iMac Hardrive

nicola00

Hardrive is goosed , on turn on left with the White loading screen with apple logo an the "working circle" (sorry couldn't think of name for it) £150 to get fixed from apple and I lose everything

So question is
Can I get it onto main screen (system) so I can pull off what I need??

If connect with Ethernet from laptop, start up with T button held, what will I be able to gain access to?

I've tried various restart options, which did work for a while but now just sits in this White screen. Have just checked the external drive and it looks like the last 2 backups failed, so I have potentially lost weeks worth of work, photos etc.

HO87

What model iMac do you have? Both the iMac G5's 17" and 20" have problems with failing logic boards due to capacitor compromise. This may be the problem not necessarily a failure of the hard drive which will probably mean that your data is still sitting safely on you hard drive.

If your hard drive is actually still working you could try booting your machine using what is known as a Linux Live CD. As Macs usually have a lighter RAM than their PC equivalent I suggest that you use a lightweight version of Linux such as Xubuntu which requires only 256Mb of RAM to run. Download the standard version here (this is the i386 ISO file for the 10.04 version). The ISO file needs to be burn to a CD-R as an iso (or image) file. Simply copying it to the disc will not work.

If you have an external hard drive (which does not have an operating system installed on it) and an external two button USB mouse plug them into the iMac and once you have burnt your CD insert it into the optical disc drive and switch the machine on.

On boot the EMI (BIOS equivalent) will automatically search the machine for bootable operating systems and, by the sounds of it, will probably discover that the onboard OS is not playing but will then find a bootable OS (Xubuntu) on the optical drive. The screen will appear to go blank but shortly afterwards three icons will appear at the bottom of the screen, quickly followed by a language selection screen. It will probably self-select English but you will need to press enter for it to move on.

It will start to load and ask you if you would like to try Xubuntu or to install it. Ensure that you select the try option or you will then install Xubuntu - something you will not want to do. Nothing is installed or changed on your computer by doing this. The loading process shouldn't take too long and you will then have a blue desktop screen open. Go to the top left corner and left click (using your two button mouse) on the "Home" folder, in the window that opens you can get access to your hard drive - it may well be called "filesystem" or MACHDD". If it isn't showing then it may well have failed but there are other things to do. Once you are into your hard drive you should be able to copy your crucial files across to your external drive - which should also be showing.

Good luck.

nicola00

Thank you so much, you've explained it great and I think I've followed most of it. I will re-read once home and hopefully give it a go later.