imac dead???

ok so im pretty sure I know the answer to this but im hoping against hope that someone will say im wrong!

My imac is a 2006 model

I turned on my i mac and the hard drive made a funny clicking noise and the screen went grey and it would not boot up. i switched it off and on again and it seemed fine.

the next day it did the same thing so i ran off snow leopard disk and went into disk utilities which found a problem with the hard drive and fixed it, i decided to run a permisions sweep (i think thats the right term?) and it froze. so i decided to re install snowleopard and everything seemed to work fine.

until..... i went to back up my hard drive and the computer would not load agin all i got was the grey screen, and the clicking noise of death! so i went through disc utillites again and now its not showing the hard drive at all!!!!

please please someone tell me I have not lost everything!!!

Well good news & bad news. The good news is your whole computer may "not be dead"...because it sounds like all you may need is a new hard drive (about $40 or so bucks). The bad news is...if your data on your hard drive isn't backed up...then it is most likely lost.

You could try (if you want to spend the $100 bucks) Disk Warrior:

DiskWarrior 4 - The Disk Utility for Mac Disk Repair, Mac Directory Repair, Mac Disk Recovery, Mac Data Recovery

...Disk Warrior may be able to repair your hard drive enough to recover your files...but I guess depending on the condition of your hard drive...there are no guarantees.

HTH,

- Nick

thanks nick,

not backed up........im dumb! i have an external hard drive but i had not got round to it! classic!

think i might just go and cry in a corner....

ellie8win said:

thanks nick,

not backed up........im dumb! i have an external hard drive but i had not got round to it! classic!

think i might just go and cry in a corner....

Click to expand...

Sounds like you "know the deal"...have an external HD & didn't use it as a bckup! You're not alone (plenty of other folks in the same boat). To be honest...I'm not really as good as I should be about backing up my computers either.

It's just like smoking cigarettes, drinking too much alcohol, or over-eating...we all know that it's bad for us...but we keep doing it anyway!

Hey...maybe I'm wrong (maybe your HD isn't dead) and your data can be recovered in some way...or with Disk Warrior ($100). But since you were able to successfully boot from a CD/DVD...were able to examine & repair the HD with Disk Utility...and still cannot boot from the HD...it doesn't sound good.

Normally I would say reformat the HD with Disk Utility (after booting from a CD/DVD)...and reinstall the OS. But I wouldn't recommend that in this case, since then you would lose your data for sure (if you still had hopes of recovering it).

Sorry to hear about the hassle,

- Nick

disk utility cant even see the hard drive anymore let alone try and fix it, I did hear that if you take the hard drive out and put it in the freezer you can sometimes getting going enough to grab the data????

going back to my crying, smoking and drinking in the corner!

ellie8win said:

going back to my crying, smoking and drinking in the corner!

Click to expand...

Don't forget about over-eating as well! Sorry...couldn't resist!

I wish there was something else to suggest to recover your data!!!

- Nick

ha ha!

thanks for your help x