dead imac - help!
 

When I got home from work tonight, I was informed that "the computer is dead." It's an iMac DV 400 w/1GB RAM and Panther. When I went to boot it, it sat with a blank screen for a long time, then gave the folder with flashing question mark. I proceeded to boot from my old OS 9 utility CD (which worked) but the hard drive didn't show up on the desktop. I checked it with Disk First Aid, Tech Tool, Disk Warrior, and Norton (all of which are older versions). None of them could see the hard drive.

I also booted from the Panther Installer Disk #1 and checked with disk utility. I could see the hard drive, but it just looks like a single drive, rather than showing the two partitions that supposed to be there. It shows up as:

57.3 GB Maxtor 6Y060L0

When I highlight it, the buttons to "Verify Disk" or "Repair Disk" remain greyed out.

It seems that the drive is dead...

There isn't any mission-critical data on it, but we may have lost a bunch of mp3s, e-mail, etc. The hard drive actually isn't that old (maybe a year or less) as I upgraded from a 10GB to a 60GB awhile back.

I don't have another computer around here to swap the drive into, so I can't check the drive in another box. Do you have any suggestions before I chalk this up to a dead drive and move on?

Irony of ironies:

(1) I ordered a new eMac this morning, and

(2) I was lamenting on the way to work today that I hadn't backed up the iMac in awhile, and came home tonight with plans to do it.

Coincidence? Or an angry iMac punishing me for replacing it?

Anyway, please help. Thanks,

--jmb

Disk Warrior 3? - I've been shocked at the drives this has recovered for me.

ProSoft Data Rescue?

Good Luck

Hugh

Read this post, http://forums.macosxhints.com/showth...threadid=16099
It tells how to "bless" the system using the CLI. To do that, boot up while holding down the Apple/Command key and S key.
If the HD isn't dead, this might get you going.

bootable cd
 

Okay, I'm willing to go with Disk Warrior (or Data Rescue, for that matter) but I don't know how to burn a bootable CD in X. I have used BootCD in the past, but it is not Panther compatible. My PowerBook (which I'm posting from) is running Panther, so it's a no go. Is there any other easy way to burn a bootable CD in X (10.3?)???

access from tiBook?
 

Another option might be to get at the iMac from my tiBook. Any ideas? Again, I can't boot the iMac, but perhaps I could do it from target disk mode, or some such. Does that even work for an older iMac? If so, how? Thanks again.

Re: access from tiBook?
 

To get into Target disk mode hold down the T key at startup, until you see the firewire symbol on the screen. connect the two computer with a 6 pin firewire cable. If you don't have a firewire port on the iMac, you can't connect from your tibook. If the connection works you may be able to drag your file over to your tibook.
good luck!

Your iMac will boot in TDM as noted above. It needs to have the latest firmware to do it. (4.1.9)

The 2.x series firmware may work but it can be very flaky. It's best to upgrade.

Hugh

Okay, I found a firewire cable, booted into target disk mode, and plugged in. I was told that the volume was unreadable, would I like to initialize? blah, blah, blah. I minimized that window and downloaded the demo of Data Rescue from ProSoft. It looks like it found ~170,000 files, but I can't recover more than one at a time unless I buy it ($89). I have yet to try Disk Warrior.

Question: How would you proceed? Just buy and fire up Disk Warrior ($79)? Or buy and use Data Rescue first to make sure I've recovered everything, then use Disk Warrior? I have no problem buying Disk Warrior -- I've been planning on doing it for quite some time -- however, I don't want to risk my data. Is it possible that Disk Warrior could thrash my data in attempting to repair the drive?

Disk Warrior will let you choose whether or not to proceed. I would try that first. It generally let's you know if it wants to do something dangerous.

I can't recommend it highly enough.

Hugh

Sounds good... But does it run in Panther? That's what I have on my tiBook... Don't want to buy it if I can't use it. Thanks again for your help.

Edit: Just answered my own question... It's a no go from a Panther drive, but I could use the CD. But I'm not planning on waiting 3 weeks for that. One option would be to wait until tomorrow, burn a bootable disk at work (where there's a computer with Jaguar) using BootCD and load Disk Warrior on it. Then I can fix everything tomorrow night.

If you have a computer shop near you - you can buy a bootable CD.

Hugh

Is there any way to get to the desktop when I boot from the Jaguar installation CD? I might be able to run it off my drive on the firewire target disk after booting that way. Otherwise I'll have to wait until tomorrow (nothing's open right now) in which case BootCD will be the easiest and cheapest solution. Bummer.

Boot CD will supposedly work until your circumstances. I've never tried it with Disk Warrior.

Did TDM work?

