I have a late 2009 iMac running Mountain Lion that I leave on 24/7. I haven't used it in a couple of days, and when I went to use it this morning, something major is wrong. Firstly, my mouse would not wake it up, which wasn't a big concern. I pressed a button on the keyboard and it woke up. I could see my desktop with a message "Time Machine could not backup" or something like that. There was a also a spinning circle and nothing was responsive. So I long-pressed my power button and shut down the computer.
When I powered back on, the Apple logo appeared, but also a gray bar underneath it that began to fill up. The bar seemed to fill up, but then the computer just shut down again. I tried this one more and it did the same thing. So I don't think it's going to boot up.
I booted into recovery by holding Option when starting the comptuer, and then went into Recovery (not my Time Machine, just normal Recovery). I started Disk Manager and I can see all of my drives. My main 1TB drive (internal on my Mac) showed the main drive and then Macintosh HD, which was not mounted. I also saw my Time Machine external drive that was also not mounted. I attempted to Repair my Macintosh HD disk, but it said it could not be repaired. Uh oh, I don't think this is good.
Then I tried to Verify my external drive that has the Time Machine on it. It said it needed to be repaired. I clicked on Repair and it is currently in the process of repairing. It said it checked the file system, volume repair complete, and now it has been on "Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required." for several minutes now with no sign of progression. I don't know if it's going to complete or not, but I'm leaving it alone for now.
SOOO.... I'm trying to understand what happened? I assume my main Macintosh HD drive failed, either during a Time Machine backup, or perhaps it tried to backup to Time Machine when it started failing? I don't know because like I said, I haven't used the iMac for several days, so I'm not sure when it happened or how long it's been. However, if my Time Machine drive is failing too, that doesn't make sense, does it, unless it got corrupted when the main drive failed?
I need advice on how to proceeed? If the Time Machine drive succesfully repairs, then I will try to boot from that, right? If it does not repair, then what do I do? I believe I have most of my data backed up on Crashplan, but not everything... and if both of the drives failed or corrupted, am I just out of luck? I think it's highly unlikely that both drives have physically failed, but if they are both now corrupted, then how do I get my data off of one of them? I do have a newer Mac Mini running in the other room, so I don't know if that would help or not?
I appreciate any help...
When I powered back on, the Apple logo appeared, but also a gray bar underneath it that began to fill up. The bar seemed to fill up, but then the computer just shut down again. I tried this one more and it did the same thing. So I don't think it's going to boot up.
I booted into recovery by holding Option when starting the comptuer, and then went into Recovery (not my Time Machine, just normal Recovery). I started Disk Manager and I can see all of my drives. My main 1TB drive (internal on my Mac) showed the main drive and then Macintosh HD, which was not mounted. I also saw my Time Machine external drive that was also not mounted. I attempted to Repair my Macintosh HD disk, but it said it could not be repaired. Uh oh, I don't think this is good.
Then I tried to Verify my external drive that has the Time Machine on it. It said it needed to be repaired. I clicked on Repair and it is currently in the process of repairing. It said it checked the file system, volume repair complete, and now it has been on "Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required." for several minutes now with no sign of progression. I don't know if it's going to complete or not, but I'm leaving it alone for now.
SOOO.... I'm trying to understand what happened? I assume my main Macintosh HD drive failed, either during a Time Machine backup, or perhaps it tried to backup to Time Machine when it started failing? I don't know because like I said, I haven't used the iMac for several days, so I'm not sure when it happened or how long it's been. However, if my Time Machine drive is failing too, that doesn't make sense, does it, unless it got corrupted when the main drive failed?
I need advice on how to proceeed? If the Time Machine drive succesfully repairs, then I will try to boot from that, right? If it does not repair, then what do I do? I believe I have most of my data backed up on Crashplan, but not everything... and if both of the drives failed or corrupted, am I just out of luck? I think it's highly unlikely that both drives have physically failed, but if they are both now corrupted, then how do I get my data off of one of them? I do have a newer Mac Mini running in the other room, so I don't know if that would help or not?
I appreciate any help...