Startup/harddrive issue

[dcandage]

So, the other night I was surfing and had 6 or 7 Safari windows open to YouTube (which means flash was running) and eventually my entire iMac froze solid (24" Aluminum Intel. Late 2007. 1GB RAM). I rebooted and got a flashing question mark in a folder. Never seen that before, so I searched and got some potential solutions. None of them worked. I assumed that my HDD was corrupted and tried to to verify/repair it (after inserting my Snow Leopard disk and booting with it). It couldn't repair it and said reboot and try again. Nothing. I then tried reinstalling Snow Leopard and that failed. Tried to erase the HDD first and retry installing Snow Leopard. Nope. Then I tried to restore from a backup (Time Machine). that seemed to work. It took about an hour and half. It said reboot to finish. It never booted all the way up. It stopped at the gray screen with the black apple and spinning progress thing. Any ideas? My Apple Care expired last December (of course!)

Dave
from Maine

 

[Badger^2]

Sounds like a dead drive.

Not hard to get into and replace, lots of demo videos on youtube.

Get a WD Black, something in the 750 gig or 1TB range.

You should think about upping your ram as well, will help your overall day-to-day computing experience.

 

[harcosparky]

My Apple Care expired last December (of course!)
Dave
from Maine

Sounds like we bought the same machine, at the same time. My Apple Care expired December 12. 2010.

I had an HDD failure about a year and a half ago, so it was covered.

POSSIBLE WORKAROUND:


If you have an external drive available you may be able to boot from the CD and install OSX to that external drive. Then boot from there and use that to have a look at the old drive to see if you can still access it.

If you can access it that way, try to get all you files/data off of it.

Of course if you can boot off the external drive, and cannot access the internal HDD then it is most likely DEAD!

I have a 24" iMac of the same vintage with three external HDD's that have OSX installed. I have different work on each of those drives and just hook up the one that I need to work off at the time.

 

[dcandage]

Well, I guess the good thing is that I have everything backed up on an external with time machine and I have a second external that I use just as storage, so I'm kind of double backed up. At least I'm not afraid of losing anything. But I really don't like the idea of opening this thing up. I'm not afraid rooting around in a computer as I've built a couple of PC's, but I've looked at a couple of videos on how to replace a drive in an iMac and I'd rather get the drive that's in it fixed, but if I have to dig in, I will. At least it's relatively cheap. Guess I'll need to get some torx drivers, suction cups and canned air.

 

[Badger^2]

One suction cup is enough, or even a really small screw driver to get the glass out. Dont forget to remove the door to the RAM.

The glass comes off in seconds, its really a non issue. So is dust. Ive popped mine apart 3 times, never a spec of dust. Dunno how everyone else seems to get so much.

One thing I found helpful was wedging a small foam pillow between the stand and the screen so the base didnt flop around.

Home Depot has a little screw set for $5 that has everything you need.

Theres no need to completely remove the screen -- just prop it up -- I use a big screwdriver.

Its pretty straightforward.

Now that I have done it a few times, I could probably do it in under 10 minutes at most.

 

[Jexta]

As an Apple Certified Tech I can tell you that if your brought the machine into our service center we would simply disassemble the machine and replace the faulty drive, after booting from an external to ensure the drive is the problem.

Repairing a HDD is not economically viable, particularly considering the outrageously cheap prices you can find these days.

In all honesty disassembling an iMac is a little daunting, however its not really that hard. Just be patient.

 

[dcandage]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

Ok, so here's what happened. Bought a WD caviar black 1TB and installed it. After breaking the wire on the aluminum bezel for the iSight camera and putting a mark on the LCD with a torx driver (can't seem to see it when together) I booted it with the install DVD and it doesn't even see the hdd. I think I'm depressed. Can anyone think of anything I might gave dine wrong, or am I looking at a $1000 logic board replacement?

Dave

 

[dxr808s]

What do you mean it 'doesn't see the hard drive'?

Have you checked through disk utility before installing the OS?

Have you made sure you have replaced every single cable back in reverse?

 

[dcandage]

Yes, I tried disk utility first to restore from a backup. Then I tried to do an install of Snow Leopard directly. Nothing. It sees the external drives, but not the internal.

 

[dcandage]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

Update. I took the Mac to a local service center and they hooked it up and found the drive. Turns out I needed to partition the drive before trying to restore it. Yep, I feel stupid. I haven't had the time to restore it, yet, but I might have time tonight. So, it seems that the only permanent damage is my iSight camera. They said I'd have to replace the bezel to fix it. A couple hundred bucks. I'll just use my mini dv camera if I need a webcam.

Dave

 

[Badger^2]

Why would you need to partition the drive? That doesnt sound right. I know its not right.

Sounds like you left a cable unplugged.

Did you watch any of the videos on youtube? All of them talk about the camera connection...