Great Minds of Gamemecca, HELP ME PLEASE!!!

[Caged Anger]

Oke, my sis is in a jam. She's a major graphic arts type and uses a Mac powerbook. The other day (now probably more like a week) she turned it on and this interesting gray screen appeared with a smilie face on it. It flickered a while before going through the rest of its death throws until it just died. On button no longer does anything.

Suspected Problem: Hard Drive Failure

Help Required: While I found a hard drive on Newegg and quick and easy installation tips, i still need help. She had a number of expensive programs on the hard drive that she no longer has the funds to replace. What I need to know is, how can we recover this data off the old hard drive and get it into the new one?

Sorry I don't have any better info about the comp, but all i know about it is that A) It's a Mac and B)It's a Powerbook.

Hope you guys can help me. Thx in advance!!!

[OUTLAWS 9.99repeating^32]

Well I would assume you should look into a Data Recovery service, like this one: http://www.drivesavers.com/

[JIMINATOR]

ok, so powerbutton, etc, do nothing. what makes you think that is a drive failure? if it was to hang on booting and report a drive failure, that would be a pretty big clue, but otherwise, it doesn't sound like that is the case. anyway i know very little about macs, but it sounds like professional intervention is required. and although i suspect your drive is fine, if you have to use a recovery service, they are (or were) tremendously expensive...

[Fragetti]

Jim
can you boot from the floppy?
then search the drive.

[ME BIGGD01]

sorry bud, not a mac person. i think taking it to a mac place to have it looked at may be the best solution or call their tech support which may give you a quick solution.

[Dissectional]

Put the MAC system CD in the CD-Rom drive. You can use a paper clip to open the drive door usually if you have to. Make sure it has A/C power and try to power on again, holding down the 'C' key. This will boot from the CD-Rom. You can do a disk check and what not from there.

This is a OS 9 procedure though, if she is running OS X I don't know what to do.

If the laptop will boot from the HD after that, burn all her stuff to a DVD/CD.
Otherwise, you better call a MAC shop.

[Caged Anger]

oke, not a powerbook, an...IBook? I think thats right. The power button works. But all the gets is a Mac OS symbol on a gray screen a couple times flashing and then it goes off again. And as a side note, hehe, um, the OS isn't her's. She doesn't have the disks for it. All the other options sound expensive though. I dunno. Thx for your help though. At least I have some ideas now.

[Death Engineer]

On a side note, everyone here should know that when you get harddrive data recovered, they are now forced by law to report any illegal media recovered. This can be MP3s, copied software, movies, etc. The data is sent to the MPAA, thanks to a new law helped to pass by millions of dollars of lobbying my the same folks (MPAA).

[Caged Anger]

....eh, hehe, um, then nm then, lol, not worth the trouble

[Slice]

On a side note, everyone here should know that when you get harddrive data recovered, they are now forced by law to report any illegal media recovered. This can be MP3s, copied software, movies, etc. The data is sent to the MPAA, thanks to a new law helped to pass by millions of dollars of lobbying my the same folks (MPAA).
That's funny. Let them prove I obtained it illegally (not that I would ever use a recovery service). It is not illegal to have movies, music or software on your computer. So let's see wow this guy has lots of mp3's on his hard drive must be illegal let's get em. Do you really think that these guys report anything? If you were in that business would you? If you did, you would be out of business in a month. Word would get out and nobody would use your service.