My new iMac 3.02 out of service after 21 hours

I bought an iMac 3.02Gb on Feb 28 to replace my 8 year-old PC, everything worked perfectly on Saturday. I plugged in a WD external hard drive (formatted NTFS) from my other laptop and transferred all the photos to the Mac. I could view them. I switched off the Mac in the evening and unplugged the external hard drive. On Sunday 6pm, I switched on the Mac, there was a flashing folder (Application) with a question mark. I followed instructions to reinstall Mac OS10.6, but I could not see the HD. Fortunately, the shop exchanged one for me on Monday. I'm wondering if I had done anything wrong or the original hard drive was already faulty. I only learned afterwards that I should drag the external hard drive to the bin before I unplug the usb.

As a result, I'm a bit scared to touch anything at all at the moment.

Sounds to me like the HDD was just bad from the get go. Doesn't sound like you did anything out of the ordinary that would have caused an issue with the drive.

You drag the external to the trash (or right click and select "eject") only while the machine is running. If you turn the machine off you can then just unplug the external. Either way though, the external drive would in no way habve had a negative effect on the internal drive, even if improperly disconnected.

Is there any risk just unplugging the usb from the mac without turning off the Mac first? For Windows, as you know, it's preferable to click on the peripherals release icon before, although a lot of people don't do that, but that doesn't render the PC unusable.

The risk is causing problems with the USB device itself but not the Mac. In most cases you can do it but eventually, in the case of a USB HDD, it will fail to mount at some point as the partition will have become corrupted. Dragging to the trash or right clicking and ejecting are the safest bets.

Other peripherals such as keyboards, mice, card readers, cd/dvd drives (with no disc inserted) etc can be unplugged at will with no dismount required (there is no USB device manger as in Windows, just plug and unplug). The only devices that have to be dismounted are drives that will show up on the Mac. This is not just USB but FireWire and e-SATA mounted drives as well.

Everything is perfectly clear. Have a good day baggss.

Happy to help. I just got a 21 inch i3 iMac last week to replace my old Quad G5 Mac as well!

Yes, I'll keep checking. I just bought a couple of books on Mac. The first one doesn't dig deep enough, waiting for the second one to arrive. The other question is of course still bugging me. Should I get one external drive or two, one for a backup image, the other for files safeguard.

frhout said:

Yes, I'll keep checking. I just bought a couple of books on Mac. The first one doesn't dig deep enough, waiting for the second one to arrive. The other question is of course still bugging me. Should I get one external drive or two, one for a backup image, the other for files safeguard.

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I would say two. That is simply because the odds of both drives failing at the same time are slim, but if you get one and it dies, you've lost everything.