Hard Drive problems with iMac Intel

[thebishopsfinge]

I've had my iMac for a few years now and have not upgraded the software from the osX 10.4.7 that it came with.

Recently it has decided not to boot, it just stays on the grey screen with the apple logo and spinning symbol.

I booted frrom the install CDs and choose the option of saving past user data but it keeps getting to a point where it says error please try again.

I've tried setting the computer as a target drive and reading the drive through another mac. The hard drive is recognised but I cannot access it.

I have several gb worth of photos I don't want to lose and I also have some work stuff, nothing massive in terms of file sizes.

How can I recover these files? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[bmcgonag]

I've had my iMac for a few years now and have not upgraded the software from the osX 10.4.7 that it came with.

Recently it has decided not to boot, it just stays on the grey screen with the apple logo and spinning symbol.

I booted frrom the install CDs and choose the option of saving past user data but it keeps getting to a point where it says error please try again.

I've tried setting the computer as a target drive and reading the drive through another mac. The hard drive is recognised but I cannot access it.

I have several gb worth of photos I don't want to lose and I also have some work stuff, nothing massive in terms of file sizes.

How can I recover these files? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I would suggest getting Disk Warrior and giving it a try. I have had great success using the live CD version of this program on multiple macs. It will rebuild the drive structure, show you the old (problematic one) and the new one side by side so you can see the differences, then you can choose to rebuild if you want. I've only had it fail one time, and that was a completely bad HDD.

Hope it helps