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24" iMac having serious problems

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DonWrk

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 15, 2011
34
0
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Well this is sort of a long story and I can explain more later on but I have been having some serious issues for almost a month now and the current state I am at is running disk utility and repairing permissions on the Macintosh HD but on the drive above that it is highlighted in red and told me that drive cannot be repaired. Does this mean it's beyond a fixing point and I need a new HD? Please help thanks in advance!
 
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I should have stated this in the first post. I've gone the whole 9 yards when it comes to trying to get this thing back to normal. Booted in safe mode, reset the pram or whatever, booted in verbose mode etc etc. The weird thing is that a few times I've actually been able to get it to boot after doing various amounts of those certain resets but anytime I have to restart then it sticks on the apple logo screen and I have to repair/reset/verbose and after a while I'll be able to get it to boot but it just seems to be getting worse and worse. Why is it that when disk utility tells me everything is fine it still won't boot up?
 
"I'll be able to get it to boot but it just seems to be getting worse and worse. Why is it that when disk utility tells me everything is fine it still won't boot up?"

It could be that you indeed have a drive that is progressing towards a true "hardware failure" (won't run regardless of the state of the software on it).

In that case, the only options are to replace the internal drive (not a simple job, but do-able), or, get an external drive and use that one as your booting drive.

However, before you reach the above conclusions, have you tried completely re-initializing your drive (perhaps with a "zero-out" of all data so that all sectors get written to), and then a fresh software re-installation?

Rather than a "repair" of an old (and possibly corrupted) directory, this will "wipe it clean" and give you a fresh directory.

If that doesn't succeed, than I would conclude that the drive itself has hardware trouble, and would look for a replacement.
 
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It seems as though it is officially doomed now. The reason I haven't wiped it out is because I had a lot of data and files that I needed to back up. I guess now my next question is how would I go about getting any of this back or is it just a lost cause now?
 
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I'm going to purchase an external hard drive right now. Can someone point me into the right directions on which ones are good with Mac and which cables I need? I just hate going to get something and come back to find out I'm missing a cable or something.
 
DonWrk said:
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I'm going to purchase an external hard drive right now. Can someone point me into the right directions on which ones are good with Mac and which cables I need? I just hate going to get something and come back to find out I'm missing a cable or something.
Click to expand...

I use Western Digital drives, no problems. They come with the USB cables needed, and I format them to HFS for Mac use, although they'll work in FAT too.
 
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Thanks for the suggestion. So is all of my data still intact since it's the drive above my "Macintosh HD" is the one that says it can't be repaired?
 
I have a 1TB Western Digital and it works great for a backup. Do a time machine backup on it then replace your Internal and load the backup onto the new drive. And don't think that replacing the internal will be hard. It's not hard at all and only takes about 30-60 minutes and a few special screw drvers.
 
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Ok so let me get this straight. I'll buy a new hard drive then load os x onto it and I'll be able to access my Mac HD without Amy data loss?
 
If you do a full time machine backup and install the OS from your backup then yes. I had to do this last year and it worked flawlessly. I didn't lose anything.
 
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Ok thanks for the help! Sure I'll be back with some questions when I get back.
 
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Ok got an external hd now how would I go about moving the files from the Mac hd to the external from the installation disc?
 
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Never mind I think I've got it now. I'm guessing I should have purchased an external hd and an internal hd also?
 
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Is it not smart to use the external hd I bought as a temporary internal hd?
 
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