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iMac Dead - what to do next ?

M

Matt-London

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 23, 2009
31
1
My iMac died this weekend. it was quite an old model, I bought it in 2008, and when I tried to use it on Saturday all I got was the grey screen with the circle/slash. It won't boot in Safe mode, or Target mode so no way to get any data off the hard drive.. or is there?
I am considering taking it apart and trying to house the hard drive in a USB enclosure. I'm not at all familiar with this procedure or the insides of computers at all so not sure how easy this is.
Any tips or suggestions on what enclosure to buy would be very welcome. Or should I just go to an iSmash shop and ask them to do it?
Thanks
 
Do you have the install discs or a USB installer? Sounds like it could be a dead hard drive, but you can confirm this by booting from an external source.
 
Hellhammer said:
Do you have the install discs or a USB installer? Sounds like it could be a dead hard drive, but you can confirm this by booting from an external source.
Click to expand...
I have the install DVD's for Snow Leopard but have upgraded to later OS since then. How do I boot from the DVD ?
 
Yep sounds like a dead hard drive, if replacing an SSD is highly reccomend end it will be better than new.

Do you have a time machine back up?? Or similar that you can boot from??
 
Samuelsan2001 said:
Yep sounds like a dead hard drive, if replacing an SSD is highly reccomend end it will be better than new.

Do you have a time machine back up?? Or similar that you can boot from??
Click to expand...
I have just managed to boot from snow leopard install DVD but its asking me if i want to set up installation. will this overwrite the data I have stored on Hard Drive as I don't want to lose anything.
Thanks
 
Matt-London said:
I have just managed to boot from snow leopard install DVD but its asking me if i want to set up installation. will this overwrite the data I have stored on Hard Drive as I don't want to lose anything.
Thanks
Click to expand...

Yes, reinstalling OS X would erase your files. Do you have a backup?

The best action now would be to install OS X to an external drive and then boot from that and try to recover files from the internal HD. Once you've done that you can proceed with replacing the internal HD.
 
Hellhammer said:
Yes, reinstalling OS X would erase your files. Do you have a backup?

The best action now would be to install OS X to an external drive and then boot from that and try to recover files from the internal HD. Once you've done that you can proceed with replacing the internal HD.
Click to expand...
No Backups (gulp) - I see I can access Disk Utility from dvd boot so I will try to make a copy of the Hard Drive from that. Fingers crossed!
 
Matt-London said:
No Backups (gulp) - I see I can access Disk Utility from dvd boot so I will try to make a copy of the Hard Drive from that. Fingers crossed!
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I am unable to create a back up from disk utility, so back to my original question -
I am considering taking it apart and trying to house the hard drive in a USB enclosure. I'm not at all familiar with this procedure or the insides of computers at all so not sure how easy this is.
Any tips or suggestions on what enclosure to buy would be very welcome. Or should I just go to an iSmash shop and ask them to do it?
 
Matt-London said:
Unfortunately I am unable to create a back up from disk utility, so back to my original question -
I am considering taking it apart and trying to house the hard drive in a USB enclosure. I'm not at all familiar with this procedure or the insides of computers at all so not sure how easy this is.
Any tips or suggestions on what enclosure to buy would be very welcome. Or should I just go to an iSmash shop and ask them to do it?
Click to expand...
The power supply on my mid 2007 died and I removed the hard disc and put into an enclosure. Followed a set of disk upgrade instructions on youtube, but obviously only as far as removing drive. Enclosure I bought was something like IT-CEO USB3 (model IT-735) for any SATA 3.5" HDD and that worked fine. Think I got it from PC World (or Amazon)
 
JustMartin said:
The power supply on my mid 2007 died and I removed the hard disc and put into an enclosure. Followed a set of disk upgrade instructions on youtube, but obviously only as far as removing drive. Enclosure I bought was something like IT-CEO USB3 (model IT-735) for any SATA 3.5" HDD and that worked fine. Think I got it from PC World (or Amazon)
Click to expand...
Thanks. Anyway I can tell if its a power issue on mine?
 
OP wrote:
"I am considering taking it apart and trying to house the hard drive in a USB enclosure."

If the hard drive has experienced a hardware failure (seems to be the case if Disk Utility can't "touch it"), putting it into a USB enclosure is not going to give you access. It will probably be "broken there, too".

Frankly, it's probably time to start shopping for something new (or at least, "newer").

And also frankly, this is the reason why a computer user keeps backups.

