is my hard drive dead?

[Sorkvild]

I woke my computer (1 Ghz G4, 1.25 GB RAM, 10.4.9) from sleep and suddenly everything froze except for the mouse cursor. No problem, I just held the power button down until it shut down and restarted. Instead of restarting I got the flashing question mark. So I booted from the Tiger disc to try and run Disk Utility/reinstall the OS. The internal hard drive does not appear in Disk Utility or in the installation window! Does this mean my hard drive just up and died? Thanks for any help.

 

[Willis]

Possible.... try resetting your PRAM

 

[Sorkvild]

Thanks for the help. I tried resetting the PRAM but it still can't see it anywhere, even in Startup Disk...

 

[mystikmarc87]

A similar thing happened to my macbook. When i turned it on I was just seing the apple logo on the grey background. It stayed like this forever. Called up apple they talked me through resetting everything - still no luck. had me typic things into the terminal screen (loooks like dos on windows not sure if its called terminal) anyway my computer started showing "i have no name" on the screen. In the end apple replaced the hard drive and all was well!

 

[jng]

Do you have access to another Mac? A friend's maybe? Try booting it asa firewire target disk.

I had your problem with my powerbook last year. It boot in target mode though which told me my drive was dying but not quite dead yet. I had to replace the HD but I also managed to salvage all my files.

 

[Sorkvild]

I tried booting it in firewire target disk mode through an intel imac, but I can't seem to do that either. I kept T held down but nothing appeared on the monitor and then it shut itself off after about one or two minutes. Is this pretty much the only way to try and recover any data from the drive? Thanks.

 

[jng]

Is this pretty much the only way to try and recover any data from the drive? Thanks.

That I know of for consumers, yes.

Unfortunately I think you need to take a trip to the genius bar at your local Apple store.

 

[Sorkvild]

this sucks!! Okay, thanks a bunch for everyone's help.