Internal HD Problem

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Hi Guys,
I have an urgent situtation here, so i hope you can help me!

So the problem is; I had a startup problem on my IMac a few days ago! I was able to start windows but not the Osx. I had the gray screen with the apple logo. I found something on google and tried to solve the problem by unmounting and mounting the mac formatted hd, boot with Osx dvd and tried to repair the HD with the Disk Utilities and that worked.

But today after I've restarted i had the same problem! This time I cant even see the partitions. There is no mac os and windows partition. I still can use Windows without any problem. I have jobs to do in a few days so i dont have much time and I really need to save or at least rescue my files.

So, any guess?!
Thanks for reading guys!
 
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From your description it's more likely your hard drive has failed. You don't say what iMac you have. You can't see the 2 partitions, but does disk utility see the drive? If it does, you'd be better off running a utility such as Disk Warrior over the drive. If it appears the hard drive is defective, you'd be better off popping a new one in and reinstalling your OS and apps so you can get back to work quickly. Then mount the bad disk in an external case and use a recovery utility such as Data Rescue to try to recover your data. This assumes you don't have warranty.
 
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Oh sorry, my mistake!
"IMac 20" Intel Core 2 Duo 2,66Ghz, , 2GB Ram, 256MB Nvidia GeForce 9400, 320GB HDD". Thats my IMac . . .

As I said before, i was able to see both of the partitions before (in Disk Utility) but i couldn't mount the OsX Drive! This time I cannot even see the Partitions (in Disk Utility) but I see the drive in one piece (300GB)! I didn't try to erase but this could work maybe! But I wont risk it!

What I don't understand is; how am I able to use Windows without any problem if there is a hardware problem with the HDD. I'M using "Mac Drive" in Windows so I can see and change OsX drivers in Windows. But I get the error message (with my translation :) "Cannot access drive! The Drive structure is corrupted and cannot be read" or something like this!

I've tried Disk Warrior but there is a problem as well! It keeps restarting the computer without booting the app! I still have warranty but i don't have enough time and I'm afraid they're not even trying to rescue the files (which I've experienced before). But I'll try it anyway I guess...

Thanks for reading again! I hope you have new ideas!
 

chscag

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Techiesteve is probably correct in that you have hard drive problems. If you can get into Windows and use Mac Drive, use it to save off all your data and documents to an external hard drive. Also save whatever Windows information you can. It's very possible that only the part of the drive which contains OS X is damaged physically or the file and folder structure is damaged. That would allow booting to Windows but not OS X.

Regards.
 
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Thank you chscag,
but unfortunately i still have this error message in Windows! So I cannot reach my files anymore! Looks like this is my end . . .
 

chscag

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Thank you chscag,
but unfortunately i still have this error message in Windows! So I cannot reach my files anymore! Looks like this is my end . . .

Sorry to hear that. Save whatever you can (if anything) and start thinking about replacing the hard drive. It's possible that after you remove the defective hard drive you may be able to access the data by placing the drive in an external USB carrier. I've done that several times with drives that were inaccessible from the operating system but were able to be accessed once they were removed and placed in an external carrier. Depends on how bad the drive has been damaged.

Regards.
 
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Thanks again chscag!

I found a way to reach my files at last! Now I'm backing up my files! I hope the User Folder includes everything I need! Is there anything important that I can backup? For example; where are my address book files? They are important for me!

And I noticed that; there is nothing about my OsX Partition in the /Volumes folder! My Windows Partition and External Drive partition are there but the OsX one is missing! Could it be that I've unmounted it and thats why its not working all the time?! And if this is the reason, how can i fix it! I dont know the terminal commands so i cannot do it by myself!

I still wont thing about the hardware problem because the Imac is just 4 months old! A Mac shouldn't broke (at least hardware) so fast am I wrong?!

Thank you guys for your support!

volumes.jpg

mycomputerj.jpg
 

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