So this all began when my girlfriend was playing the Sims while booted to windows. The game started to jitter and become unstable, as i'm sure most of you know the sims usually does. All of a sudden she got the windows BSOD and it told her it was dumping the VRAM. When we tried to start it back up the HD wouldn't mount and all I was getting was the blinking question mark folder. It wouldn't register in target disk mode on my brothers mac mini and i could only boot from a the leopard disc after the folder came up which usually took 3-4 minutes. Once booted i ran disk utility and there was no HD...anywhere. I tried everything i could find while searching here and other resources. I took it to the apple store yesterday and had one of the geniuses take a look at it. He pulled out their magic little firewire drive with the diagnostic tools on it and it wouldn't even boot that. He found it very odd that it wouldn't boot the drive and that it would only boot the disc after the folder came up and the drive ejected the disc. So obviously the HD is dead and i knew that before i even took it in, i was just wondering if anyone else has had any of these problems or if anyone has any insight on what could have happened. I'm anxious to see if this is a common problem with these or not. Thanks!
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Aluminum iMac HD troubles...
- Thread starter TheCubedXbox
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That does sound like a hard drive failure. Judging by the amount of replies this thread got, it is a fairly rare problem. If/when 
fixes it, it shouldn't happen again. So all the other components besides the hard drive work, as far as you can tell?
fixes it, it shouldn't happen again. So all the other components besides the hard drive work, as far as you can tell?That does sound like a hard drive failure. Judging by the amount of replies this thread got, it is a fairly rare problem. If/when
I see that it musn't be a huge problem, just bad luck on my end
.Yeah as far as i can tell they are all working. They kept the imac at the store and are repairing it (the hard drive is out of stock so they have to order one...typical
). The genius that helped me said they were gonna replace the hard drive and then run it through some tests because it was acting so strange to make sure the failure wasn't caused by something else. He was really helpful and took some good notes on what it was doing, so I'm glad that it's all on record incase it happens again.+1 for Apple service so far
That's very bizarre because I had the same exact thing happen to me on my Macbook.
I was in Windows under BC doing some stuff for work when all of a sudden I got a BSOD. When I tried to reboot I could not boot into OSx or XP.
When I tried booting I could hear the hard drive go "click-click-click."
Took it to that Mac store and (thankfully) because of care I got it replaced with a bigger drive.
I wonder if there is something about Windows that a hard crash like that could cause the drive to become unusable.
Or it could just be a huge coincidence.
I was in Windows under BC doing some stuff for work when all of a sudden I got a BSOD. When I tried to reboot I could not boot into OSx or XP.
When I tried booting I could hear the hard drive go "click-click-click."
Took it to that Mac store and (thankfully) because of
care I got it replaced with a bigger drive.I wonder if there is something about Windows that a hard crash like that could cause the drive to become unusable.
Or it could just be a huge coincidence.
That's very bizarre because I had the same exact thing happen to me on my Macbook.
I was in Windows under BC doing some stuff for work when all of a sudden I got a BSOD. When I tried to reboot I could not boot into OSx or XP.
When I tried booting I could hear the hard drive go "click-click-click."
Took it to that Mac store and (thankfully) because of
I wonder if there is something about Windows that a hard crash like that could cause the drive to become unusable.
Or it could just be a huge coincidence.
As much as people make Windows out to be the devil, no it doesn't cause hardware failures... The clicking noise you heard is the head rubbing up against the platter of the drive, which is definitely a hardware failure, nothing OS related.
I see that it musn't be a huge problem, just bad luck on my end
Yeah as far as i can tell they are all working. They kept the imac at the store and are repairing it (the hard drive is out of stock so they have to order one...typical
+1 for Apple service so far
Hi Cubed!
Unfortunately, its not TOO rare. Same exact thing happend to me 48 hours ago. Was using the machine (24" imac alum) under normal conditions (web, surfing etc).. and it started to hang on apps and what not./ So I restarted it. Never came up again. Occasionally the Question Mark folder, sometimes it would just hang on the Apple screen and shut itself down. Went to the Apple store, sure enough.. hard drive.
Now heres where I have to contest your Apple +1 (aside from the fact that we are both dealing with dead machines that are less than a year old.. if it weren't for Time Machine.. *#$%&(#$&) Anyway.. they Genius told me that it would be 7-10 days to have it fixed under warranty. We all know that this is a 10 minute repair at best. However, if I purchased ProCare for 100$, it would be ready today! Thats a BS enough in my book, but I need my machine to work.. so I paid it. THEN they called me 8 hours later, to tell me the drive wasn't in stock, and it will take .. yep .. 7-10 days!! After they talked me into ProCare
-2 for Apple (1 for ****** HD that could cost the faithful all of their work. and 1 for trickin me into ProCare) I think, from the looks of these forums and the discussions over at Apple.com.. we are going to see alot more of these popping up. To me, for the premium that we pay.. its just unacceptable. We all know where to go if we want unpredictable and unreliable machines.
Sorry for the Rant.. I'm bored without my iMac..
Steve
That's not so great on Apple's end to do that to a customer, i feel bad.
My iMac is fixed it only took 3 days. Running great again, but only after I reinstalled boot camp and booted it for a couple hours and it crashed AGAIN. This time it was only the windows partition and when i would boot it I would get the black screen with the blinking cursor....soooo i dunno, i repartitioned my hard drive and I think i'm done with boot camp. Too much to lose, and too much of a hassle. Oh i also bought an external hard drive so no more data loss
!!