are my harddrives interchangeable? imac g3 and dell inspiron 530s

Question

are my harddrives interchangeable? imac g3 and dell inspiron 530s

i have a computer (DELL inspiron 530s) that recently has been saying hard disk drive failure when i try to start it up. it gives me the option to press F1 to continue or press F2 for setup. when i press F1 to continue a black screen will eventually pop up and say

No boot device available press ENTER key to retry

SATA-0: Installed
SATA-1: Installed
SATA-4: None
SATA-5: None

im not very experienced at working on PCs. i want to find out if the harddrive needs replaced or if its something else before i ivvest in a new hard drive.

PS. my wife was the first to experience this happen while i was at work. she said she didnt know what to do. but i guess it eventually did boot up completely after a few trys. i dont know if she kept hitting enter to retry or if she kept turning the PC on and off until it eventually worked. not sure what she did but she said that she didnt mess with any of the settings. i havent had the same luck. i have tried turning it off and on a few times and hitting enter over and over again but still get the same results

iMac, imac g3

Posted on Nov 16, 2013 5:33 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Klaus1

Level 9

52,749 points

Nov 17, 2013 5:51 AM in response to daileybread411

This is the Apple forum. Nobody here knows anything about Dell computers.

Reply

Answer 2

Jan Hedlund

Level 7

22,201 points

Nov 17, 2013 7:02 AM in response to daileybread411

An iMac G3 uses an ATA (PATA) hard drive, while the Dell computer in question seems to have SATA drives.

It appears as if the S.M.A.R.T. system has reported that a hard drive failure is imminent. In a case like that, if at all possible, one should immediately try to copy important files to (for example) a USB flash drive. After that, the hard drive can be replaced. I would suggest that you contact Dell support.

Jan

Reply

Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

82,841 points

Nov 17, 2013 1:29 PM in response to daileybread411

Reading the manual for your computer, it appears the hard drive is SATA. G3 Macs will read SATA drives if they are NTFS or FAT32 formatted and inserted in a USB or Firewire case that has a bridge to USB or Firewire to the SATA internally. The iMac G3 as mentioned below uses Parallel ATA for internal drives. Ideally you have at least an iMac DV which has Firewire. Those with USB that are G3s only supported USB 1.1 (whose speed is 15 Mbps). Apple didn't get USB 2 until the middle aged iMac G4s (the early ones didn't have USB 2 either). ExFAT is not supported on Macs until Mac OS X 10.6.4. This image below shows what Firewire looks like on an iMac G3:

Whether or not the common Data Recovery software for Macs can read PC files is unknown.

You can contact the vendors on my user tip and find out if they still have software that will run on your Mac with your Mac operating system.

Reply

Answer 4

a brody

Level 10

82,841 points

Nov 17, 2013 1:31 PM in response to a brody

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/FWU3ES2HDKU/will allow you to put the PC hard drive in a case that can be hooked up any of a number of ways to your iMac.

Reply