G4 Dual 1.43 Ghtz won't boot and disk utility won't repair it

This isn't going to be easy.

Does disk utility try to repair the drive? If it mounts, you could try the software I list below.

You either goint to have to get an external firewire drive & install some mac os on it. Then run some utilities from this drive or you going to have to get the drive out and mount in an external enclosure & run utilities.

There our commercial places that recover data. They will not be cheap.

I do not know what type of drive you have in the machine. So before buying an empty enclosure check.

Has everything interface:

FireWire 800/400 + USB2, + eSATA 'Quad Interface'

&

save a little money interface:

FireWire 400 + USB 2.0

This web page lists both external harddrive types. You may need to scroll to the right to see both.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

The latest the hard drive enclosures support the newer serial ata drives. The drive and closure that I list supports only older parallel ata.

Here is an external hd enclosure.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW91UAL1K/

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Perhaps Disk Warrior will be of some help:

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

"Stellar Phoenix Macintosh - Mac data recovery software, recovers data from damaged, deleted, or corrupted volumes and even from initialized disks."

They have a trial version, so I guess you can see if your data can be recovered...

http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-data-recovery.htm

"Data Rescue II is the best data recovery software on the market for recovering files from a problem hard drive. Data Rescue II works when other tools fail. Data Rescue II is also completely safe to use since it does not attempt any risky repairs to the drive while its scanning."

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

FileSalvage is an extremely powerful Macintosh application for exploring and recovering deleted files from a drive or volume. FileSalvage is designed to restore files that have:

-- been accidentally deleted.

-- become unreadable due to media faults.

-- been stored on a drive before it was re-initialized/formatted.

http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id= 1

"TestDisk is a free data recovery utility. It was primarily designed to help recover lost data storage partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally erasing a partition table)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TestDisk

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"*Hard drive data recovery and warranty implications*

Hard drives that have become non-functional through normal use, and have had data recovery performed on them by DriveSavers or Ontrack Data Recovery can be returned to Apple for warranty service. This includes products covered by the AppleCare Protection Plan. The cost of any data recovery attempts is not covered by the Apple Limited Warranty."

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3974?viewlocale=en_US

Entering:

mac data recovery

into Google will list some firms who specialize in recovering data. Data recovery isn't cheap.

Examples:

1) Ontrack Data Recovery is the world leader in data recovery services and data recovery software offering the fastest, most convenient and cost-effective solutions to clients who have experienced data loss.

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

2) Enter the world of DriveSavers Data Recovery…

* Data Recovery Tools

* Data Recovery Process

* Data Recovery Cleanroom

http://www.drivesavers.com/