Computer question

[Osama bin Bambi]

I figure at least some of you on here knew computers - at least better than I do - so here goes.

A few years ago I got a new laptop and gave my old MacBook (white, plastic, 13", probably 2007-2008 model) to my mom so that she could use it for business. However, earlier today she noticed that the top bar on the screen - which normally shows info like wi-fi connection, volume, battery charge, time, and user - was missing. She didn't know what was happening, so she decided to restart the computer. Except the computer was really slow in restarting, so I had to force it to shut down (holding down the power button) before starting it up again. Now it says that the disk needs to be reformatted and that the memory needs to be backed up.
If it matters at all, she also apparently dropped it yesterday, though she claims it wasn't a big fall and that it seemed to function fine immediately afterwards. It's been slow as fuck for a while, but it's only shown problems today.

She kind of expects me to know the answers to this because it was my old computer, but the truth is nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I have an external drive that I use for my own backups, but it's almost full. I've advised her to try to find another drive that we might have laying around (since I can help her back it up) and to call the Mac store so they can walk her through it. But I was just wondering if any of you had any ideas in the short-term to solve the problem.

[The Illusive Man]

Given the info you have presented this sounds like data corruption/loss due to hardware damage or it could be a number of things interupting Input/output. Apple store is the easiest way to fix this without voiding your warranty.

[RavynousHunter]

I think what TIM was trying to say in his 2nd point was that the physical jarring caused a hiccup in the software's I/O procedures.  Think of it like this: you're writing a file that takes up sectors 00 to 04.  However, the laptop is jarred, things get a tad scrambled for a second, and while the file had written the first two sectors (00 and 01), the jarring caused it to skip a sector, and afterwards, wrote to sectors 03 to 05.  Well, it doesn't know that it wrote to that last sector, 05, it assumed that the writing was successful, but it has in fact, corrupted not one, but two files in the process.

That, and a drop could cause the reading and/or writing heads in the physical HDD itself to skip, or perhaps even dig into the HDD platters themselves.  Having taken apart hard drives in the past, I can attest to how sensitive the platters are in non-solid state drives; they're basically aluminium discs coated in...brass or something, some sort of bronze coloured metal, and they function more or less like old-school record players.

Okay, done rambling, lol.

[Ultimate Paragon]

I think what TIM was trying to say in his 2nd point was that the physical jarring caused a hiccup in the software's I/O procedures.  Think of it like this: you're writing a file that takes up sectors 00 to 04.  However, the laptop is jarred, things get a tad scrambled for a second, and while the file had written the first two sectors (00 and 01), the jarring caused it to skip a sector, and afterwards, wrote to sectors 03 to 05.  Well, it doesn't know that it wrote to that last sector, 05, it assumed that the writing was successful, but it has in fact, corrupted not one, but two files in the process.

That, and a drop could cause the reading and/or writing heads in the physical HDD itself to skip, or perhaps even dig into the HDD platters themselves.  Having taken apart hard drives in the past, I can attest to how sensitive the platters are in non-solid state drives; they're basically aluminium discs coated in...brass or something, some sort of bronze coloured metal, and they function more or less like old-school record players.

Okay, done rambling, lol.

Well, to me, that sounds like so much technobabble.  Maybe I ought to learn a little more about computers.

[Cerim Treascair]

I think what TIM was trying to say in his 2nd point was that the physical jarring caused a hiccup in the software's I/O procedures.  Think of it like this: you're writing a file that takes up sectors 00 to 04.  However, the laptop is jarred, things get a tad scrambled for a second, and while the file had written the first two sectors (00 and 01), the jarring caused it to skip a sector, and afterwards, wrote to sectors 03 to 05.  Well, it doesn't know that it wrote to that last sector, 05, it assumed that the writing was successful, but it has in fact, corrupted not one, but two files in the process.

That, and a drop could cause the reading and/or writing heads in the physical HDD itself to skip, or perhaps even dig into the HDD platters themselves.  Having taken apart hard drives in the past, I can attest to how sensitive the platters are in non-solid state drives; they're basically aluminium discs coated in...brass or something, some sort of bronze coloured metal, and they function more or less like old-school record players.

Okay, done rambling, lol.

Okay, that makes a little more sense. Is it possible that this is due to her dropping the computer the day before?

Absolutely plausible.  It doesn't have to be a long drop to jar something badly enough to screw something up.

[RavynousHunter]

What Priest said.  It doesn't take much to jar the read/write heads on a hard drive, and just like jarring the needle on a record, it can occasionally dig into the platter, corrupting data, which can lead to loss of performance.  Now, usually, modern hard drives are built to resist such things, but non-solid state drives will never be immune to physical shock.  It sounds to me like she just plain old got unlucky with a drop.

[The Illusive Man]

Well, to me, that sounds like so much technobabble.  Maybe I ought to learn a little more about computers.

Look into CompTIA A+ as a start. It will give you the basics.