iMac drive with lion giving me 'the folder'

[Drag'nGT]

Update:
Diskwarrior helped me to get access to about 171gb worth of data that I didn't back up. So I'm very happy about that.

I did a secure wipe of the drive and reinstalled Lion and did the updates. Everything has been working fine today up until I installed iLife 09 and Aperture 3. I installed both at the same time. Did the updates and restarted the machine... everything good. Then I opened Aperture and began to use it. The computer hung up... couldn't quit or respond after being in the app a few minutes. I had to force quit Aperture....... 5 min later it quit. Then Safari (1 page open) hung immediately and I had to force quit it as well... same 5 min wait. Right now it's been another 20 min of me waiting for the computer to shutdown. This is ridiculous! The computer worked fine yesterday.

What the hell is going on?

Right now I have a grey screen with a cursor. Wait it just changed to a spinning pin wheel...

What can I do to figure out what's causing the issue?

I'm gonna just let it keep shutting down since the grey folder issue I started the thread over is due to me getting impatient and holding the power button down until it turned off.


EDIT: at 10:01pm it turned off and I edited this post at 9:49pm

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Ok, so somehow I go to turn on the iMac this morning and the blinking folder with the ? on it is there...

I booted to my Lion USB install and was planning to repair the disk. But the disk doesn't really mount... When booting and holding Option, the drive with the name on it shows up. But when selecting my USB and trying to repair I get an internal drive named Media and the info says it's the internal SATA with no formatting/partition.

So what gives? What suggestions to repair this disk do you guys recommend?

I have had issues with Lion since I upgraded without a clean install. So I have iTunes and Aperture backed up but I'm just trying not to loose the odds and ends I haven't backed up yet.

Thank you for the help!




Worst case scenario... My Aluminum MacBook is the stupid no firewire '08 model. How easily could I use my MacBook's ssd in an enclosure to boot to and run Data Rescue 3 to save my files? It's not ideal to remove the drive from the iMac since that's more time and effort that I care to try.

 

[The-Pro]

Its quite possible that the HDD has failed completely, in that case data recovery is probably only possible through a professional service or if you have the skill to do it urself. If software doesnt do it then taking out the platters and placing them into an identical drive could be the only possibility to get your data back. Its very hard and should only be done by experts with the proper tooling. That can cost you several hundreds of dollars euros or whatever currency.

I tried to rescue the data of a friends macbooks HDD. The drive was clicking and the spinning wheel at startup went on forever. In disk utility it also showed up as Media with no partitions etc. Disk utility didnt even know what capacity it had. turned out the drive was completely buggered. When I took it out I wanted to find out what broke. The arm went over the drive and the back to its resting position over and over again. Taking out the platter could have been the only chance of recovering data. Wasnt worth it so didnt bother.

You can just take out the SSD, put it into any USB or firewire enclosure and boot up from it. You wont even need a proper enclosure, those simple USB to SATA cables to connect external HDD's to computer are all thats needed, and they're very cheap. Its very easy.

Are you still under warranty or do u have apple care? Apple will replace the HDD for free if u do.

 

[Drag'nGT]

Thanks. I don't have Apple care on the iMac since it's an 08 as well. The drive is showing up when I boot with 'option' held down but it won't mount as a target disk. Do you need to have the same version OS on the two machines for target disk to work? I'm having an issue getting it to work with a Mac Mini using a fw800 cable and fw400 adapter.

Also, is there a better disk repair utility than the one Apple offers?

 

[Drag'nGT]

Update:
Diskwarrior helped me to get access to about 171gb worth of data that I didn't back up. So I'm very happy about that.

I did a secure wipe of the drive and reinstalled Lion and did the updates. Everything has been working fine today up until I installed iLife 09 and Aperture 3. I installed both at the same time. Did the updates and restarted the machine... everything good. Then I opened Aperture and began to use it. The computer hung up... couldn't quit or respond after being in the app a few minutes. I had to force quit Aperture....... 5 min later it quit. Then Safari (1 page open) hung immediately and I had to force quit it as well... same 5 min wait. Right now it's been another 20 min of me waiting for the computer to shutdown. This is ridiculous! The computer worked fine yesterday.

What the hell is going on?

Right now I have a grey screen with a cursor. Wait it just changed to a spinning pin wheel...

What can I do to figure out what's causing the issue?

I'm gonna just let it keep shutting down since the grey folder issue I started the thread over is due to me getting impatient and holding the power button down until it turned off.