[wallyworth]

Hi there --

I have an old Snow iMac (G3/600) whose hard drive recently died in an interesting way. None of the rattles, etc... that a lot of people seem to have had with their older iMacs, but just a relatively sudden and complete failiure.

It began when the computer displayed DOS-like text when it was logged out. The computer was successfully rebooted and DiskWarrior repaired the directory. It then ran once then crashed yet again. I ran DiskWarrior again, but it died during the final directory replacement stage, saying that DiskWarrior would need to be run again. Simply put -- I can't at this point. DiskWarrior won't recognize the drive, Apple's Disk Utility won't recongize the drive (as even existing, let alone mountable), no Mac OS installer (8.6, 9, 10.2, 10.4) will recognize the drive, and when it's in target disk mode it won't show up in other computers.

The drive still spins, but for all intents and purposes it's dead. Is there any way for me to get it working long enough to get my files off of it, or am I totally screwed? I have a feeling that when DiskWarrior can't do anything that's basically it...

Thanks,

Christopher

[P]

It could be that the problem is on the computer rather than the drive, so you could remove the drive from the iMac and put it in a separate box or another computer to copy your files off - if you're lucky. Don't count on it though.

[tooki]

That is possible, though unlikely. It certainly can't hurt to try!

But usually, when a drive has stopped responding, there's not much to be done, short of sending it to a data recovery service for an exorbitant amount of money.

tooki

[wallyworth]

I'm going to try pulling the drive and putting it either in a different machine or in a FireWire enclosure to see if I can pull the files out that way. I know the drive isn't completely dead as the head can be heard moving, but all of the read/write tests I ran with TechTool Pro failed, so I'm pretty sure it won't help.

Thank you for the advice!