Ok, so I have an Aluminum 20" 2.4 iMac. The other night, we had some pretty bad storms while I was asleep, and I think the power went out for a few seconds, or there was a surge. When I got up, my iMac would boot, but hang on the gray scree, every time. I DO have it plugged into a very capable surge protector. I called Apple Support, and after a little while of testing different key combinations, the lady told me to take it into the store, or they would send someone to my house. I took it to the store, where the genius did the exact same stuff that I did while I had the lady on the phone. The genius ordered a hard drive, as well as a logic board. I'm hoping that the logic board is what needs to be replaced, but I'm not sure. Do you guys know what the problem could be? I really don't want to lose any of my data on that hard drive. I had an external hard drive connected, with all of my music and pictures backed up, but none of my Windows machines will recognize it. They do that chime when it's plugged in, but it doesn't show up in My Computer. Any ideas?
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Fried iMac
- Thread starter techie4life
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Chances are your external drive is formatted for Mac, and windows can't see mac drives directly unless a third party driver is installed. I've used Mediafour's MacDrive before, It works well. I don't know of any free alternatives though
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/
Of course, you could just wait until your iMac is back up and running again to recover your data.
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/
Of course, you could just wait until your iMac is back up and running again to recover your data.
MacDrive doesn't recognize the external hard drive. I don't know if the trial is different than the full version, but the trial doesn't seem to be working.
It's possible that your surge protector didn't protect your devices? can you take the drive out of the external caddy and hook it directly to the inside of your windows PC?
Unfortunatley, the windows PC is a laptop, so that's a no go. I have downloaded several demos for different "Data Recovery" programs, etc... and they all recognize the drive.
Have you attempted to use a friend's mac or one of the one's at the Apple store to see if the External drive's data is still intact?
Exactly what I was going to recommend. A good surge protector should sacrifice itself, stopping most of the surge from getting to your equipment. That being said, if lightning wants to fry your stuff, it can... not matter what you have between it and your iMac.n
I've had the same thing happen twice to my g5 powermac. I was able to take it to my local apple reseller, and the tech folks there were able to easily get my hd working again.
A Power Line Surge Protector will work, maybe, if a power line surge was the problem.
How are you connected to the Internet?
Phone modem / DSL ? <---- Lightning loves to come in on a phone line
Cable Modem ? <------ Pretty much the same thing.
I once lost a computer due to a lightning storm and it was disconnected from the power. I pulled the plug due to the incoming storms but did not disconnect the Phone Modem line!
How are you connected to the Internet?
Phone modem / DSL ? <---- Lightning loves to come in on a phone line
Cable Modem ? <------ Pretty much the same thing.
I once lost a computer due to a lightning storm and it was disconnected from the power. I pulled the plug due to the incoming storms but did not disconnect the Phone Modem line!
I am connected through wireless and wired ethernet. I have not been able to take the hard drive to an Apple Store, or use a friend's mac. I'll just hope that they can back up my data before they replace the hard drive, that's what I asked them to do.