iMac hard drive can't be accessed, any ideas?

[dukemeiser]

I have an iMac 400 DV running Panther. 10 GB hd. It's making a funny sound, a clinking. Like the sound of dropping a metal ball -> ping, ping...

I had been getting a ? in a folder on startup. I did FireWire Target disk mode and was able to get it booting fine again. Now I can't get it to do anything. Booting from a CD will work, but the hd isn't shown. FWTDM won't work now either. Any ideas on how to get my data off?

I tried DriveSavers, but $1000 is out of my range...

[mklos]

I have an iMac 400 DV running Panther. 10 GB hd. It's making a funny sound, a clinking. Like the sound of dropping a metal ball -> ping, ping...

I had been getting a ? in a folder on startup. I did FireWire Target disk mode and was able to get it booting fine again. Now I can't get it to do anything. Booting from a CD will work, but the hd isn't shown. FWTDM won't work now either. Any ideas on how to get my data off?

I tried DriveSavers, but $1000 is out of my range...

Well if it doesn't show up anywhere then your probably screwed! A clunking, pinging sound is not a good sound so as you probably already know your hard drive has crapped out on you. Maybe, just maybe DiskWarrior might, I say might get your data back, but its unlikely since your hard drive doesn't show up. So if you don't have your stuff backed up then your probably SOL!

Sorry!

[Dont Hurt Me]

Your hard drive is dieing, my wife has a Imac 500 that i just replaced the drive and it was doing the clunk clunk routine. it did it for awhile so do yourself a favor and back up any important data and plan on a new drive. I replaced the drive and presto problem is gone. this is what you need to do. new drives arent so much $50- $60 bucks. They must have used cheap drives in those Imacs because my quicksilvers IBM drive is still going strong and gets used way more.

[dukemeiser]

I know I need to replace the drive. What I need is to get my data off of it. Is it worth opening the drive to fix it?

[Dont Hurt Me]

I know I need to replace the drive. What I need is to get my data off of it. Is it worth opening the drive to fix it?depends on your data< data recovery is about a thousand bucks so only you can answer that. have you tried to archive and reinstall?

[dukemeiser]

I can't access the drive. Putting in a Panther Install disk won't work, it won't recognize my drive. DiskWarrior won't recognize it either. It's not a software issue, it is a hardware issue.

[Duff-Man]

Duff-Man says....Unless you are qualified/experienced in taking apart hard drives and trying to recover data from them you are looking at using a 3rd party like Drivesavers (http://www.drivesavers.com/) to do it for you and that can be expensive...hard drives generally do not have "user-servicable" parts. If you don't know exactly what you are doing and the data is very important to you then don't fool around with it - you may just make it more difficult (and expensive) for the pro's to do it for you....oh yeah!

[OutThere]

I think it's over mate...I had a hard drive do that once on me, sent it in for warranty and lost all my data. 50 gigs of stuff. Sorry. :(

[dukemeiser]

That's what I was afraid of.