G5 hard drive problems

to preface, i know next to nothing about macs, but I am trying to help my girlfriend with a situation with her sister's G5. The computer had been left turned on and on the internet all day, my girlfriend comes and opens a new firefox tab and goes to a website. The computer immediately freezes. She leaves it, and in the morning her sister comes to find the frozen computer. She tries to restart it, but it never gets past the picture of the apple in startup. I come to find out that the day before, it had fallen from its desk onto the ground. The sister takes it to "Mac Specialist" in virginia beach. They say the computer needs a new hard drive and she is additionally paying the $200 fee to try to get her information off of the other one. The replacement hard drive is a 320gb one instead of the 160gb drive, the sister claiming that this is cheaper. She wants my girlfriend to pay for all of this, but I maintain that this is in no way my girlfriend's fault and that she shouldn't have to pay for any of it. Who is right, and why? How much would you expect something like this to cost?

It's not her fault.
A new HD should be $100. I think newegg.com sells 500GB HD's for around that price. I don't know how much it costs to get all of the info saved from the old HD to the new one. There are a few free apps that do that sort of thing like Super Duper. But if the drive is bad, I don't know if or how well an app like that works. I think your best bet is to take it to a professional.
Would you be able to get a refund if the disk copy doesn't work?

yeah the problem is that the sister took it to this mac specialist place without looking into any other options. she gets the receipt tomorrow, i will try and give a list of costs.

Ditto "not her fault" and suggest Firewire Target Disc Mode as a means of accessing the important files on the *damaged* Mac and transferring them over to another Macs HD for the cost of the Firewire cable and the kindness of the other person who's Mac you can hopefully borrow ...

To check if your girlfriends G5 fits the specs visit this link:

How to use FireWire target disk mode

this is the girlfriend just logging in to clarify some things. the computer, when dropped, was sitting on a desk. my mom was standing on the desk to put up wallpaper and i guess she accidentally kicked it or something and it fell a distance of no more than two feet from the desk to the ground. after the fall, the computer booted up completely with no problems. my sister had used it throughout the day as she always did, just using the internet for e-mail, etc. and AIM. it had been left on all day and when i got home later that night, all i did was tab into a new window on the firefox she already had opened, went to a website, and it froze. thinking nothing of it, i simply left it how it was and went to sleep. then when she gets up in the morning it's frozen, and you know the story from there. i'm just clarifying and trying to figure out if it wasn't my fault, was it because it was dropped? or is it just underlying problems with her computer prior to my using it? the guy at mac specialist seems to think it is my fault (or so she tells me) and that the drop had nothing to do with it so long as the computer turned on after that occurred. just trying to figure out who is honestly at fault, because estimates i've received from my sister have been around $600 total (for the new hard drive, the labor, and trying to get her info form old hard drive onto the new one). and thank you in advance for the help, i really appreciate it!

bohemoth said:

this is the girlfriend just logging in to clarify some things. the computer, when dropped, was sitting on a desk. my mom was standing on the desk to put up wallpaper and it fell a distance of no more than two feet from the desk to the ground. after the fall, the computer booted up completely with no problems. my sister had used it throughout the day as she always did, just using the internet for e-mail, etc. and AIM. it had been left on all day and when i got home later that night, all i did was tab into a new window on the firefox she already had opened, went to a website, and it froze. thinking nothing of it, i simply left it how it was and went to sleep. then when she gets up in the morning it's frozen, and you know the story from there. i'm just clarifying and trying to figure out if it wasn't my fault, was it because it was dropped? or is it just underlying problems with her computer prior to my using it? the guy at mac specialist seems to think it is my fault (or so she tells me) and that the drop had nothing to do with it so long as the computer turned on after that occurred. just trying to figure out who is honestly at fault, because estimates i've received from my sister have been around $600 total (for the new hard drive, the labor, and trying to get her info form old hard drive onto the new one). and thank you in advance for the help, i really appreciate it!

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Boot the iMac from the Install Disc (hold the "C" key when you hear the Startup Chime) and navigate to Disc Uitlities and verify/Repair the Hard Drive. Also repair Permissions while you're there too. Then just reboot.

There is also a Hardware Check you can run but I don't know exactly how to advise you on where this test is, if it's on the install discs or what ...

I don't know anyone (besides you) that would think nothing of a frozen computer and then let it sit frozen overnight. Maybe the HD got stuck and not correcting the problem for 6-10 hrs fried the HD. Or maybe the 2ft fall did if it was powered on when it fell.
Really, who knows how it untimitely died. $600 is excessive though. A new HD is $100. I could see a $100 charge for moving the files but not $500. I don't think any amount of data is worth that much anyways. (If it was, your sister should have made a backup.)
Have you tried Best Buy to see if the Geek Squad does that sort of thing or are they Windows specific?