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Grey File Folder with a ?

3

3kids

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 27, 2006
176
0
That's exactly all my iMac (2 1/2 years old) has.

AppleCare determined on the phone with the instal disk that it isn't recognizing a hard drive at all. I took it to an Apple authorized service center to see about saving any data. He took a quick look and listened to the crazy tones and said I was getting nothing off that drive.

I have an appointment at the Genius bar tomorrow. Switch out the hard drive? Any chance in your experience I can save anything?? Good as new after the switch?
 
You can freeze the disk for about 30 minutes then QUICKLY start pulling stuff off of it on another computer. After about 10 minutes the disk will die again, permanently. I don't think I'd recommend it unless you know what you're doing.
 
Um... try freezing your hard drive!

Your data will be lost, probably, or they will charge you an extortionate amount to have it saved. Sorry!

Although maybe not try freezing your hard drive, it might void your warranty, if you have warranty.
 
The data recovery place recommended by Applecare gave an estimate of up to 2K to try to get a good recovery of data. Just under 1K for photos only. The Apple tech today was much less, but in under a minute said he couldn't do anything.

I am not comfortable taking it apart. Freezing it? Wow. I am not so brave.
 
Ok. I read the article. I would be brave enough to actually try it, but I wouldn't have any idea how to get data off quickly. I am not techy, just a mom with a lot of photos.

The machine is covered by applecare, so I know I will ultimately have a working imac again. I just wish there was some way to believe the genius will be able to save anything.
 
Final update. Couldn't get anything off the hard drive.
 
3kids said:
The data recovery place recommended by Applecare gave an estimate of up to 2K to try to get a good recovery of data. Just under 1K for photos only. The Apple tech today was much less, but in under a minute said he couldn't do anything.

I am not comfortable taking it apart. Freezing it? Wow. I am not so brave.
Click to expand...

same issue on a macbook that had a couple thousand dollars worth of work on it, sent it to segate to do recover, ranges from 500 to 3000 dollars. the disc was toasted tho, the platter was scratched to hell by a damaged reading head. toss it, its toast, nothing will be able to fix it, and every time you turned it on, you were pretty much scratching all the data off the disc.

its fine that you couldnt take the disc apart, you shouldnt anyway. you dont have the facilities or equipment to do it. it needs to be done in a dust and static free cleanroom and you dont have the devices that would be able to read teh platters.

pulling the imac itself apart isnt a trivial matter either. i had to do that today to try to replace a faulty HDD (turns out the problem was teh SATA controller) and its a long and involved process that pretty much involves disassembling the entire machine from top to bottom
 
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