Go forth from this day and learn from your experience, a sadder but wiser man....
 
Fishrrman said:
OP wrote:
"I am considering taking it apart and trying to house the hard drive in a USB enclosure."

If the hard drive has experienced a hardware failure (seems to be the case if Disk Utility can't "touch it"), putting it into a USB enclosure is not going to give you access. It will probably be "broken there, too".
Click to expand...

At least he has a chance of getting data out of it, which is something he can't do now.
 
I have already bought a new MBP , I'm just trying to recover the contents of my Hard Drive. Yeah I know how stupid it is not to have a back up. My photos are in iCloud so thats ok but my wife's aren't and none of my music is. I have every iTunes file synced to my iPhone so haven't lost that until I lose my phone or it breaks so I need to reverse sync my phone with iTunes to rebuild my library on my new MBP. Any ideas?
 
hmmm
OP reported a grey screen with the "prohibited" sign.
That doesn't usually mean a bad hard drive, maybe just a corrupted boot file. Not likely a power problem, and a reinstall of OS X may fix that issue.

@Matt-London - you said that you have upgraded to OS X newer then Snow Leopard in the past.
Any OS X installed system newer than Snow Leopard will also have a (normally hidden) Recovery system partition
Can you boot to that Recovery system? (Restart, holding Command-R)
If you get to the recovery menu screen, you can choose Disk Utility to test the directory on your hard drive. And, you also would have a choice to reinstall OS X, when it will download and reinstall your present OS X system.

Yes, a 9 year old Mac may simply have a failing/failed hard drive, but the recovery system may be useful too, if you can boot to it...
 
DeltaMac said:
hmmm
OP reported a grey screen with the "prohibited" sign.
That doesn't usually mean a bad hard drive, maybe just a corrupted boot file. Not likely a power problem, and a reinstall of OS X may fix that issue.

@Matt-London - you said that you have upgraded to OS X newer then Snow Leopard in the past.
Any OS X installed system newer than Snow Leopard will also have a (normally hidden) Recovery system partition
Can you boot to that Recovery system? (Restart, holding Command-R)
If you get to the recovery menu screen, you can choose Disk Utility to test the directory on your hard drive. And, you also would have a choice to reinstall OS X, when it will download and reinstall your present OS X system.

Yes, a 9 year old Mac may simply have a failing/failed hard drive, but the recovery system may be useful too, if you can boot to it...
Click to expand...
@DeltaMac I can get to Disk Utility through recovery mode and have tried repairing / verifying but both have given me error messages saying unable to verify or repair. The hard drive was almost if not full if that makes any difference?
 
If you were here, I would use my Disk Warrior to try to resurrect the hard drive.
You can move ahead with your plan to remove the hard drive, and try it in an external case.
But, I suspect that you may not have much luck with that, either.

I had to search about iSmash! I thought you were just joking about the smash part :D
Sure, give iSmash a try. The worst they can do is refuse, and they might refer you to a shop that can help... They might even give you a good idea about an external case, too...
 
For better or for worse, your iMac is probably fine except for a dead hard drive.

You can replace the hard drive and your iMac would work again.

As for data recovery, I say tough luck.
 
DeltaMac said:
If you were here, I would use my Disk Warrior to try to resurrect the hard drive.
You can move ahead with your plan to remove the hard drive, and try it in an external case.
But, I suspect that you may not have much luck with that, either.

I had to search about iSmash! I thought you were just joking about the smash part :D
Sure, give iSmash a try. The worst they can do is refuse, and they might refer you to a shop that can help... They might even give you a good idea about an external case, too...
Click to expand...

Thanks - I am happy to purchase Disk Warrior if theres a chance it will work but if Mac Disk Utility is unable to repair it or verify it do you think Disk Warrior can? Also, how do I run it on the iMac if the iMac doesn't work?
 
grahamperrin said:
Which version?



What exactly is the message?

If the OS is Yosemite or less then Recovery OS Disk Utility should allow you to copy the text, then (still in Recovery OS) you can use Safari to paste to this topic.
Click to expand...

OS = Yosemite
You can't copy text in recovery mode so I will type it out:

Verify and Repair volume "Macintosh HD"
Volume repair complete
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
(in red) Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back-up as many files as possible, reformat the disk and restore your backed-up files.

Verifying volume "Macintosh HD"
Checking journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
(in red)
Invalid node structure
The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Error: The disk needs to be repaired. Click repair disk.
 
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