04-09-2009, 06:35 PM

I've read the stickys and tried all the suggestions there but still can't get my mac to boot.

It's an intel mac, my hdd is partitioned and I was running windows earlier when everything froze, I was then given a blue screen of death! It shut down and that was it.

I've not been able to boot into either windows or osx since, I get the ? folder and can hear what sounds like three faint ticks followed by a squeak repeated over and over comming from somewhere near the hdd.

Whenever I used my osx disk and go into disk utility there is no sign of my hdd just my dvd drive, I have a spare hdd which when plugged in is picked up no problem.

Does this sound like a failed hdd, does any one have any suggestions?
I have data on the windows partition which I desperatly need to recover and I dont have much time to do it, has any one got any experience using data recovery services? Do these services work? And does anyone know how much this sort of thing costs?

Sorry for the long post but I'm seriously stressed and before anyone asks, I havent backed up what I should have and yes, I am an idiot for not doing so!

04-09-2009, 08:23 PM

Whenever I used my osx disk and go into disk utility there is no sign of my hdd just my dvd drive, I have a spare hdd which when plugged in is picked up no problem.

That's usually a sign of hard drive failure.

Does this sound like a failed hdd, does any one have any suggestions?
I have data on the windows partition which I desperatly need to recover and I dont have much time to do it, has any one got any experience using data recovery services? Do these services work? And does anyone know how much this sort of thing costs?

Data recovery services are very expensive. You can do a Google search and compare prices but there is no guarantee that all your data can be recovered. OnTrack is one of the best. Link

But before you decide on a recovery service, you should try this: Remove the hard drive from the machine and place it in a USB external enclosure that is suitable. (SATA) Hook it to another Mac or even a Windows PC and see if you can read the data. If you can, you might get lucky and be able to extract your data.

I'm assuming that you did not have a backup of at least your OS X partition?

Regards.

04-10-2009, 03:27 AM

Thank you for your reply.

I'm going to pop into work and get a cradle and try what you suggest, I have another hdd for my mac so I'll get my macbook up and running with that and see what I can do, I do have a windows os pc so maybe I'll try connecting to that too.

I didn't back up my osx partition, the data I need is on the windows partition and It's only a few small files, I'm gutted. Live and learn eh, the hard way!

Thanks again
Stuart.