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Is my hard disk fried?!?

I have a 2009 imac running Snow leopard. It was running ridiculously slow and stalling out on programs like crazy this morning, I had to force shut down several programs several times (usually Firefox or Photoshop - though I did relaunch Finder once as well). Moving files even from folder to folder was painful, as was opening folders. Things had been running slowly on and off yesterday but not enough for me to have any concerns over it but when I tried to work this morning it was next to impossible as I could barely launch files or had to wait up to 10 minutes for a page to load.

I restarted several times throughout the day, still not working well. I checked for software updates on all the affected programs, all were up to date. I rebooted from CD, ran disk utility on it, it said everything was fine. I knew it wasn't fine so I started to back up my files just in case - I had two firewire backup drives daisy chained to the computer. It was having great difficulty backing up to the master backup drive, all files would copy painfully slowly. What was usually a 30 second back up took up to 2 hours if it worked at all without stalling. I have no idea what, if anything, actually got backed up. Again I started from CD and ran disk utility to fix the drive and again it said nothing was wrong.

I quit off disk utility which prompted a restart and ejected the disk. It restarted slowly but allowed me to log in my user and loaded my desktop. While launching the start up programs I have (Mail and Firefox auto start) it stalled. I could move my mouse, view the desktop but nothing else. I waited about 10 minutes to see if it would recover and when it didn't resolve and wouldn't allow me to force quit the programs it was hung up on, I hard restarted using the power button. Upon launch, I got the white screen with the question mark in the file.

I've followed every direction on this page http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570. I can still successfully start from CD but I can't run disk utility as it isn't even recognizing that I have a hard drive. Where my hard disk is supposed to be, it has the icon and says media. It shows the total capacity as 0 bytes and that it's an unformatted drive.

I don't know what to do from here - I really need the information that is on this drive if possible as I have a work deadline looming and I have no idea if it backed up or not. I'm going to drag the back up drives to the inlaws as they have a mac and see what I do have copies of. I was also considering trying to access it in target disk mode off of her computer. Is this a bad idea?

We live in a small town and there is no local mac support. Any information as to what I can do to fix my computer and get the info off of it is greatly appreciated!!

imac, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Oct 7, 2010 5:00 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Oct 7, 2010 5:31 PM

Greetings,
but I can't run disk utility as it isn't even recognizing that I have a hard drive. Where my hard disk is supposed to be, it has the icon and says media. It shows the total capacity as 0 bytes and that it's an unformatted drive.

If disk utility isn't showing a mounted volume like "Macintosh HD" that does suggest an issue with the drive. This could be physical, or something wrong with the format / partition table.

If you weren't maintaining regular backups like with Time Machine then your priority #1 should be to try to get the data off the drive if it is extremely important data. Any repairs you might do be it with Disk Utility or other repair software (Disk Warrior, Drive Genius, Tech Tool Pro, etc.) run the risk of making whatever data is on the drive harder to recover. Repair programs by their nature move data on the drive. If this drive is truly failed, you want to avoid making changes as much as possible so data recovery software / companies have the best chance to get the data off.

Target disk mode would certainly be my next step.
It might also be worthwhile to reset the SMC which will also reset the drive controller, just in case it is not mounting for other reasons: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

If you cannot access the drive in Target disk mode then you have 3 choices:
A. Try repairing using Disk Utility or other program and hope that the repairs are sufficient to get the drive up and running and risk moving some data in the process (which as mentioned above makes data recovery more difficult).

B. Contact a data recovery professional.
_There are many nationwide / worldwide data recovery companies out there. Here are a few examples:
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com
http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/
http://www.totalrecall.com/

C. Use data recovery software to attempt to extract data off the drive.
_Here are a few examples:
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
http://www.macintosh-data-recovery.com/
http://www.subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?mainpage=product_info&productsid=1

Long term the question is, is this a physical issue with the computer/drive or a software issue (formatting)?

Completely erasing the drive would be the way to tell. If you attempt to erase the drive and are unable to, this would suggest a physical issue with the drive, its connection to the logic board, or the logic board itself.

If you can erase the drive then this is probably just a software issue. Formatting of the drive broke down for "X" reason. There are many, hard shut downs, power outages, micro power surges, force quitting applications 100 times a day, etc.

