Unmountable Boot Volume Error

[Mac]

So my thinkpad got the, (what I've researched) equivalent to the 360 red rings of death, "unmountable boot volume" last night. The laptop is 4-5yrs old so warranty is out of the question. I was surfing the web, and allege sudden it just froze. So I had to do a hard shutdown and then power back up, and that's when I got the error.

I tried to run it in safe mode/last good known configuration/etc and I get the same error. So I decided to try and run "rescue and recovery", some how all of my backup points are gone. So I thought I'll try a clean install, well it took about 20 min to get to the recovery screen (where I can begin a clean install) and it started the process but about 30 seconds in, I got an "internal error, cannot proceed" or something like that.

So what's the next step? New laptop?

 

[Mike80]

sounds like you might have a fried hard drive, Unless you want a new laptop, you can get a new hard drive much more cheaply.

 

[Mac]

That's what I thought mike. It's kind of beat up and falling apart, so I'm really not sure how much longer it will "stay together"

 

[Dryden]

I'd say bad hard drive. At this point, I would recommend downloading a Linux spin, such as Fedora Live Media, which you can boot off a CD. You can use this to see if the computer boots and run an OS, which then likely rules out CPU, mem, or video failure, and from that Linux OS then run hard drive diagnostic utilities and possibly have a shot of copying any files off the drive over to a USB stick, if the drive functions at all. Most Linux spins will have a copy of MemTest on them, so you can test the RAM while you're at it.

http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora

 

[Mac]

My buddy works in IT here where I work, so he's gonna run some tests. It's not a big deal if I can't recover anything off the HD because I have it backed on a thumb drive