Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

hejjafish

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 7, 2008
1
0
I have a 24" intel imac with, i think, a hdd failure. I'd like to hear some opinions to confirm this before I tear it open to replace the hdd.

The string of problems I've encountered started a few days ago. I normally let my imac go to sleep by itself but, on this occasion I told it to sleep via the apple menu. When I awoke the imac the screen was frozen. No mouse movement, no clock movement, nothing. At this point I turned the power off and back on again. It didn't get past the white screen (before the gray with apple logo). I then tried resetting the PRAM, booting in safe mode, and booting from my os disc. Nothing worked.

After several tens of tries it magically booted. It stayed active long enough for me to back up all my data (transferring at least 100GB), reformat the hdd, reinstall leapord, transfer data back, and use it until I let it sleep again.

I'm back to the point where it won't boot again. It doesn't get past the white screen. I can't select a drive to boot from or boot from a disc. From what I gathered this is the hdd failing. Can anyone confirm?
 
thats what it sounds like. it could also be the connection between the hdd and the board, not reading it right or such. i would suggest getting it out and (gasp)putting it into a windows pc. use windows to format it, the run disk check. or download some software. afterwards, if it seems fine, put it back into the imac, format and install leopard, and see what happens


p.s. sorry about suggesting you use windows, i wouldnt put that on anybody, lol, but in this case its needed
 
I know this was half a year ago, but I had what appears to be the exact same problem, what i did was archive and install, and it hasn't had problems booting since.:)
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.