iMac I/O ERROR HELP!

[AidanGirard]

Dear Macheads,

My HD is fried. My iMac will not start as of yesterday. It got to the loading screen then shut itself off. I tried booting into into safe mode, but that didnt work. When i watched the activity in safe mode it says there was a "Disk I/O Error" then it kills all programs and shuts down.

I tried resetting the PRAM and the SMU, but that did nothing. I now have my start up disk in, and ive gone into disk utilities to verify/repair the disk. When I verify the disk it says

"Invalid node structure
The volume needs to be repaired

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit

1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair"

So i attempt to repair the disk and it says
"Invalid sibling link
Volume check failed....


... 1 Volume could not be repaired because of an error"


WHAT SHOULD I DO!?!

Does this mean I should archive and install? Is there any possibility I can back up a large sum of my data before hand? If I archive and install how much data will I lose?


Thank you very much for the help.

 

[Hellhammer]

Archive and install won't erase any data but it's possible that the installation will fail due to dead HD. If you have another Mac, you could try Target Disk Mode. Otherwise, take it to Apple if you're still within the warranty.

 

[HvyMtlPlyr]

When my HD failed I called Apple they said I can get my old drive back after it was repalced - and I did (my iMac was only a month old at the time). I then put it in an external case and use Data Rescue - which recovered all of my files. By the way, no matter what I did I was not able to mount the drive - even tried Target Disk mode. Data Rescue was still able to read and recover my data. And no, I don't work for Data Rescue - just a very happy customer.