Macbook pro 2009 dying? dead? taking a rest?

[Laurent]

Hi,

I have a Macbook pro unibody 2009 that gives me the grey screen of death.
I have done a number of checks to try and understand what's wrong, but more importantly, running it in recovery mode, it does not want to restore the Time Machine I have on an external hard-drive ("An error has occured while erasing your restore destination disk"), nor do an OS X reinstall ("an error occured while preparing the installation")...so I am at a loss...
please see pictures for more details on machine and where it stops when starting in single user mode...
I have fixed a "Disk0s2 I/O error" issue on it 2 years ago, which was the SATA cable on the HD which was dead and I had to change it...but given in recovery mode in disk utility I can currently actually "scan" all the content on my HD, I figured the cable must be fine...
Can anybody advise what to do?

Thanks
Laurent

 

[honestone]

It sounds like your hard dive is bad, and that you need to replace it. If you had a more robust Disk Repair program like Disk Warrior (the best) or TechTool Pro (excellent product), you could confirm that.

Yet, based on what you said above, you can scan the drive with Disk Utility in Recovery Mode. That could mean that Disk Warrior could repair the drive.

In any event, if you want to keep and use the machine for at least a few more years, you should consider installing an SSD inside it, replacing your "dead" hard drive. SSD prices have been dropping. Here's how to do it:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook Pro 13-Inch Unibody Mid 2009 Hard Drive Replacement/1337

Sounds like you've been inside your machine before, so most likely it will be a piece of cake for you.

You might even be able to "save" your old drive and put it inside an external case.,

 

[Laurent]

Homestone, do you know whether I ll be able to restore my time machine on the new HD (wanted to replace the mac drive by a SSD anyway, now I can put 2!! )

 

[honestone]

Homestone, do you know whether I ll be able to restore my time machine on the new HD (wanted to replace the mac drive by a SSD anyway, now I can put 2!! )

One would hope so! I don't use Time Machine, but use SuperDuper! instead. It is "device independent", in terms of a restore. Just make sure to erase, format, and if necessary partition the new SSD/HD first.