hard drive crash?

M

macscall

Registered
I probably know the answer to this but hope I don't. In the less than capable hands of a PC repair shop, the techs were trying to transfer my music library on Itunes to a hard disk to make DVD's to transfer to my daughters new pc. They called and said they couldn't get the Imac to boot. Only the file folder with a question mark on the screen. I'm guessing the Imac can't find the hard drive. Is all hope lost? Over 4000 songs lost? It is a 7 year old Imac 335 MHZ slot drive. Is it worth the money to get the hard drive looked at? Can anything be retreived? Is there anything they could have done to cause this, or was it just a coincidence that it chose that time to die? I'm not a big techy so any suggestions would help me. thanks
 
Well the hard drive probably has failed in the iMac, but it may not be completely dead. In the hands of an experienced Mac tech, it might be recoverable.

Note that those old consumer-grade iMacs didn't have the highest quality hard drives in them because they were consumer-grade machines with a low price point.
 
Your tech may have trashed files needed for the system to boot.

You didn't mention what operating system is on the machine, I'm assuming OS 9 or earlier.

I would get the machine back and boot off your OS disc by holding the C key down.

You should be able to see if the music is still there.
 
I am running OS 10.2. I tried reinstalling the OS but when it gets to identifying the destination (my hard drive) it freezes and shuts down. I just don't know what they did, and they won't say anything.
 
If you have another Mac, you could boot it into FireWire disk mode by holding down the T key while you power it on. Then connect a firewire cable between the two Macs.

If the hard drive icon shows up on the extra Mac's desktop, try copying off all of the files to the extra Mac. If the drive doesn't show up on the desktop try using Disk Utility on the extra Mac to repair the drive in the "broken" Mac.
 
Thanks, I do have another imac exactly like it just a little older. Same OS 10.2. I'll try that and see what happens.
 
Yes, those suggestion should work. I had an similar experience, I found my G3 Imac would not boot, although I was able to use it in target mode, and was able to recover the files from it, before replacing it.
 
I tried the procedure above and the hard drive icon for the "Bad" mac shows up on the "good" mac. Clicking on it shows it was empty. No applications, nothing. Does that mean it is a goner?
 
If it shows empty, then it was probably erased or formatted. If you don't reca.l erasing or formatting it, open Disk Utility on the secondary Mac and have it "repair" the bad Mac's HD. If everything checks out okay, you might want to try a stronger repair tool like DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro
 
If the hard drive were kaput I would expect the disk utility to simply not recognise the device, hanging the system suggests that the Mac is struggling to read from the hard drive.

I would think (please bear in mind these problems are difficult to diagnose over the net!) that the drive is either suffering from bad sectors or has been installed in the system incorrectly (if it were ever taken out). In most iMacs of that generation the HDD used was a cheap and cheerful Maxtor, they are very prone to developing problems!

If Disk Utility can't help you try Disk Warrior or Prosofts Data Rescue X whilst the mac is in firewire target mode, at very least they may be able to confirm whether the problem is hardware or software related!
 
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