imac is dying on me. please help! :(

[shambock]

Hi everyone....need your help! Something is seriously up with my imac and I'm starting to fear the worst. I've been trying to fix it for the past 5 hours but am not getting anywhere.

When I switch it on, I get this screen:

It stays like this for about 2 minutes and then the imac just shuts down.

I tried booting from installation disks to verify, repair disk etc, but that's not working either:

Trying to do a fresh install from scratch, but it's not letting me do that either:

I also tried connecting my imac to my sisters macbook with a firewire and pressing T in order to do a transfer, but the macbook just isn't picking up the imac. Even with migration assistant, nothing.

Is my imac hard drive totally dead? What's going on? Is there anyway I can get the files from my computer? I really don't want to lose them.

any help would be appreciated very much

 

[HLdan]

Based on the reports from Disk Utility it does look like your hard drive is failing. Did you not back up your files?

 

[shambock]

Thanks for the reply.

I do have the vast chunk of my files backed up, but a few not. It's not the end of the world if I lose them, but obviously would like to get them if I can.

So what happens in these hard drive situations? Shall i book my mac in for a genius bar visit? Do apple fix this or is it coming out of my own pocket?

 

[farmermac]

Thanks for the reply.

I do have the vast chunk of my files backed up, but a few not. It's not the end of the world if I lose them, but obviously would like to get them if I can.

So what happens in these hard drive situations? Shall i book my mac in for a genius bar visit? Do apple fix this or is it coming out of my own pocket?

That depends on if you are within the 1 year warranty or bought AppleCare.

If I were you I'd tear that computer up and put a 2tb in there

 

[Raima]

Stand back everyone, I know CPR!

Like other people have said, if it's under warranty, get it fixed by Apple.

Not much you can do if it's a HDD hardware failure, unless you got a spare exact hdd where you could possible try swapping over the controller board.

 

[farmermac]

Stand back everyone, I know CPR!

Like other people have said, if it's under warranty, get it fixed by Apple.

Not much you can do if it's a HDD hardware failure, unless you got a spare exact hdd where you could possible try swapping over the controller board.

Thank god time machine makes hdd failures a non issue these days

 

[shambock]

If I were you I'd tear that computer up and put a 2tb in there

Is it easy and pretty straightforward replacing a hard drive in an iMac? I'm not an expert on this kinda thing.....I have though replaced a hard drive on a PC. I guess it's the same kinda thing?

 

[Jonross]

Your hard drive is not failing, this happened to me too, did you recently upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard? Or done some upgrading or partitioning?

 

[mrsir2009]

Well, a HD failure is pretty much all it can be. If you haven't backed up try to get a professinal to save as much content from the disk as possible as soon as possible. Good luck!

 

[shambock]

Hi all.

I managed to do a fresh install of Leopard. It took about 9 hours to install. Very slow.

Desktop is up and running but is extremely slow. Keeps lagging all the time. Pretty impossible to use.

I purchased Disk Warrior and tried it just now. No luck. This is the message I'm getting:

DiskWarrior has successfully built a new directory for the disk named "MacintoshHD". The new directory cannot replace the original directory because of a disk malfunction"

Really don't know what else to do or try. Gonna have to take it to Genius Bar I suppose. :[

 

[velocityg4]

Hi all.

I managed to do a fresh install of Leopard. It took about 9 hours to install. Very slow.

Desktop is up and running but is extremely slow. Keeps lagging all the time. Pretty impossible to use.

I purchased Disk Warrior and tried it just now. No luck. This is the message I'm getting:

DiskWarrior has successfully built a new directory for the disk named "MacintoshHD". The new directory cannot replace the original directory because of a disk malfunction"

Really don't know what else to do or try. Gonna have to take it to Genius Bar I suppose. :[

You might as well stop beating a dead horse.

If it is under warranty I would bring it to the Genius Bar to be fixed. If not replace the drive yourself. If you are too nervous about doing the install have a tech replace the drive (not Apple or Best Buy as they charge outrages fees). Though I would not bother having them reinstall OS X as that is easy to do.

 

[shambock]

Just found out that my mac is past its warranty.

Will Apple definitely not fix this problem for free?

Not very confident about replacing the drive myself.