HELP! I think MY Hard Drive DIED!

I know, i know. STOP YELLING!


So i have a car that i love very much, and i also have a MacBook that i love. I use the forums for no other purpose then to read about my car and how to modify it. SOOOOOO... i read on my car forums how to manipulate the ECU using a windows based program, which sucks because i dont have a shiny aluminum cased computer that i paid a lot of money for that runs windows, kinda bummed, still love my macbook though... but i digress...

so i start thinkin... im gonna run bootcamp and install windows on my computer! Well then I get all excited. I'm like Jo Jo the idiot circus boy with a pretty new pet. <Tommy Boy>

I open bootcamp and set aside 10 gigs of space aside from my HD for the windows install...it does its thing...it tells me to insert windows disk, i do, next thing you know, badda bing, badda boom, its askin me if i wanna partition this space for the installation of windows. Looked like it was my entire HD (reading was in MB's it was like 131,555,555, or something to that effect), so i go, forget that! and i decide to quit the process. IDK if i made a bad choice, IDK, but anyway i shut the computer down then restart it while holding the Option key, like my computer savvy and always trusty buddy (who was there the whole time) instructed me to do.

WEll WHADAYA KNOW! just as i had been afraid of after hearing the uncertainty in his voice, theres no MAC selection available for me to choose! No idea what to do, i panic, i eject the windows cd from my disk drive and poof, just like that, the windows selection that i could have clicked, goes up in smoke.

Now when i run my startup disk, when im prompted on where i want to save my os to, theres no disk to save it to...

Any Help would be greatly appreciated!

Sorry for the bad news but it looks like you overwrote your Mac partition. That calls for a complete reinstall. Hopefully, you were using Time Machine to make backups?

Anyway, first reset the PRAM/NVRAM. Then use your Leopard or Snow Leopard DVD to boot the machine and reinstall OS X. Use your Time Machine backup to restore (if you have a TM backup).

restore with no hard disk visible?

thanks cag,
I am in a similar situation. When I boot from my Leopard disc and try to do anything (reinstall or disk utility) there is no hard disk visible. Can I restore my hard drive from my TM backups if it isn't visible? Excuse my naivety... will the TM backup just automatically restore my missing HD?
Thanks in advance...
Using original G5 iMac running 10.5.8

You have for sure an iMac G5 and not an Intel iMac? If you have a G5 the Bootcamp part does not apply to you since Bootcamp only works on Intel Macs.

What happened? Did the machine just stop working? Trying to see if the hard drive maybe died or you did something to erase it.

In other words, what happened?

G5

Thanks dtravis 7...

Of late, the fan on my Original G5 (not intel) has been going turbo... fan sounds like jet and won't wake (used to be every other month and accelerated to almost every other day).
reset smu everytime. It went turbo again last night.
removed back panel and gently blew dust out this morning with compressed air.
reassembled and got a question mark/folder flashing for my trouble when booted.
inserted 10.5 install disk to fix/reinstall and there is no hard drive (apple article TS1440) just the DVD
tried pressing "option" while restarting and got "reload" arrow and "right" arrow and spinning wrist watch.

It does see my external HD when it boots from disk.

Any help is definitely appreciated.

The one issue sounds like the hard drive died.

The turbo fan issue though could be Logic board related. Which iMac is it? Can you give us a few specs like CPU speed and Screen size? The early iMacs had a run of bad capacitors (like PC's of that time period did) and with time the top bulges out and they die. Some leak also. Since the back comes off, you have either a first or 2nd generation iMac.

Do you know much about electronics and what an Electrolytic Capacitor looks like? If so with the back off, look at the tops of especially the larger Capacitors and see the the metal is bulging upwards..

G5 Hard Drive

iMac G5 20" 1st Generation (original owner)
1.8 GHz Power PC
1 GB SDRAM (kingston 1G)
160 GB Hard Drive

No bulging and no leaking in the capacitors.

Thanks again for the help!

(sorry for posting in notebook area)