imac catastrophic harddrive failure?

[mfacey]

Hi,

It looks like the hard disk in my 1.5 year old iMac (24" 3.06 C2D, running 10.6) suddenly failed today . I woke the mac up from sleep and pretty much immediately I got a spinning beach ball. The system was totally unresponsive so I did a hard reset. Unfortunately the blinking "?" folder came up on the gray screen, instead of the familiar Apple logo.
Booted off the OSX disk and ran Disk Utility. The harddisk comes up as "media" and unrecognized by the system. So no First aid or formatting possible. I'm guessing the hard disk has given up but before purchasing a new one I want to rule out anything more serious like motherboard issues. Any advice on what else it could be, and what I can check to be sure?

Thanks!

 

[CJS7070]

Any erratic behavior from the drive in the past few days/weeks?

 

[flopticalcube]

Run the Apple Hardware Test: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509

 

[mfacey]

Any erratic behavior from the drive in the past few days/weeks?

None at all, that's why I'm a bit sceptical. When the drive in my Powerbook died a few months ago, I heard a bunch of clicking and grinding before it totally collapsed...

 

[OldCorpse]

Specs? What is the brand of the HDD, the size, and the speed?

 

[Kirbdog]

This is when Time Machine becomes your new best friend.
I have yet to experience a HDD crash. My brother has the exact model iMac that I have (2.8 C2D santa rosa) and has had 2 HDD fail on him so far. It seems like the luck of the draw.
Hope all ends well for you.

 

[LucasLand]

hopefully you bought applecare. they will fix it quickly

 

[mfacey]

Specs? What is the brand of the HDD, the size, and the speed?

Its a 500GB drive that came with the mac. No idea what the brand etc is...

This is when Time Machine becomes your new best friend.
I have yet to experience a HDD crash. My brother has the exact model iMac that I have (2.8 C2D santa rosa) and has had 2 HDD fail on him so far. It seems like the luck of the draw.
Hope all ends well for you.

Yep, this will be my first (and hopefully positive) experience with restoring from Time Machine. If necessary I also have another backup online with Mozy... so all data should be safe.

hopefully you bought applecare. they will fix it quickly

Nope. Calculated risk. If the HDD is dead I'll just buy a new one and replace it myself. The amount of money I've saved with all the apple products I own by not using AC easily outweighs the cost that I'll have to endure now.