can't repair Mcintosh HD

[zoran]

Just got this msg and i am frightened to death of the possibility to loosing all of my precious data. But for what reason? Why did this msg popup? What do i do?

Here is how my system is setup. Its a 2010 corei7 iMac, with two drives (1TB HardDrive and a 500GB SSD). The system can (used to) boot in to OS's, different for each drive. The spining drive (1TB) could boot to SnowLeopard and the SSD (500GB, which i primarily use), would boot to ElCap. I use TM for backing up everything, all drives. This backup was made using ElCap. Yes TM backs up the faulty drive that contains SnowL.
What do i do now guys? Im going crazy over this. The data stored in the 1TB drive, at the moment are not accessible.
The iMac works since its using the SSD drive, and of course it boots using ElCap.

 

[ght56]

Were you able to get the data? This could potentially stem from several causes (both hardware failure as well as directory issues)

If you have a Time Machine backup to a third hard drive, you are safe and sound---I am not clear when you say you use TM whether or not you are referring to a Time Machine backup for each volume to a separate disk.

If you do NOT have Time Machine backup of the problem 1TB drive, there are some actions you can take to try to repair the disk and try to recover user files. However, let me first ask this - is this the original HDD that came with the iMac when it was new?

 

[zoran]

Yes we are talking about the factory/original hdd. Of course, right now, the iMac is working with a second drive (ssd) I have installed.

 

[ght56]

As this is an 11 year old drive, it seems very likely that the drive has physically failed. One way you can check to see if failure is likely is with the use of this program, where you can install a trial of the program to check to see if the drive is reporting physical failure.

If yes, there are two main options - you can attempt to use software programs to recover data on your own or you can go for pro services.

If no, there are several actions you can take to try to repair the more likely software issues.

Again, I am also not clear about your Time Machine backup. Do you have a TM backup of the malfunctioning 1TB drive on a separate physical disk? If so, your files are on that other hard drive.

 

[zoran]

Thanks... yes luckily i do have a TMbackup of the files on a separate drive, but... what happens if the malfunctioned drive has damaged files, and those damaged files are in the TMbackup?

 

[ght56]

I would go through the backup and open some of the files to make sure they are okay. Especially if the app in the previous program confirms the 1TB disk has physically failed, you will want to make a clone of that TM backup ASAP as you obviously do not want important files saved to only one functional hard drive.