Can anyone help me pick out a new laptop hard drive?

So yesterday morning I'm pretty sure my hard drive on my MacBook Pro took a dump on me. I opened it up to do some homework and everything was just pinwheeling. I figured it just needed to be restarted but when I turned the computer back on all I got was a gray screen with a flashing folder icon with a question mark in it.

I googled the issue and did a recovery boot, and followed the steps I found on the apple support website to check and repair any issues with the OS-X startup disk. No issues were found but the computer would still not boot up like normal.

The next step I found was to try reinstalling the OS. When I did this the installer asked me where I wanted to install the OS and normally there's just the "Macintosh-hd" icon you can select. Buuuuut I had no such icon. It's like the laptop doesn't even recognize a hard drive is even there.

Is it most likely my hard drive is shot? And if so can anybody recommend a good replacement option? Currently there's whatever 500GB hard drive that comes with the laptop, but I am considering switching to a solid state drive. Would this be a worthwhile investment? I spend lots of time on my computer running fairly large programs since I'm an engineering student.

If it helps it is a 13" MBP non-retina that I bought in the summer of 2013. Currently running 8GB of ram and a 500GB hard drive.

 

I would go with SSD hands down. Makes even the slowest computer faster even if it is a mac.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...earch=1&cm_sp=CAT-SSD_10-_-VisNav-_-UpTo512GB

 

SSD is absolutely worth it. You know exactly when the drive will fail versus the uncertainty with a standard HDD. I would go with something good from Samsung or Corsair. I run two of there older SSD's in my tower and I've had no issues in 4 years. Just read lots of reviews and buy from NewEgg so you can return the thing if it craps out right away, because if an SSD is going to fail it usually does right away.

 

Okay so it sounds like SSD is a definite yes. Is there anything else I need besides the hard drive to get every back up and running? And is it fairly straightforward to replace? My computer is sorta my lifeline so having it fixed ASAP would be great.

 

Check out youtube, tons of videos on how to do this. I'd look into buying a kit to move your files and OS over from your old drive if you are not very tech savy. Most SSD manufactures have a kit version of there drives with everything you need to get the job done for only $20-30 more than the bare drive itself.

Or have a good independent computer shop install a SSD and transfer the files, but it's really not hard and I see most places charging at least $80/hour to do this really easy task.

 

Yeah I was planning on doing it myself. I really haven't messed with computers much but I'm really hands in and mechanically intelligent so I'm not too worked about ding the work on my own. Plus I'm broke as shit and can't afford to spend more than I need to.

 

Just remember to pick up an anti static wrist strap and use it. Don't do this work on carpet. The last thing you want is to build up some static and accidentally shock something that doesn't like to be shocked.

 

or you can just rub your hands on the case to de energize yourself.

 

Here's a good example of a kit, but do shop around and do some research. I haven't exactly kept up on what drives are top of the market bang for buck right now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA12K2ZD7062

 

I've seen that not work. The only way to do this safely and not use a wrist strap would be to keep in constant contact with the frame or powersupply of the laptop. That's a pain in the ass. A strap is cheap and reusable. A static mat would be even better but he's only working on the HDD so it's massive overkill.

 

I have never had a issue.

 

The new generation SSD's are a great choice! They still aren't nearly as durable as the older disk technologies but they're getting better every year. Personally I'd recommend leaning towards Samsung drives. I have them in two laptops and both are continuing to run without issue.

 

So next logical question. How big should I go? As big as I can afford?

 

i would go either 256gb or 512gb.

 

As big as you need, like any other drive. If you aren't going to keep much music or video on your machine you could go with a smaller drive with a faster read/write rate. The faster the read and write rates the faster your computer will feel. If you need larger storage than go for a moderate performance model with more size.

That Samsung I linked to seems like a pretty good compromise between speed and size. It's far faster than a HDD yet provides 500 GB of storage.

Do some reading. You don't want to be that guy who shorted out a CPU because he thought he didn't need any static protection.

 

Yeah just from my brief browsing on Newegg that one you linked seems to be one of top rated SSD's on there. I don't have any music really, but quite a few movies, and the majority of what I'll be doing for the next 2 or so years will all be CAD files and Solidworks files which can get fairly large. I guess I would rather have a little extra space than run out of it.

 

You will see awesome performance with CAD on an SSD because the access rates as so much faster. The only bad thing is that you could burn up the drives lifspan a little faster because some of those sort of programs do have very high rewrite demands. I'd still go with an SSD though and just be prepared to buy a new one in 3-4 years.

 

Well considering this one only lasted me two years with very minimal CAD usage(I just really started in the past few months) 3-4 years is fine by me. I just watched a youtube video on switching to a SSD and it looks plenty doable haha


Although if my hard drive is in fact a goner, do I really have any options as far as recovering all/some of my stuff from it? I think I may have backed everything up to my GF's external hard drive a while back, but other than that I haven't done anything..

 

You can try to recover the data. Sometimes the drive may just be very slow because of whatever issue is effecting it and that can cause OS hangups that appear to be total failures. If the transfer doesn't work you can still install a new drive, you just have to re install OS X which can be a PITA.

 

Yeah when i tried reinstalling the OS this morning it wasn't even recognizing the hard drive at all so who knows.