Noooooooooooooooo

I was happily using my Macbook when all of a sudden I hear a clicking sound and I get the beach ball of death.

I reboot and now I'm stuck on a grey screen with a folder with a question mark

I poured my life into that drive, Uni work, bookmarks, holiday plans ..EVERYTHING

HELLLLLLLLLLP

How can I recover my stuff!

Its fine.

Probably a power failure.

Remove the battery and plug it into AC power - I found the same thing would happen to me (angry folder) when I put my Macbook to sleep and unplugged my USB hub - which was waking it and making it sad.

I have to disagree.
Sounds like classic hard drive failure.

If you want your data back you will probably need to look at data recovery services which cost around $1000 normally. There are some DIY things you can try but none of them are overly reliable.

Also, try booting while holding down the option key...you should then be able to select a bootable drive to boot from (unless you have bootcamp and/or a boot CD/DVD you should only get the one option).

If your hard drive is kaput then just buy a new one and restore from backup....being that your life+uni+everything else is on there I'm sure you've been doing backups....right!!!...right?

Bartron

It makes precisely 4 clicks when it boots and it does nothing.

@iSlayer - I can't afford $1000, I'm a Uni student with enough bills already, and going to Europe next semester to study where I need every cent I have. Even if something is unreliable, I'm willing to try it.

@bartron - The option key does nothing.

I'll have to get a new drive tomorrow morning as I can't live without my laptop. I have assignments due every week and a lot of ongoing work to do.

I'll probably try get a external 2.5" enclosure and see what happens if I plug it into Firewire/USB

Will try and boot with install CD's and see if there's some kind of recovery option, but the clicking sound doesn't have me too optimistic.

I'm willing to try anything. Keep the ideas coming.

Sorry but its dead

I have had two seagates die on my Macbook in exactly the same way

An external drive is not going to help you as it wont be recognized. which is why the option key didn't work

Be lucky this happened to you early in your life. Its a lesson on backing up you will never forget

recently happen to me trust me your drives dead.

It's not booting off the CD's either.

I'm looking for some ZIP lock bags to try the freezer option, as that's the best suggestion so far

If the drive is making a lot of clicking and other weird noises that are very unlike normal, then your drive is fubar, and off to a recovery service you are going.

The occasional person has luck with the drive freezing trick, however, which gives a one-off chance to recover the contents.

Oh btw dont for a second think I am not sorry for your plight. I feel for you. Totally. I lost 5 years of data. Lucky most of it was backed up on DVD's email etc that I could get back

I guess you need to ask. What price you put on your data?

Off to the freezer it goes.

If that doesn't work it's going to get pounded with a hammer.

Luckily I use IMAP for emails.
I lose bookmarks but I might have backed some of those up.
I last backed up my Uni folder a while ago but I might get some lecture recordings back but I have lost a lot and it's going to hurt me come exam time when I need to prepare.

I don't even want to think about what else I've lost.

I might be wrong then. The only time I have ever seen that grey folder with the ? mark which indicated that it couldnt find the HD was when I was having those weird power issues.

However if its not booting from CD, and you can hear the drive clicking then it may just be a dead HD.

Bear this in mind though, I had a HD that clicked on an iBook that wouldn't boot either, and that turned out to be a logic board.

Interesting, so I should wait until I get another drive before freezing this one?

Need to wait until tomorrow when the stores open.

I was looking at going 160GB not too long ago but I never got round to getting it then, now I have no choice!

So what will it be?

Fujitsu 160GB 2.5"NB HD SATA. 5400rpm, 8M, SATA-5, 3ys, FDB
or
Samsung 160GB HM160JI 2.5" SATA 150 Native Command Queuing (NCQ) HDD - 5400...

It sounds like classic hard drive failure. I seriously doubt its anything else. Waiting probably wont hurt though but it probably wont make any difference

Either or. Quality wise there isnt a huge difference really.