Imac fatal HDD issue

[Mtrap]

Hi all,


I am new to this forum and somehow need urgent help to rectify some issue I face with my Imac.

The machine somehow stalled while I was accessing Iphoto. The status indicated just spin endlessly and I had to do a hard restart. From there on, it does not boot up and stop where the apple logo is. Good thing is it does allow it to boot up with the Imac cd that came with and by doing the press and hold on "C" thing.

Did a check using disk utilities and it report that the harddisk is "serious damage" and cannot be rectify using first aid. And advise me to backup as much data as possible.

So my question is: What shall I do? And how to recover all or copy / migrate / clone the entire HDD volume?

Appreciated!!

 

[old-wiz]

You do have a backup don't you? If not you may be out of luck.

 

[Mtrap]

No, I did not have a back up of everything on the Mac HD volume.

 

[Badger^2]

Go to the store and buy a USB hard drive and copy over what you can to it.

 

[JediMeister]

To attempt to recover your data, you can install Mac OS X to an external hard drive and try booting the computer from that drive, or use Target Disk mode to try accessing the contents of the irreparable drive.

 

[MacHamster68]

and once you recovered somehow your data(if possible) and bought and installed the new HDD , get a external HDD of the same size or bigger and use time machine to backup from day 1 , a external 1 TB drive cost you as much as £50 , well spend money as you never have to worry again about your internal breaking down or how to recover data from it

 

[davids8477]

Hi all,


I am new to this forum and somehow need urgent help to rectify some issue I face with my Imac.

The machine somehow stalled while I was accessing Iphoto. The status indicated just spin endlessly and I had to do a hard restart. From there on, it does not boot up and stop where the apple logo is. Good thing is it does allow it to boot up with the Imac cd that came with and by doing the press and hold on "C" thing.

Did a check using disk utilities and it report that the harddisk is "serious damage" and cannot be rectify using first aid. And advise me to backup as much data as possible.

So my question is: What shall I do? And how to recover all or copy / migrate / clone the entire HDD volume?

Appreciated!!

Yo might want to try using DISKWARRIOR.

I have a similar issue and DW fixed the file structure for me in about 10 minutes.

 

[Mtrap]

Thanks to all who have replied.

Here is the latest update. I rushed to get a 2TB WD My book external HDD and installed a fresh Mac OS X on the drive by the use of the CDrom. And migrate all data/ application / network setting to the new drive. Everything is recovered anf back to normal. I would thanks APPLE for the friendly software during this difficult time.

I tried to Erase and reformat the problem internal ATA hdd on the Imac but somehow the S.M.A.R.T. error does not even allow me to erase. May I know what can I do next? Since it does not allow me to do the formatting over Disk Utility, can I do it over Terminal using root permission?

And also, after all the recovery on the Imac using the external drive. I back it up using Time Machine. And just would like to ask if Time Machine does by up my other Bootcamp volume as after successful migration on the Imac, I accidentally erase my Bootcamp content.

Sorry if it sound confusing.