[Dave25]

I have a G4 flat-screen iMac running Panther. Recently it froze completely, and on trying to restart it I got a plain grey screen with the folder icon and flashing question mark. I first tried booting from the install disk and using Disk Utility, however when I select the drive all the options in Disk Utility are greyed out, and it doesn't appear possible to do anything. I was then advised to obtain a copy of DiskWarrior. This I did, and on running it got the following message: "DW has successfully built a new directory. The new directory cannot replace the original directory due to a Mac OS services failure - try rebuilding again". I've done it three times with the same result. I've got some photos on this drive that I really want to save if at all possible (I know, they should have been backed up, but they weren't!) I'm wondering whether if I were to attempt to re-install OSX it would correct the problem sufficiently to allow DW to finish the job. If I do this though, do I run the risk of losing the possibility of recovering the photos?

[Zubir]

Sounds like your harddrive is dead, friend. But don't take my work for it, take it to a tech to be inspect. It could be the SATA chip, or something.

[osxrules]

I would get a new hard drive and buy one of those external firewire cases for ide drives. Install OS X onto the new drive and then put the old one in the case. Even if you can't boot the drive, you may still be able to mount it and then either copy the stuff or repair the drive.

If you could get some sort of boot disc, that would be better. Try DriveGenius - they give you a free demo that you can download, burn to disc and boot from. The demo just means you can't run certain functions.

[Dave25]

Many thanks for the advice chaps. I have in fact succeeded in recovering my photo files off the damaged drive. A friend recommended I try attaching a working mac to the problem one then try using a utility called "Data Rescue". A demo version can be downloaded for free which will carry out a full scan of the target drive, but only allows one file to be recovered as a test. It did this, the scan took over 12 hours to complete, but it did succeed in finding and recognising my files. The test recovery proved successful so I happily paid the $89 for the activation key, which allowed me to recover all the files. Very much cheaper than using a professional data recovery service. This weekend I'll see if the damaged drive can be revived.