Intel iMac harddrive suddenly not recognised

[Peranakan]

hi guys,

My iMac (24" model, OSX 10.5) has been working fine for over a year until now. I woke it up from sleep and the colorwheel kept cycling over a frozen screensaver image. I restarted the computer, only to find out it no longer recognised it's internal hard drive (folder with flashing question mark appeared).

So I booted from the install disc.
In the Disk Utility my hd is no longer visible! It just says 'Media' in the icon list and has a capacity of 0 bytes, 'Not Supported' SMART Status and an 'Unformatted' Partition Map Scheme.

In the Startup Disk Utility I can only choose the install disc and the local network and the System Profiler gets an error scanning for the serial ATA.

What happened???

I do have a Time Machine backup, but I prefer getting my hd up and running, because I haven't backed up in 10 days (meaning lots of work could get lost).

I hope you can give me some tips.

Thanx in advance.

[DeltaMac]

Sounds like your hard drive has failed, or is very close to failure.
You can try Disk Warrior, which is the best tool to get your hard drive going again, if possible.
If you are using Time Machine - the normal interval for backups is every few minutes. How would it happen that you haven't allowed Time Machine to back up for 10 days? Just forget to leave your backup hard drive attached?

[Peranakan]

hi DeltaMac,

I tried DW, but it didn't recognise the hd either (unless I'm doing something wrong).
I also tried getting my iMac in FireWire target mode, but it didn't mount.

About Time Machine: I don't keep it attached, because I'm out of ports with all my peripherals. Stupid me.

[DeltaMac]

Ports are easy - that's a good purpose for external hubs.

Your present hard drive needs to be replaced. You have your back up (such as it is). And, you will have your old hard drive that may have recoverable files. You can try installing that in an external case, and attempt file recovery on your own. Here's some recovery software - there's a free download so you can try it out: http://www.macintosh-data-recovery.com/

[djackmac]

Sometimes I have better luck mounting bad drives when they are removed from the machine. But it doesn't look like you'll have much luck with that one.