iMac g5 will not mount in target disk mode

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Level 1

20 points

iMac g5 will not mount in target disk mode

I am trying to recover data from an iMac G5 with a failing hard drive. The mac recently stopped booting and does not get past the grey startup screen before just turning off. There have been many other cases like this that I have looked at, but I still have not found a solution. I have started up from the install disk and can see that disk utility still regonizes the disk (althought it is marked as failing) but no options for repairing or verifying are available (greyed out). System Profiler on the non-target mac can see the drive (under firewire tab), but I don't know if I can mount it because Disk Utility can not see it. Is there anything I can do to extract the files? Thanks for any help you can offer. Sheldon

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Feb 6, 2012 6:13 PM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,418 points

Feb 6, 2012 6:27 PM in response to dareiff

If the HD has failed on the old computer then you can either recover from your backup, however I'm assuming from your post you were not backing up. If that is the case then you can purchase Data Rescue 3 (Google it) and see if it can recover some data or you will need to take it to a data recovery service which will be extremely expensive.

As a general rule of thumb ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS have a solid backup plan! Beginning with Leopard 10.5.x there is no excuse to not at least be using Time Machine. If you are not familiar with TM then please watch the Time Machine Tutorial.

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Answer 2

dareiff Author

Level 1

20 points

Feb 7, 2012 3:22 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Thanks, I will look at Data Rescue, however I not convinced the drive actually has any kind of hardware malfunction. It does spin and doen't make noises. The SMART status puts it at "failing", but I'm not sure it has acutally failed yet. And by the way, I do backup, but this is my gradparents computer and some things were backed up, but there was no regular backups being done. This is something I will make sure to set up them up with for their new mac. Anyone have suggestions on either how to mount it in TDM or how to get it to boot again so it is usable to transfer files?

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Answer 3

R C-R

Level 6

17,782 points

Feb 7, 2012 4:09 AM in response to dareiff

If the drive is failing, the more times you try to access it the closer it will get to total failure. If the data on it is important, don't try to boot from it (since that involves a lot of unnecessary file access).

If TDM won't work, consider removing the drive from the G5 & attaching it to an inexpensive USB drive adaptor like this one.

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Answer 4

dareiff Author

Level 1

20 points

Feb 7, 2012 2:39 PM in response to R C-R

This may be what I will do, but before I do that, would it be possible to remove the drive from a WD mybook enclosure and replace it with the failing one temorarily just to pull data off?

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Answer 5

R C-R

Level 6

17,782 points

Feb 7, 2012 3:06 PM in response to dareiff

I don't have any firsthand experience with disassembling WD cases so I can't tell you how practical that would be, but it doesn't sound to me like a good idea.

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Answer 6

dareiff Author

Level 1

20 points

Mar 3, 2012 12:55 PM in response to dareiff

Just to follow up, I ended up buying a SATA to usb adapter from newegg which worked great. I am now copying files. Not sure what was wrong with the G5 and why it wouldn't boot. Possibly had something to do with the fact that permissions were all messed up and no changes could not be saved to the drive.

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