carbon Copy Cloner
·
Stellar Drive Clone
·
Superduper
Alternative of disk cloning: If you disagree with cloning the
problematic hard disk drive, then you have another option, which is to IMAGE
the hard drive. Rather than copying all the data, Image will compress the
required data and will also ignore any faulty sectors that may comes in its way
to imaging. Later, the Image file can be extracted to load the data in its
original form.
Ask Technician Help, since, the hard drive may have severe
faults and only hard drive replacement can bring back Mac to life. Utilize
Apple Care facility or Apple Warranty to get the faulty hardware replaced in no
time.