I received a phone call from a friend who uses a Macbook and they asked me if it is bad when you turn the Mac on if nothing appears on the screen except a folder showing a question mark. After a few minutes of research and a few probing questions I found that the hard drive was making the dreaded clicking noise. It was apparent that the hard drive in the Macbook had died!

 In this particular model Macbook the hard drive was accessible by removing the battery then unscrewing a metal bracket and simply pulling the drive out. Once I had the drive out I attached it to my laptop using a SATA to USB adaptor and booted with Knoppix to see if the drive was accessible at all. The drive was not recognised at first so I tried a full SATA connection in my main computer. I could now see the drive in Vista under Storage Manager but it would not mount at all and it just clicked loudly. Usually this means that the heads are stuck or damaged and at worse they have started to scratch the platter.