If you can determine, by looking into the system (profiler, or 'get info' on
the HDD itself) to see what format type is shown, then you'd know more
and could deal with the shop with a little bit more knowledge. Once
you are sure about what you are looking at, the tech at the shop should
be able to do the tasks simply enough; you may need to leave it there.
Since the hard drive needs, or appears to need, reformating, everything
on the hard disk drive will be lost. All your applications, saved works and
files, user information, etc; as a part of erasing/reformatting the hard drive.
A shop may be able to move your files over to another HDD and reformat
your hard disk drive and then move all your files back. I know I could do it
and I only have an externally enclosed FireWire hard disk drive and the OS
installer discs for my systems; and a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner from
Bombich Software. It's donationware and will run unrestricted from download.
Once you make a clone (to a properly formatted external FireWire HDD)
you can see if it works to boot your computer, prior to erase/reformat
or zeroing data on the computer's internal drive in the process of eventual
reinstall. You can re-clone the moved content of your whole computer
drive back into the computer's hard disk drive using the CCC utility. This
requires you have a FW enclosed HDD large enough to handle it. [Of
course, you could also use CCC to move/clone just the System with its
user folders and stuff; and then reinstall all your apps later on.]
Be prepared to lose all your data presently on the hard disk drive; unless
you have the tools and want to learn how to clone your computer's HDD
content to a FW external drive and see if it can restart your computer.
Once you can get a good clone made, you then can think about wiping
the computer's internal hard disk drive. If, at this point, something does
happen and you can't use a proven clone to restore (you'd use CCC
again to move it back properly, since you can't drag and drop copy a
system in OSX) you'd still use the booted OSX installer disc#1 to use
the Disk Utility in a drop-down menu below "Installer" and use the tools
in there. The basic ones you'd see, "repair disk" and "repair disk perm-
issions" won't do it; additional tools are in another menu in D.U. and
since Tiger is a little different than the Panther I'm using today, I'm
not really familiar and can't reference the D.U. in my Mac to see the
exact page layout in that utility. I've used Tiger's D.U. in my other Mac.
PS: If you were using Panther, I'd say to check to see if you
have "Journaling" turned on in the Disk Utility (native one in
the System) because HFS+ with Journaling disabled may
also cause a problem with some applications. But if your
computer was formatted 'Standard HFS' it'd need a reformat.
