MacBook Pro 13" (Mid-2009) hard drive utility disk read error

Question

My MacBook Pro was running normally a few days ago but all of a sudden in the middle of a garage band session, I got the beachball. I then realized the whole computer was frozen. I have had this MacBook Pro 13" model for a few years with no problems and this is the first time this has happened.

When I rebooted the system I got the flashing folder with question mark logo. I booted up IOSX from the disk and ran Disk Utility; it couldn't recognize my hard drive at all.

I recently replaced my old 160GB hard drive with a Western Digital 320GB Scorpion Black HD. It recognizes my new drive but whenever I try and partition or erase the drive a window pops up saying:

Disk Fail: Input/Output error

How can I fix these issues?

Answer 1

Sounds like the disk is dead. If it's still under warranty, bring it back and get a new one. If you have data on the disk you need and no backup, take it out and put it in an external case, then use a utility to rescue what you can before returning it.

Answer 2

That sounds really bad.

By booting from disk I suppose you probably booted from a Snow Leopard disk, because your drive crashed?

You can try to boot into single-mode (hold cmd-s) during the boot. This brings you into a console mode, where one can try to repair the drive using fsck, etc.

If you can't get there, I suppose your drive crashed completely.