# White Screen @ Startup HD problem



## Genesis0008 (Jul 24, 2008)

I was working on my laptop (MacBook Pro) and shutdown my computer normally. I left it in my backpack a couple days, nothing really unusual, went to turn it back on and got a white screen with a blinking gray folder. After some digging, I discovered that my hard drive can't be found by anything, including the Disk Utility. I put in the install disc, and of course "OS 1.4 cannot be found, cannot upgrade to 1.5 without 1.4. . . etc" so now I'm stuck with a laptop that can't seem to detect a hard drive. Any solutions? It goes without saying that I really need to restore my HD with all of my personal files on there, as I have many school documents that I need to get to which I'm depending on. Thanks for your help.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Your hard drive is gone. It has died. It will need to be replaced, and OS X installed on it. It sounds like you have an upgrade disk, and I'm not sure where you got that, as Apple hasn't sold one in years, and it is useless for installing on a new hard disk.


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## Genesis0008 (Jul 24, 2008)

If I pump enough voltage into my laptop, can I still get some ounce of satisfaction from its death? Damn. I'm running hardware tests as a last [futile] resort, but I suspect that I'll be getting the fatal news here soon. Any chance I can salvage files from the HD by loading it into another mac or something? Anything? PLEASE?


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

When a hard drive fails like that, it's a hardware issue. The only real thing you can do is pay lots of money to a place that can do data recovery as they will have to take the drive apart and put the platters into a speical machine to try to read them.


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## davidcoxell (Jun 12, 2008)

This probably won't help at all, but when the hard drive on my G4 failed, my local Mac guru put the drive in the freezer for an unknown length of time (in a plastic bag to prevent condensation). This meant everything contracted just enough to free up the drive long enough to get the data off. It was all recovered.

So do you want to stick the laptop in the freezer for a couple of hours and see if it works...?

This really is a last resort. And you'll need a means of getting the data off before it warms up and dies - again...


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## davidcoxell (Jun 12, 2008)

PS - Maybe take the battery out first................?


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