iMac turns on, gets stuck at apple logo screen

J

johnay3

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Came home from work the other day and my iMac (20" iMac from '07 / Snow Leopard) was frozen, did a hard restart and it booted up fine without much of a problem. Everything was running very sluggish so I began to verify the disc through utilities at which point it froze again, now whenever I restart I get stuck at a white screen with apple logo and something spinning underneath it. The longest I've let it sit at that screen is about an hour or so, it gets extremely hot though so I'm hesitant to leave it any longer. I've tried a few suggestions already, safe mode with no luck, disc target onto my macbook with no luck and I've tried "/sbin/fsck/ -fy" at the command prompt which returns something along the lines of Harddrive can not be repaired.

Would really appreciate any help, any other information you might need just let me know. The most important thing to me right now is being able to access some of the files on there if it is not a total loss. I've back up about 2 months ago, so it wont be a total loss, but like I said, would prefer to salvage anything I can. Thanks!
 
I think you have a failing hard drive, so if you want to attempt to back up more files - then Firewire target boot mode is a good thing to try.
You may find that you have better results if you let the failing hard drive cool off for several hours, then try again. As the hard drive heats up, you may find the copy process slows down dramatically. If you see that, then shut it down again. Could take a couple of days before you get all that is reasonable to retrieve.
Or, you can get that hard drive replaced, and put the bad hard drive in an external case, where it may be easier to keep cool, and make your backup attempts directly to the new drive.
 
Thanks for the quick reply. I've actually tried Firewire with no luck. I may be doing it incorrectly.

I have an 800/400 cable and connected iMac to my MacBook. Powered on iMac while holding "t", the Firewire icon appears on the iMac and bounces around, but the drive does not appear on my MacBook desktop, is that even possible I'm not sure if it has to be on another iMac or something similar.

I'll wait over night and try again in the morning. But if I'm doing something incorrectly or if you have any other suggestions please let me know, thanks again.
 
If you have a FireWire cable connecting the two Macs, and boot one to FireWire target boot mode - and the firewire icon shows on the screen of the iMac with the bad hard drive - then that bad hard drive _should_ mount on the other Mac (the MacBook). Check in your Disk Utility to see if it shows as a drive there. Or, check in your System Profiler, then the Firewire tab. Does that drive show up in that tab? If it says 'unknown device' or something similar, and doesn't show in Disk Utility at all...
Try shutting BOTH macs down. Start the iMac first (again in Firewire target boot mode) waiting for the floating icon to appear. THEN, boot your MacBook. Does it show up at all? A poorly working hard drive may show up after a delay, so give it 10 minutes or so.
If it never shows up at all, I think you can call that hard drive done, and it's ready to be replaced. You can try the external case later...
 
Your Disk Utility image shows that drive, but the volume is greyed out, which means that it is not mounted. You could try clicking on the partition (the Macintosh HD), and then click the Mount icon in that Disk Utility menu. maybe it will mount for you.
Hard restart of your iMac? You're just in target mode, and the disk is not mounted. All you need to do is press your power button on the back, and your iMac should shut off with almost no delay. You don't get the opportunity to protect the hard drive when in that mode, and that's part of how target boot mode works. It's working as an external hard drive, and not much more than that.
 
No luck with the mount. I got a message saying "This disk needs to be repaired. Click repair disk."

I clicked and it said "Volume repair complete." and "Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required."

The blue status bar is chugging away... I will let it sit for a while and get back to you with any results.
 
Is it at all possible that the disk won't mount because the iMac has a password protected login? Just curious because target disc mode would seem like an all too easy way to bypass the login.
 
johnay3 said:
Is it at all possible that the disk won't mount because the iMac has a password protected login? Just curious because target disc mode would seem like an all too easy way to bypass the login.
Click to expand...

It has nothing to do with password protection. Most of the drive failures in iMacs like yours seem to be heat related. Your best bet is going to be removing the drive and putting it in an external enclosure and putting a fan on it to keep it cool. Then connect it to a working machine through firewire or usb depending on the type of enclosure the drive is installed in. Beyond that having both Disk Warrior and a good recovery software with a strong cloning option such as Data Rescue 3 or R-Studio for Mac is going to be necessary. Also you will need another drive that's at least 320GB to create an image on (assuming that's the size of your drive). If you don't have the resources above and still hope to get your data back, then quit messing with it, because essentially its deteriorating more and more as you toy with it, and let an experienced Mac tech with experience using the resources listed above have a crack at it.
 
I definitely do not have those resources, can you recommend a tech service, or a way for me to find a reputable one? Some things I have seen online are ontrackdatarecovery.com and drivesaversdatarecovery.com but I'm not sure if that is the right route or not. Thanks again for the quick and helpful responses!
 
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