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Level 1

30 points

Wife's iMac won't boot-Target disk mode won't work

I've tried single user mode and target disk mode. Noting except single user mode will work and I don't know enough UNIX for that.

Her iMac is running ML and is about 4 years old. It's attached to my 3,1 Mac Pro via Firewire. I have a physical keyboard attached to her iMac by USB. Starting up with "T" depressed or "S" or even command-R or the option key to choose recovery.

Edit - while typing this, the screen came up allowing me to reinstall ML, etc. I chose to go into Disk Utility, selected her boot drive, and chose repair. After a few minutes the message came up that it could not be repaired and to move as many files off it as possible. I do have one partition that still showed with my files on it, but I again cannot get the iMac to either reboot or go into Target mode.

Any help recovering her files would be most appreciated.

Posted on Jun 6, 2014 4:04 PM

Best reply

dianeoforegon

Level 5

7,287 points

Posted on Jun 7, 2014 5:34 AM

Do you have an external drive? If yes, do you have room to create a partition on the drive that is large enough to backup the files on her drive?

If no, go out and buy an external drive.

I'm assuming she can't boot into her drive now.

Attach the drive to your computer and format the external drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - Partition Map Scheme: GUID.

You'll need two partitons.

1 Enough space to backup her computer

2 40GB would be plenty to install OS X with no other applications or files.

Install OS X on her drive. You can download via the Mac App Store (MAS). You might want to move her to Mavericks if she meet the requirments. (see below)

After installing OS X, download SuperDuper to clone her drive. It's free to do a full erase and clone backup.

Eject drive and attach to her computer.

Hold down Option key when launching her computer and select the external drive.

Clone her drive.

Verify that the data was copied to the clone.

Open Disk Utility and select her Macintosh HD (internal drive)

Erase

It should default to these options:

Format the external drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - Partition Map Scheme: GUID

Now you can install Mountain Lion or clone over the Mavericks install to the internal drive.

After you boot from internal drive, copy over her personal files.

Make sure you make the User's Library visitble before booting into the interal drive so you can see contents. How to enable the User’s Library folder

Since she was running Mountain Lion, her applications are probably OK, but check this site to be sure .

http://roaringapps.com/

OS X Mavericks: System Requirements

To install Mavericks, you need one of these Macs:

▪ iMac (Mid-2007 or later)

▪ MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)

▪ MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later),

▪ MacBook Pro (15-inch or 17-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later)

▪ MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)

▪ Mac mini (Early 2009 or later)

▪ Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)

▪ Xserve (Early 2009)

Your Mac also needs:

▪ OS X Mountain Lion, Lion, or Snow Leopard v10.6.8 already installed

▪ 2 GB or more of memory

▪ 8 GB or more of available space

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

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20 replies

Nov 2, 2014 2:23 AM in response to Don T

I'm having the same issue and have followed all the way up till using the super duper application. The hard drive that I want to clone does not show up. I am currently running from a bootable drive on a portable hard disk on the iMac hat has the hard drive.

I have tried to verify/repair disk but i have the same error as you. I have yet to try via target disk mode as the Hard drive does not show up on "start up disk" under system preferences. It does, however, show up in disk utility. But whenever I try to repair the disk, it shows an error and the disk disappears from disk utility.

Nov 7, 2014 3:43 AM in response to fenatellie

Hi everyone,

I'm exactly in the same situation as Fenatellie here. Followed the -outstandingly helpful- instructions of Dianeoforegon, but I'm absolutely blocked with SuperDuper! application.

Macintosh HD appears on Disk Utility, but it cannot be mounted or repaired. System throws the message of "Backup as many files as possible, et cetera..." and that's all I get. So I'm quite locked in this loop, as I cannot get the HD cloned because it's not mounted, but it cannot be mounted using Disk Utility... Any workaround here to recover all the sensitive information? DiskWarrior?

Cheers.

Don T Author

Level 1

30 points

Nov 7, 2014 6:31 AM in response to WistfulMod

If you got the dying drive to show by booting from an external hard drive, per the suggestion, then it will show up on the desktop when you boot into the newly installed partition with a fresh, minimal OS. I don't remember exactly, but I had to keep clicking the "Mount" button several times for this to work. What I do remember is that things were kind of flaky and I couldn't use SuperDuper to make a clone. I had to go into the old drive (mounted on the desktop when booted into the external drive), open her Users folder, and copy the key files by dragging them onto the new partition on the external drive. I was able to get everything needed off. To copy from my earlier post about what ended up working for me:

Took a spare external FW drive and partitioned it on my working Mac Pro.
Installed a fresh copy of 10.8 on one partition. This enabled the iMac to see a working system and boot into it (BTW, the problem was a dying hard drive)
Started the iMac, holding down the option key immediately, letting me choose the external partition with the OS on it.
Now that I could get into the iMac, I used Disk Utility to show the iMac drive. This took several attempts with warnings that I need to rescue the data ASAP.
Copied the files from the dying iMac drive to the empty partition on the external drive

Nov 7, 2014 11:38 AM in response to Don T

Unfortunately nothing seems to work. I have given up all hope and have decided to erase and reformat the SATA harddrive. Guess what. I can't. disk utility says it cant erase the drive as the file directory can not be recognized. How awesome is that. I guess it is totally fried for me. My apartment had short-circuited a while ago. Thanks everyone though, I am just gonna get a new HD and use time machine from now on.

Don T Author

Level 1

30 points

Nov 7, 2014 11:47 AM in response to fenatellie

Sorry to hear that. Sounds like the power spike did you in. I would make 2 recommendations moving forward:

1. Get a good UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). APC makes a bunch of them. Get at least the 1500 RS to guard against power failure/spikes

2. Have at least one more external drive and use SuperDuper to make a backup. I have more than one. I have SD do a daily backup and a weekly backup. These can be made bootable in case you need to go backward. Time Machine is fine, but it's not enough.

Good luck. I think we only paid about $260 for the Apple Store to replace her hard drive.

Wife's iMac won't boot-Target disk mode won't work