System won't boot.

[kduv]

OK, I have a MacBook. It froze about 5 days ago so I forced a reboot. When it started to come back up I got the dreaded flashing question mark folder. What does this mean? It means that it can't find a usable startup device. OK, sucks, but I'll do what I can for it.

I throw in my install DVD and go straight to DiskUtility. What do I see in the left pane for drives? Only the CD/DVD drive. Seems its not recognizing my hard drive. OK, so I reset the SMC/PMU, same problem, so I reset the NVRAM. Same problem.

I've booted into the install CD and looked around in the terminal .. it doesn't look like its seeing the HD there. I checked in /dev/ and I saw the following disks listed:

disk0
disk0s1
disk0s2
disk0s3
disk1
disk2
disk3
rdisk0
rdisk0s1
rdisk0s2
rdisk0s3
rdisk1
rdisk2
rdisk3

I tried fsck, but it only checks the CD/DVD drive because my HD isn't mounted.

I can only boot into single user mode if the install disk is in. I'm not very experienced with linux, so I don't know if any of the listed drives in /dev/ mean anything, but its all I got.

I don't think there's a hardware problem .. its a fairly new laptop.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've been researching and trying stuff for 5 days now and I don't know what else to try.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Keith

[hayne]

If your MacBook is still under warranty, take it in for repairs.

[kduv]

It just recently expired on its warranty. :(

[DeltaMac]

Sounds like your hard drive has failed. You can replace your failed hard drive in your MacBook in about 5 minutes. Restore your software from your restore DVDs, and you are back in business. A good disk repair utility, such as Disk Warrior, would be worth a try if you want to try retrieving any files from the old drive.