My hard drive either crashed or failed. Is there any way I can restore it or is a trip to the Apple Store for new hardware in my near future?

 

When I try to restore the backup I did yesterday, my only option is to put it on a different external drive. I recently upgraded to El Capitan, but the desktop you see in the pic is Yosemite.

The drive is probably trash. They might be able to get something off of it at the apple store, but if you cannot restore to it, Time Machine is not able to write to the disk for restoration. Probably can't read from it, either.

 

Apple drives, at least the one I pulled out of my macbook, was made by Hitachi. Hitachi is not a favorite brand of mine. However, the macbook has the same hard drive interface as any laptop PC of the same era.

 

I ordered a Toshiba drive from Amazon and replaced it myself. Saved some bucks. I understand you not wanting to do that. You won't catch me changing the alternator on my Buick. However, you may save some money taking it to smaller computer repair place over the Apple store.

In my experience, the Apple store will replace but not recover materials. They will diagnose it though, and let you know what is wrong.

 

If the drive still spins, there may be a chance to recover things. Swamprat is correct with regards to taking to a place to have it done other than the Apple store.

The drive is probably trash. They might be able to get something off of it at the apple store, but if you cannot restore to it, Time Machine is not able to write to the disk for restoration. Probably can't read from it, either.

 

Apple drives, at least the one I pulled out of my macbook, was made by Hitachi. Hitachi is not a favorite brand of mine. However, the macbook has the same hard drive interface as any laptop PC of the same era.

 

I ordered a Toshiba drive from Amazon and replaced it myself. Saved some bucks. I understand you not wanting to do that. You won't catch me changing the alternator on my Buick. However, you may save some money taking it to smaller computer repair place over the Apple store.

 

I'm not worried about recovering anything from it. I did an external backup on Friday and didn't really add anything new since then.

 

It's a work machine, so I don't know what their policy is. I may have to take it to our corporate office in Shelbyville to have them do it. I'd be fine with taking it across the street to our local guys and will suggest that to the boss. Once I have a HDD again, I can just restore it off the external.

On another note: what do Mac users think about El Capitan? I find it a lot smoother than Yosemite.