• Welcome to the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.

MacBook Help

 
 
 
abaddon said:
Older, and 13 inch. Probably a 2009. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201608

The 2009's will let you install OS X El Capitan.

Grabbing an Install Disk off eBay or even a whole hard drive with the OS pre-installed is an option. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...0.l1313&_nkw=OS+X+El+Capitan+10.11.6&_sacat=0

If you're going to take it apart, then iFixit has step-by-step directions to help with that. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2009+Hard+Drive+Replacement/1337

If you want to try to look at the drive from your Windows machine, I don't know that you can do more than accept its offer to reformat it. Maybe pull off files but you indicated it's new to the client so nothing to recover. Something like MacDrive (https://www.macdrive.com/macdrive/standard-vs-pro/ ... I saw a "5 day full feature trial" offer there) will try to fix it, and failing that then reformat it but you still need an installer on some variety of disk.
Click to expand...

Oh, that's cool! That's a big help. Thank you so much.

I'm going to check out the drive and see if it's hosed first then go from there
 
This is what the bottom of the macbook in question looks like.

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/-2CxSAVwFqE[/YOUTUBE]

If that helps identification.
 
Well, that's one old beast.

2008 or older. That's going back before anything I can tell you. I'm surprised there's no number, a serial number or EMC number of something, in there.

But I'm going to refer you back to OS compatibility chart. It's there in the range where it's "maybe" it'll run El Capitan.

Looks like replacement of hard drive, if it comes to it, will be simple though.
 
abaddon said:
Well, that's one old beast.

2008 or older. That's going back before anything I can tell you. I'm surprised there's no number, a serial number or EMC number of something, in there.

But I'm going to refer you back to OS compatibility chart. It's there in the range where it's "maybe" it'll run El Capitan.

Looks like replacement of hard drive, if it comes to it, will be simple though.
Click to expand...

I just sent an email to the person that made the video for identification.
 
Well, if it comes to reinstalling the OS and the customer has no disk, I'm pretty sure you're safe with 10.6 Leopard in the 2007-2009 range of Macbooks.
 
abaddon said:
Cheerful Charlie said:
Long ago, when hard disks were not that reliable, I occasionally did bad block checks that solved a lot of problems. This command was fsck -c -c -y dev/sdx. This is a Linux command. Since it cannot be run on a mounted partition, I used to run it from Knoppix, a live CD Linux system. Apparently today's hard drives don't work quite the same. So Linux rescue disks that check any hard disk for bad blocks does things different now, but they do check bad blocks and mark them as do not use. I am willing to be there are similar live CD system repair disks for Macs. Running fsck -c -c -y was very, very slow, but very, very thorough.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Macs do fsck in Terminal and in Disk Utility's "First Aid" GUI version of the same. But... bootable disk with Mac OS X on it is needed.

There's more powerful software to repair the corrupt file system like DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro but they're expensive.
Click to expand...


A quick google for free Macintosh rescue disks shows a number of candidates. Some do hard disk diagnostics. Probably not as polished as the expensive software suites, but just for checking the hard disk health, probably good enough.
 
Okay, I finally got to pulling the HDD. Macdrive 10 said the main volume was hosed so I thought I'd try formatting it. Macdrive failed the format so I tried removing the volume and tried recreating and formatting again. Failed at 33% so the drive is hosed.

I'll check out prices for replacement with OS and let my client know.

Oh and BTW, no id under the battery but the battery model number is A1185.
 
Talked to my client. He just bought the computer from a refurb website for $200. He's had it for a month and a half, it had a thirty day warranty. Poor guy. Paid way too much then the thing goes south after the warranty expires.

He wants me to fix it. I can get an HDD with Snow Leopard, Lion, El Capitan, or High Sierra for 25 bucks. Which one do you think would be appropriate for this computer?

Thanks for all your help, guys.
 
That battery model A1185 was used in Macbooks from 2006 to 2009.

The video you showed about HDD replacement was, I think, 2008. So if that video was the same machine, then the machine's at least that old.

Here's more info on the compatibility of older machines with OS versions: https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac-software/what-version-macos-compatible-3776008/

So which OS? My reasoning is this:

The later versions of Mac OS would run slow on an old, under-powered machine.

So I'd go with the oldest OS in your list, which is Snow Leopard. Even if the machine's as old as 2006, a lot of people would have upgraded to Snow Leopard. I've seen comments here and there from persons who did that upgrade were happy with it, it was a good improvement on 10.5.
 
abaddon said:
That battery model A1185 was used in Macbooks from 2006 to 2009.

The video you showed about HDD replacement was, I think, 2008. So if that video was the same machine, then the machine's at least that old.

Here's more info on the compatibility of older machines with OS versions: https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac-software/what-version-macos-compatible-3776008/

So which OS? My reasoning is this:

The later versions of Mac OS would run slow on an old, under-powered machine.

So I'd go with the oldest OS in your list, which is Snow Leopard. Even if the machine's as old as 2006, a lot of people would have upgraded to Snow Leopard. I've seen comments here and there from persons who did that upgrade were happy with it, it was a good improvement on 10.5.
Click to expand...

Snow leopard it is. Let's hope she's a nice kitty.

Thanks.
 
The drive came today.I installed it and the computer fired right up. Whoo hoo!!!

Thanks for all your help, guys.

0a570454f9dd980f45e80de85aacf84f.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom