How the ##%* do I make my MacBook Pro boot?
I super, duper need help.
I have the early 2008 17" Penryn MacBook Pro MB166LL/A.
I recently upgraded to Lion without a problem, no issues whatsoever. Machine runs like a bomb for what I do (web design & development) and I have never had an issue with it in the 3 years that I have owned it.
Until, today.
I have a Blackberry and it has a holster that has a very small magnet inside of it. Today I put the BB, holstered, on the bottom right hand corner of my open MacBook Pro. Meaning the very small magnet was right where the hard drive sits. I was also opening a large file at the time. I ran off to have a drink of water and when I came back, I heard the hard drive making some interesting sounds.
It was giving the good ol' whiiiiirrrrr.... click! sound repeatedly. I immediately removed the magnetic holster from the corner of the Macbook Pro, but alas, it was too late. The hard drive was spazzing out with this clicking sound.
I switched off the machine and switched it on again. It starts up and then you hear the hard drive spinning - and then you can hear the clicking, and then it gives a loud CLICK and then goes silent.
My machine gets as far as the grey screen - no Apple logo.
So, what have I tried?
Booting from CD - doesn't work.
Booting from an external usb - doesn't work.
Target Disk mode - doesn't work.
Holding down D while booting - doesn't work.
What I mean by "doesn't work" is that it stays on the grey screen.
The only little bit of hope I have left for the ol' chap is that when holding down Option during the chime, it does give me a cursor, but there are no drives to select. Even with a working bootable Ubuntu USB key and the Snow Leopard install disk inside of it.
If anyone has any suggestions, I would be more than welcome to hear them. I am about to start dissecting the machine and removing the HDD entirely and replacing it with a SSD... but I really don't want it to have to get to that point!
Cheers,
Calvin
Update
Thanks guys.
What I did was eventually get it to boot from my Snow Leopard DVD, took about 30 minutes of clicks and whirs for it to finally do it, and I have INSTALLED Snow Leopard to my Seagate External Drive... which I am booted off of now and using Data Rescue 3 to clone my internal drive to see what I can salvage.
It has been going for about 22 hours and it is 19% complete.... ouch! But it has salvaged 50 gigs so far and only 400 megs are unrecoverable...!
Cheers,
Calvin