Either way, maintaing regular automated backups is our safety net: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1553

I hope that helps and best of luck to you.
4 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Oct 7, 2010 5:31 PM in response to vkr

Greetings,
but I can't run disk utility as it isn't even recognizing that I have a hard drive. Where my hard disk is supposed to be, it has the icon and says media. It shows the total capacity as 0 bytes and that it's an unformatted drive.

If disk utility isn't showing a mounted volume like "Macintosh HD" that does suggest an issue with the drive. This could be physical, or something wrong with the format / partition table.

If you weren't maintaining regular backups like with Time Machine then your priority #1 should be to try to get the data off the drive if it is extremely important data. Any repairs you might do be it with Disk Utility or other repair software (Disk Warrior, Drive Genius, Tech Tool Pro, etc.) run the risk of making whatever data is on the drive harder to recover. Repair programs by their nature move data on the drive. If this drive is truly failed, you want to avoid making changes as much as possible so data recovery software / companies have the best chance to get the data off.

Target disk mode would certainly be my next step.
It might also be worthwhile to reset the SMC which will also reset the drive controller, just in case it is not mounting for other reasons: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

If you cannot access the drive in Target disk mode then you have 3 choices:
A. Try repairing using Disk Utility or other program and hope that the repairs are sufficient to get the drive up and running and risk moving some data in the process (which as mentioned above makes data recovery more difficult).

B. Contact a data recovery professional.
_There are many nationwide / worldwide data recovery companies out there. Here are a few examples:
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com
http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/
http://www.totalrecall.com/

C. Use data recovery software to attempt to extract data off the drive.
_Here are a few examples:
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
http://www.macintosh-data-recovery.com/
http://www.subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?mainpage=product_info&productsid=1

Long term the question is, is this a physical issue with the computer/drive or a software issue (formatting)?

Completely erasing the drive would be the way to tell. If you attempt to erase the drive and are unable to, this would suggest a physical issue with the drive, its connection to the logic board, or the logic board itself.

If you can erase the drive then this is probably just a software issue. Formatting of the drive broke down for "X" reason. There are many, hard shut downs, power outages, micro power surges, force quitting applications 100 times a day, etc.

Either way, maintaing regular automated backups is our safety net: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1553

I hope that helps and best of luck to you.

Oct 7, 2010 5:50 PM in response to MadisonP

Thank you for your advice! I've not been using Time Machine as it's never ever worked since the day I got this computer, despite which drives I hooked up to it and despite taking the comp to the tech guy. I've been doing manual back ups periodically so that I never lose as much as I'm willing to redo. However, when I was double checking some of the files that were supposedly backed up, I found that my drag and drop had skipped several documents inside of files which makes no sense to me. I did try to redo them individually but I have no idea if it worked or not until I hook up the back up drives.

I tried the SMC reset and it didn't solve the start up issue but it did make the hard drive viewable again in Disk utility. Given your advice and my iffy backup, I am going to pack everything over to the other computer to see what I can pull off of it (if anything) before I repair the disk.

Thank you VERY much for your help - at least I have a fighting chance now! I'll continue to check my emails and report back later tonight to update this thread. Perhaps I can get it fixed enough to help the next person or at least serve as a good warning to maintain your back ups more religiously than twice a week.

Oct 7, 2010 9:39 PM in response to vkr

So I hooked up the computer as a target disk and it set up just fine. Her computer had an auto scan on it so I let it run the scan before it mounted the disk. The scan got him up on a file called info.plist (I don't have any more information than what was shown onscreen). She'd been having her own computer issues (time stalling and Firefox crashing) before I'd hooked the two together so I decided it'd be best to restart it. When we restarted her computer and redid the connection between the two, it no longer recognizes I have a hard drive and won't mount it. I tried the SMC reset again and it didn't work this time. I still have to start it from disk and it still doesn't recognize my hard disk on Disk Utility.

On the bright side, the vast majority of my critical files did back up to my backup drives before the initial crash so I didn't lose too much data (and, since I did access it once, I'm assuming it's still recoverable anyhow). So I'm still where I was initially only without the fear that my drive is totally unsalvageable.

Is my hard disk fried?!?

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