Hugh

Yes, TDM worked like a charm. Thanks! See five posts above your most recent for details (sorry, I've been flooding my own thread!). I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get this fixed once I can get my hand on a Jaguar machine.

Thanks again for all of your help!

Have a good night...

I've made a Jaguar bootable CD with BootCD and put DiskWarrior on it. It works great...in fact, better than the real CD. The problem with the real CD is that the computer would hang upon restart or shutdown after the repair. Also, it would not start up one of my machines. The Alsoft tech person said to use BootCD and it worked. The only drawback is that it takes a long time for the computer to boot with BootCD. The advantage with BootCD is that you do have access to your desktop whereas with a regular Apple boot disk you only have access to the installer and the disk utility. I don't know what you can do from the BootCD desktop however, because I've never tried. You could put the Terminal on the CD (if it is not there by default), but I don't know if enough of the BSD subsystem is there to do anything with it.

Update
 

Alright, I made a bootable CD with BootCD today at work, loaded Disk Warrior 3 onto it, and then tested it out on my work computer. It worked fine, and I was able to run Disk Warrior to rebuild the directory of that computer's hard drive.

When I got home tonight, I booted the dead iMac off the CD, then launched Disk Warrior. The only disks that it can find are the bootable CD and the associated RAM disk (which BootCD creates). When I launched Disk Utility, it can see the hard drive but, again, Disk Warrior can't see it.

Once again, this disk haf two partitions, but the partitions aren't visible, and the verify and repair buttons are greyed out. I'm beginning to lose hope. The good news is that I was able to see files on the drive using the Data Rescue via target disk mode.

Any other suggestions as to what I might try? Thanks!

--jmb

Have you tried starting up in single-user mode and running fsck -y ? Start up with the command and s keys selected to get started. Then follow the instructions on the screen.

The following are also both longshots.

DiskWarrior has a repair mode and a scavenge mode. Can it see the volumes in scavenge mode? By the way, I don't know if DiskWarrior in scavenge mode will screw things up for Data Rescue or not. I can't tell you which might be more effective either.

Can you use the Terminal (if there is one put on the BootCD disk by default or if you put one on there) to mount those partitions? This is a longshot, because it requires that BootCD installed Terminal on itself and that it installed a copy of diskutil as well.

I haven't tried single user mode but, since I can't get it to boot at all, I didn't think that I'd be able to get it to boot in single user mode. Also, I thought that Disk Utility is just a front end for fsck -- is that right? If so, I suspect that it won't work since I can't get Disk Utility to work.

BootCD does include both Terminal and Disk Utility (not sure if about diskutil). I don't know how to mount volumes from the terminal, so I haven't tried that. I also don't know what you mean by scavenge mode. All that I can see to switch is toggling back and forth between Directory and Hardware. When I go to hardware, the drive *does* show up, and when I hit 'Test Device' it says that the S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics indicate that the drive is functioning properly.

If you can walk me through mounting the volume in the terminal, I can give it a shot. Thanks!

Okay, found out that it *does* have disutil from the command line, but I'm not sure how to work it... Also, from the Disk Utility app, when I click on the hard drive, it says that I've selected 1 drive and 0 volumes. This can't be good... Looks like it thinks I have a blank disk.

I think that single user mode starts up without using the disk (just from what is coded in the hardware of the machine without the HD), so I think you could still boot into single user mode (but I might be wrong). It does not take long to try this out and it is worth a shot.

I don't recall, but I think you start up DiskWarrior with the shift or option or command key held down. Look in the user manual for DiskWarrior.

In Terminal, type

diskutil mountDisk disk0

(the above 0 is a zero).
You could also try

fsck_hfs -n /dev/disk0s9

(the -n option tells fsck_hfs not to do any actual repairs. Replace the -n and try again if you want to do the repairs).

What about Nortan Disk Doctor?
 

I know a lot of people don't like Nortan but it has saved my butt a number of times. It saved my dying firewire drive 3 momths ago and saved at least something out of every mac I ever owned. (on my 6th one now).

Okay, just in case someone else stumbles across a similar problem, I wanted to bring this issue to an end. I ended up recovering my data in target disk mode using Data Rescue. I then had to reformat and the HD and reinstall Panther (none of the disk utilities could revive it). I got it back up and running and a few days later it crashed hard again. Disk Warrior still tells me that, according to the S.M.A.R.T. report, the drive is working fine. I ended up unplugging the computer and sticking it in the corner. Our new eMac finally arrived, and life is good. I still haven't done anything with the iMac, but the drive is still under warranty (it was an upgrade about a year ago) so I'm going to pull it and get it replaced.

Bottom line... Data Rescue works.

Thanks again one and all.

P.S. I'm now working through troubles with my PowerBook G4. The fun never ends!