Changed the name of my hard drive, now won't boot

[TCherie]

Hello. This is my first post but I've been reading here for a while. I'd appreciate any help.

Like an idiot, I changed the name of my hard drive. I noticed it was called 'MyData' and thought that was vague, so I changed it to 'HardDrive'. When things started getting weird, I changed it back to 'MyData'. I used it as normal for a few days, and then it froze while I was using Safari - I was unable to do a force quit. When I tried to restart it, I got the blinking folder with a question mark. I followed advice across this forum and was able to restart it twice with the PRAM reset, and used it for another week (without ever shutting down). But then a week later it stopped responding.

I then followed advice from this forum and tried to run first-aid using the original install disks. It did not show my hard drive at all. I ran repairs and it said no repairs needed. I then inserted an old copy of DiskWarrior, which it didn't recognise, and it's now stuck in there.

Is the renaming of the drive just a red herring and my drive has coincidentally failed at the same time? Or is it not showing up because idiot me renamed it and now thinks it's gone? It's an iMac intel that I bought second hand from my boss, who knows nothing either.

Please don't flame me, I know I did a stupid thing. I'm a beginner and I need help, please. Thank you for any advice.

 

[pdjudd]

Is the renaming of the drive just a red herring and my drive has coincidentally failed at the same time?

Yes, I think that is defiantly the case. Reaming a drive doesn’t cause a drive to stop booting. This sounds like hardware failure.

 

[Gregg2]

Yes, I think that is defiantly the case.

Or perhaps definitely the case, although the Mac can be said to be defiant in this case. Obviously, changing the name causes problems, but you've encountered multiple problems, some related to that, and others not.

 

[TCherie]

Or perhaps definitely the case, although the Mac can be said to be defiant in this case. Obviously, changing the name causes problems, but you've encountered multiple problems, some related to that, and others not.

Thank you, pdjudd and Gregg2. That's what I was afraid of. (Hmm, there doesn't appear to be a crying emoticon).

Definitely defiant. Although I most certainly did not ream my hard drive. Not yet, anyway.

 

[snberk103]

... Although I most certainly did not ream my hard drive. Not yet, anyway.

If you do... I don't think I want to know....

Good Luck with the drive. Best bet at this point is to get an external, or a better borrow an external caddy that you can slip a new internal HDD into. If you can get your HDD to spin once more you may be able to just swap the new for the old. Do a little research and make sure you get a compatible HDD - but it should be as easy as placing the new HDD into computer after being cloned to. Of course the hard part will be getting the old HDD to spin up that last time.

Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper seem to be the two preferred cloning apps.

Good Luck.

 

[TCherie]

If you do... I don't think I want to know....

Good Luck with the drive. Best bet at this point is to get an external, or a better borrow an external caddy that you can slip a new internal HDD into. If you can get your HDD to spin once more you may be able to just swap the new for the old. Do a little research and make sure you get a compatible HDD - but it should be as easy as placing the new HDD into computer after being cloned to. Of course the hard part will be getting the old HDD to spin up that last time.

Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper seem to be the two preferred cloning apps.

Good Luck.

Thanks snberk103. I've ordered an external, here's hoping it's actually Mac formatted as the description claims. No chance of the drive spinning one more time. I think I used up that opportunity the two times I reset the PRAM and it survived temporarily. I'll be sure to use CCC or something when I have the new drive.

Thanks to everyone who replied. I will probably be back asking further stupid questions once the drive gets here.

 

[donnakhan]

hard drives

for some unknown reason my mac changed its hard drive without me. I turned the iMac on and there was my daughters name under the hard drive icon don't know how to fix it, should I just leave it? very strange tho!!!!

 

[Batt]

for some unknown reason my mac changed its hard drive without me. I turned the iMac on and there was my daughters name under the hard drive icon don't know how to fix it, should I just leave it? very strange tho!!!!

Tell your daughter to change it back.