Aluminium iMac harddrive faliure?

[se7eren]

Hello,

I suspect that the hard drive in my imac has died over night. Just wanted to check with you guys that this is the case before going out and buying a new one!

This morning, waking up my mac i was greeted by the beachball and unable to do anything. I rebooted and came across the chime, white screen and a 'flashing' folder icon with a question mark in it. I tried again and same thing. On the third time of trying; chime, white screen for a few seconds and then nothing.! Blank screen and as if the power has turned off.

I then booted from the leopard disk and ran scan disk utility. This sees the physical disk and the Macintosh HD, although there is no repair permission only verify. When this is run it fails quickly returning a red error message stating that verify or repair has failed. Also, the install disk does not give me the option to reinstall stating that i need OS X 10.4 to install Leopard and cannot find it?!

Is this a dead hard drive or something else??

One more thing;

If i am to get a new hard drive which would be better?

Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM

or

Samsung SpinPoint F1 640GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM

Thanks

 

[edgew8]

Sounds like a dead drive to me.

Did you have the iMac in sleep mode overnight or turned off?

also go for the Western Digital

I also recommend you get the iStat widget and keep an eye on your HD temps in the future, make sure they are under 45°c

 

[michael.lauden]

deff go with Western Digital.. however i once had a 7200RPM HDD and it made so much racket.

i've stuck with 5400RPM for now.. but hopefully by the time you need another - you won't need a HDD. but a SSD!

 

[se7eren]

Thanks for the response guys.

Just confirmed my feeling.

The imac was in sleep mode.

Reviews point to the WD as well, and only £6 more expensive!

Oh well, will need to find some 'sucktion cups' now!!