I just took apart my $2200 24" iMac.......(HELP!)

[DentMe]

Ok, I tried to make this post as clear as possible with all the formatting. Please bear with me

I was transferring a large file from an external hard drive onto my 24" 3.06GHz Dual Core iMac...then the iMac freezes and really WEIRD noises came from the iMac's internal hard drive.

It's a loud, low-bass, thump...followed by 3 "echos"...repeating over and over..It almost sounded like a DJ was playing inside. I have never heard a hard drive make such a sound. It's not the usual "clicks"
Can anyone shed some light into this abnormal sound?

And now...

• My iMac won't boot. It will freeze at the Apple logo, then turn into a flashing folder, then a cancel sign
  
• It won't boot from CD as well!
  
• And going into single user mode gives me kernel errors
  
• I have already reset the PRAM and it didn't help much.

SO...I decided to take the hard drive out and either replace it or reformat it (it was a scary process disassembling it, plus I was on thick carpet...)

1) I have a working PowerMac G5 tower. Can I simply take that hard drive out and put it in the iMac? (the iMac is OS-X 10.5.5 while the PowerMac is 10.5.1) This would be my most ideal method

2) I have a PC and I plug the defective iMac hard drive into it. What if I were to completely reformat the hard drive in NTFS? Or does it have to be FAT32 because it's for a Mac?

​

NOTE:
The iMac hard drive wasn't completely dead after the weird noises described above. I was still able to boot into my bootcamp Win XP on the iMac. I went into disc management and deleted the Mac OS X partition...this caused me to not be able to boot into Win XP upon restart. It just gives me a BSOD...


I am desperate and any help will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks

 

[McGiord]

check here...
http://www.macfixit.com/

I believe the other Mac HDD will not run on your iMac, because each Mac comes with its own OSX disc...others please correct me if I'm wrong...

Get a HDD case and plug it to your other Mac, and check if it still make those noises, or the noises come from another component in your iMac.

Buy a new HDD, they are not that expensive, time for good upgrade:
www.macsales.com

Can you boot it with your OSX disc?

Warranty? Genius Bar?

 

[danny_w]

check here...
http://www.macfixit.com/

I believe the other Mac HDD will not run on your iMac, because each Mac comes with its own OSX disc...others please correct me if I'm wrong...

Get a HDD case and plug it to your other Mac, and check if it still make those noises, or the noises come from another component in your iMac.

Buy a new HDD, they are not that expensive, time for good upgrade:
www.macsales.com

Can you boot it with your OSX disc?

Warranty? Genius Bar?

Probably not after taking it apart.

 

[DentMe]

check here...
http://www.macfixit.com/

Go to their forum?

Get a HDD case and plug it to your other Mac, and check if it still make those noises, or the noises come from another component in your iMac.

It worked fine in my PC. Fine as in it didn't make noises and I was able to delete all partitions.
Should I format it? NTFS? Fat32?

Can you boot it with your OSX disc?

I can't boot from disc on the iMac...

 

[McGiord]

Go to their forum?


It worked fine in my PC. Fine as in it didn't make noises and I was able to delete all partitions.
Should I format it? NTFS? Fat32?




I can't boot from disc on the iMac...

NTFS is not writable in Mac OS X, unless you use some applications.
And Fat32 is limited to 4Gb file size.

What is your plan for the HDD? What are you going to do with it, back in the iMac or other use?
For Windoze use NTFS probably is better...

 

[DentMe]

What is your plan for the HDD? What are you going to do with it, back in the iMac or other use?

Yeap. Back in the iMac. I really want to fix it

I feel the HDD may be corrupt and a clean format might save it

 

[jzuena]

check here...
http://www.macfixit.com/

I believe the other Mac HDD will not run on your iMac, because each Mac comes with its own OSX disc...others please correct me if I'm wrong...

I don't think any G5s ever shipped with Leopard, so it must be running from a full install made at a later time anyway. The bigger problem is that Intel Macs expect the hard drive's partition map to be GUID with the main partition formatted using Mac OS Extended (HFS+) and the PPC machine would have its partition map set to APM (Apple Partition Map) with the main partition formatted either HFS or HFS+. It might work, though.

Get a HDD case and plug it to your other Mac, and check if it still make those noises, or the noises come from another component in your iMac.

Buy a new HDD, they are not that expensive, time for good upgrade:
www.macsales.com

Can you boot it with your OSX disc?

Warranty? Genius Bar?

Go to their forum?

It worked fine in my PC. Fine as in it didn't make noises and I was able to delete all partitions.
Should I format it? NTFS? Fat32?

I can't boot from disc on the iMac...

I doubt either NTFS or FAT will be readable by the Mac. If you have the Leopard install disk, you could put the disk in your G5 and reformat it there. You will probably have to set the partition map as APM, but can then at least choose HFS+ when formatting the partition.

 

[jzuena]

Another thought to verify if the G5 disk will work would be to put the G5 in target disk mode and try to boot the iMac from it. You need a firewire cable to connect the two machines in that case. If that works you would know that moving the drive into your iMac is more likely to work.

 

[gillboyswims96]

It's a loud, low-bass, thump...followed by 3 "echos"...repeating over and over..It almost sounded like a DJ was playing inside. I have never heard a hard drive make such a sound. It's not the usual "clicks"
Can anyone shed some light into this abnormal sound?

my friends old imac (i think it was a blue one...) quacked... QUACK!

umm... i would say take it to a apple store. or call apple support. they actually help i have learned.