iMac Crashed While Performing Snow Leopard Install

[EvMan]

Hey everybody,

I've been a frequent visitor to the MacRumors Buyer's Guide... but this is my first time visiting the Forums section. Apologies in advance for a long, detailed post...

So, I've got a problem. I don't know the solution, but I think I know the cause. I decided to purchase and install Snow Leopard on my 2007 21" iMac. An error occurred during the install, and now my computer won't boot up. Each time I try, it attempts to boot up, but powers off after a few minutes. When I boot from the Install Disc and run the DiskUtility it tells me that my drive cannot be repaired and that I should immediately back up my files.

Here's what I believe is the cause (and feel free to let me know if you agree or disagree): I very foolishly began the new OS install without enough hard disk space on my iMac. I imagine that that's what prevented the OS from completely installing, and I suppose that's what is preventing me from successfully booting up.

Additionally, I attempted to boot my iMac as a firewire drive with a newer MacPro I have... but it would not boot, telling me that my iMac didn't have OS X installed.

So, I guess I have two questions:

1) Are you familiar with this problem? And can you think of any easy solutions that don't involve cracking my computer open or going to a data recovery specialist.

2) If there are no easy solutions, what are my best options for data recovery? Sending it to a specialist? Taking the hard drive out of the iMac and recovering the data myself?

Any thoughts you might have would be much appreciated. Thanks ahead of time!

 

[JediMeister]

The installer checks whether you have sufficient hard drive space before installing. If you didn't have enough space, you would not have been able to select the drive to begin installation. It sounds like the partition table was either bad before installation or the installation threw it out of whack.

If you weren't concerned about recovering your data you could try to repartition the drive and if you could then you could go about your way installing 10.6 cleanly. Since you have already expressed data recovery as the preferred course of action, you can try running Disk Warrior ($50) or Data Rescue 3 ($100) on the drive, and of course there are the professional services who bill per gigabyte of the drive.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Additionally, I attempted to boot my iMac as a firewire drive with a newer MacPro I have... but it would not boot, telling me that my iMac didn't have OS X installed."

Are you trying to say that you attempted to start up the iMac in "firewire target disk mode" and failed? Did you do it correctly?

Try this as an experiment:
1. Disconnect the iMac from the other computer
2. Unplug the iMac and let it sit 5 minutes, then plug it back into the wall.
3. Press the power-on button and hold down the "t" key and KEEP HOLDING IT DOWN
Do you get the "firewire icon"... or something else?

"If there are no easy solutions, what are my best options for data recovery? Sending it to a specialist? Taking the hard drive out of the iMac and recovering the data myself?"

It's not an easy job to get the drive out of an iMac.

"And can you think of any easy solutions that don't involve cracking my computer open or going to a data recovery specialist."

Yep.
1. Boot from your backup drive (with a cloned copy of your internal made with CarbonCopyCloner), then..
2. Wipe the iMac drive and restore from your backup.
(Just a "lesson for the future". And where's your cloned backup for the MacPro?)