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Superchicken · Jul 2, 2002, 03:13 PM

Oh man... I think...
once this hits home, I'm gona have a panic attack!
I think I mighta tottaly screwed up my hard drive! And I'm gona have to see if there's some way the local mac shop in town can save my data!
I've got tons of pictures, that I can't make again, and I really wanted to hold onto my early graphics work!
I've got tons of Photos of friends, many of whome I will never see again!
I unplugged the back of my iMac when AIM froze, and I started it up again to see that it now had a flashing system folder icon. SO I grabed my OS 9 CD, and tried to boot from it, now it doesn't even realize there's a hard drive!
and it's asking me to initialize it...
Does ANYONE know a way to fix this and still keep my files?

Proudest Monkey · Jul 2, 2002, 03:24 PM

one day my sisters iMac rev. D did this exact same thing, but just while it was asleep. As it turned out, the drive was fried, nothing could be done with it and it was replaced, all data was lost. i know this isn't the news you want to hear, but maybe it is something with the rev. D's ?

Superchicken · Jul 2, 2002, 03:30 PM

well I didn't COMPLETELY fry the hard drive, cause disk repare says that there's some parts still there, it's just unmountable.
A software refresh might do the trick.. but I don't think I even have those disks any more!
Good thing I was planning on getting a new hard drive... but..
Sigh...

buffalolee · Jul 2, 2002, 04:39 PM

Take it to a data recovery place. Might cost you about $800 or so just to retrieve the data. The data is still retrievable, but getting it back from a fried HD is costly. Look in the ads of Macworld magazine, I thought I saw some data recovery companies out there.

Next time....
backup backup backup backup
<img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="frown.gif" />

v8q · Jul 2, 2002, 06:21 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by buffalolee:
Take it to a data recovery place. Might cost you about $800 or so just to retrieve the data. The data is still retrievable, but getting it back from a fried HD is costly. Look in the ads of Macworld magazine, I thought I saw some data recovery companies out there.

Next time....
backup backup backup backup

<hr /></blockquote>You might try just re-installing the disk drivers with drive setup. That is non-destructive and just might save you.
If you happen to have another mac with linux or OSX on it, you could probably use some standard unix tools to salvage your data or maybe even fix the drive.
I had a similar problem with my rev e and ended up saving the whole thing.

Xaositect · Jul 3, 2002, 09:01 AM

BEFORE you re-install the drivers...

Boot from a Norton or TTP disk and run it's disk utility. They can usually see disks that didn't mount. Disk Warrior is generally considered better than NDD for this, but I have had several times I couldn't see the drive in DW but could in NDD, so YMMV. If you update the drivers before doing the disk repair, it can cause more grief (from painful experiences - note the plural).

Based on the hundreds of data recoveries I've done over the last several years, you have a good chance of getting everything back. If you couldn't boot to desktop even off CD without lockup, or if it does't see the drive to initialize, you have problems.

Good luck!

Cipher13 · Jul 4, 2002, 02:07 AM

Disk Warrior it.

gto47 · Jul 6, 2002, 11:08 AM

You unplugged it!!!!! What were you thinking? An emergency restart can easily be done by inserting a paper clip into the pinhole on the i/o panel. If you've been doing that for years, you're lucky the drive just broke now. Inside the hard drive are 3 or so magnetic disks, which are controlled by a head, which reads and writes data to them. When you unplug your computer instead of shutting it down properly, this head goes on a tangent, and destroys your data. Maybe it wont the first time, maybe itll only be a disk error then, but just wait until that one time, when the disk is doing some serious writing, and you pull the plug, and the head goes insane and manages to physically scratch the drive - destroying it. This can all be solved by using the pinhole restart, however as it rights the head before it restarts the computer. Now i haven't seen the status of the hard disk under any utility yet, but it seems very likely to me that the drive was damaged. It may only be that disk errors from your continuous unpluggings have made it impossible to mount, but somehow i doubt you have been this fortunate. In all likelihood, you'll have to take it to a data recovery facility, which will cost an arm and a leg. If its not physically broken, this will be much less money - an option which you may want to choose, before norton or TTP destroys your valuable data by accident. For next time, I urge you to think before you act, if you don't understand something, you should find out. The alternative is suffering the consequences, a route, which I am sure you would preferably not take.

Superchicken · Jul 7, 2002, 03:37 PM

Thanks all.. took it to my local mac shop, paid 60 bucks for Data recovery, and 140... this is Canadian remember, for a brand new 60 gig HD!
hehe

I love this thing!
not that I've put that much more of anything on it but..... i never have to delete anything again!
haha

kidding.

But I'm not a huge MP3 nut, I encode my CDs only, then again I do have almost 50, so that's still a fair bit of music 485 songs right now.

But yeah...
hmm well gto47 I guess i'm fortunate. Although I think God's probably looking out for my HD, I do so much work for Him with my iMac, I dout He'd let anything serious happen to it

that is unless that means I'd get a new eMac <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

XSM · Jul 7, 2002, 07:02 PM

Yes, god will fix everything. God will keep you safe. God will make sure your data is not corrupt.

I have a friend who talks like this all day long and it drives me nuts.

God will bring a G5 at MWNY right? Oh..only if I convert?

XSM · Jul 7, 2002, 07:03 PM

BTW I'm not trying to be an ass, its just that religious people crack me up.

[ 07-07-2002, 07:04 PM: Message edited by: XSM ]

Superchicken · Jul 7, 2002, 07:39 PM

Nah, I have a friend like that, she's part of the carasmatic movement and what not.
The whole... shouting Jesus loves me, just because you feel really happy, and making other people feel really uncomfortable.
But she's a nice person so it's not like she's obnoxious or anything.
I'm just more the type of person that won't shy away from making it clear that God protects me from my own idocy

After all

"God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise"

hehe

Anyway, if you wanna classifie me as any kinda Christian, I'm the rare sarcastic breed that can make you laugh without having it end with some one having sex with a horse or something like that

Well generally I can... although there's the rare times when people just stare at you, and you walk out of the room... and cry in your pillow... and write in your diary:

Dear Diary, there were some mean people on the MacNN forms today... they poked me in the eye, and didn't laugh, and I think that one guy stole my lunch! Oh well... at least they'll never suspect when I come in with my Uzzi and give em one chance to get saved before I send em to Jesus... twich twich...