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iMac G4 disk won't spin up
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2007
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My iMac G4 (1.25 GHz, 20") took a hard bump yesterday; almost fell off the desk but not quite. It continued to run and seemed fine, but I decided to shut it down and continue moving the furniture a little bit more sensibly  So I shut down apps and all the usual things to shut it down, finished moving things around, and powered it back up.
It spent a long time thinking, and then gave me the Question Mark on a Folder syndrome, meaning it couldn't find the system folder. I booted it from the Tiger CDROM and ran Disk Utility, and discovered that the internal hard drive does not even show up any more. It's just as if it had no disk at all other than the DVD drive.
Before I start doing anything drastic or jumping off a bridge or something, I thought I'd see if anyone out there has any suggestions on what may be going on, or how to get that disk spinning again. Needless to say I back things up, but it's always an imperfect process, and there are important files on there that I REALLY need to recover.
Thanks for any suggestions or advice...
Justin Harlow
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Moderator  Join Date: May 2001
Location: Hilbert space
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I suspect the harddrive's cables aren't connected properly. Can you hear the disk spin up? If the answer is no, then it might be that the power cable came lose.
In any case, I would thoroughly check your harddrive even if you get it to run again. It might have suffered some permanent damage from the fall/bump. The first check is to see what the SMART status of the drive is (if you get it to work again). If it says verified, it's an indication your drive didn't suffer any damage. Then use TechTool Pro for example to check the drive's mechanism. If you have any suspicion that the drive doesn't work properly, replace it. Don't wait until it breaks, drives are really, really cheap these days!
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I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
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Senior User
Join Date: Feb 2007
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It's unlikely that a Sunflower iMac's HD cable has come loose IMO, if it was me I'd open up the iMac (v. v. gently), swap out the HD and go from there (put it in an external enclosure, etc).
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2007
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I suspected the loose cable syndrome too, so I opened it up, but as JonoMarshall says, that is nearly impossible because of the "cubic close packing" inside the case. I listened carefully, and you can hear the disk trying to get started (a few clicks and whirs), but then nothing. I have seen that symptom before and it is usually very bad. I guess my next move is to consult a disk recovery specialist and take out a second mortgage...
Thanks
JEH
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