Is my iMac G4's hard drive failing?

The drive's SMART status can be wrong. It can't catch all types of failures. Your drive is likely dead.

Have you tried reinstalling Mac OS X? You installation may just be bad.

Download "SMART Utility". See if that tells you that you have failed. It'll provide reasons, too. Post them.

Also download TechTool Pro 5/6. Run the SMART test. Post a screencap of the results.

I diagnosed and fixed scores of hard disks when I was working as an Apple tech..

Just so you know in the future, never turn off the computer after you get that message without backing up your data. When you see that the drive is failing, it is very likely the computer might boot again.

JCLrox said:

I wish I had read these replies sooner, haven't checked this thread since yesterday. I replaced the hard drive earlier today, so I guess it's too late to use SMART Utility to check the bad drive. I'm pretty sure that my installation of OS X isn't bad, because I reinstalled Tiger last week. I really appreciate all of you guys helping me, next time I'll be sure to check threads for new replies more often. Thanks again!

Click to expand...

If you still have the drive, all may not be lost. Drive failures come in many forms.

If you can install that drive as a secondary into some computer, some of your data may still be recoverable...

Pekka

Michael Anthony said:

Download "SMART Utility". See if that tells you that you have failed. It'll provide reasons, too. Post them.

Also download TechTool Pro 5/6. Run the SMART test. Post a screencap of the results.

I diagnosed and fixed scores of hard disks when I was working as an Apple tech..

Click to expand...

How do you download stuff when your computer isn't working?

seveej said:

If you still have the drive, all may not be lost. Drive failures come in many forms.

If you can install that drive as a secondary into some computer, some of your data may still be recoverable...

Pekka

Click to expand...

Totally true, when I worked at an Apple reseller as a tech I figured several levels of failure:

1: Drive is making clicking sounds and other weird sounds but working and booting (for the moment)
2: Fails to boot up, attaching it to another Mac says it is damaged and cannot be repaired (usually data recovery should work well.)
3: Attaching it to another Mac says the drive is unrecognised. Click "Ignore". Data recovery software will still be able to work on it.
4: No messages from OS X. Run data recovery software and it *may* detect it. May be only represented as a drive but without partitions.
5: Nothing can see the drive in any from. You're ********. Take it to someone with a clean room and pay $1,000 if you want your data. *Sometimes* replacing the external circuit board on the drive may help, if that has failed for some reason, but I've never seen that happen in my tech experience.

Best data recovery software:

Data Rescue III [commercial, GUI]

testdisk/photorec [free, quite simply CLI interface with instructions]

jj17 said:

How do you download stuff when your computer isn't working?

Click to expand...

Use another computer

Download and use SMARTreporter, it leaves a small icon in the menu bar and periodically (adjustable) reports on the disks SMART utility and changes colour etc if it finds an issue. Can spot problems early and before they manifest themselves.
http://www.corecode.at/smartreporter/

Agree with everything you said (wrote), except:

Jethryn Freyman said:

5: Nothing can see the drive in any from. You're ********. Take it to someone with a clean room and pay $1,000 if you want your data. *Sometimes* replacing the external circuit board on the drive may help, if that has failed for some reason, but I've never seen that happen in my tech experience.

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I disagree because I have.
Okay, it might be, that the circuit boards are better nowadays, because I have not done it recently, but I've "saved" dozens of drives this way between 1998 and 2003. In fact, I helped formulate IT policy for my employers back then, so that we always bought one spare HDD of every type the company used, just to be sure that we always had a spare circuit board to use. I left the statistics at that job (and as mentioned, the results may be outdated), but I remember that about half of all failed HDD's could be "resurrected" by using a spare circuit board.

Pekka

seveej said:

Agree with everything you said (wrote), except:


I disagree because I have.
Okay, it might be, that the circuit boards are better nowadays, because I have not done it recently, but I've "saved" dozens of drives this way between 1998 and 2003. In fact, I helped formulate IT policy for my employers back then, so that we always bought one spare HDD of every type the company used, just to be sure that we always had a spare circuit board to use. I left the statistics at that job (and as mentioned, the results may be outdated), but I remember that about half of all failed HDD's could be "resurrected" by using a spare circuit board.

Pekka

Click to expand...

Heh yeah you're totally right, if all else fails, try a different circuit board from an identical drive... though the one time I did that it didn't help as the drive head had totally crashed into the platters.

Good advice