EMac HD dead?

I have an eMac 1.25 Ghz that suddenly crashed and won't boot up. I am pretty sure it sounds like a dead hard drive because I hear clicking noise as it tries to access it to boot up. All I get when I try to start is a grey screen and eventually a flashing folder icon. I believe this happened after a power surge.
Things I tried:
1. it boots successfully from install CD but the install CD doesn't recognize the HD as existing to repair disk of check permissions
2. it boots fine from a firewire drive, same, not recognizing the internal hd
3. it successfully boots target firewire and again fails to see the internal HD
4. I tried zapping pram to no avail
5. I even heard of turning the computer upside down and rebooting, although I don't know if that's a myth. I tried it anyway and no luck.
So, any thing else anyone can think of? I know I can just put in a new HD but that is a lot of work to crack open that sucker (to get to the HD) compared to an iMac G3.
Any ideas will be graciously thanked!
Paul

The "turn the computer upside down" sounds like a garbled suggestion of reseting the PMU using the PMU reset button inside the battery compartment; since your Mac is starting up, just can't find an internal HD, that's an unnecessary step.
Your diagnoses of a dead HD sounds unfortunately accurate. You can replace the internal HD; see Apple eMac Upgrade Guide. You may find it just as easy to pick up an external Firewire HD, format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) / HFS+ (most drives other than those from LaCie come formated as Windows NTFS, which the Mac can read but not write), and install OS X onto the external drive using your OS X Install optical disc. Make sure any external drive has Firewire ports; PowerPC Macs such as the eMac cannot boot off an external USB drive. You can buy a complete drive ready to go out of the box from online vendors (e.g., LaCie drives from Small Dog Electronics); to save money, you can buy a bare (internal) hard drive and put it in a Firewire case yourself (see PT: HD drive replacement tips).
The first time you boot from the external drive (and anytime you boot after doing a PRAM reset; see What's stored in PRAM?), you'll hold the option key down to bring up Startup Manager, then open System preferences and set Startup Disk to the external HD.
With a bootable external Firewire HD, you can see if the one-file evaluation copy of Data Rescue can find the damaged internal HD, which would let you recover any files on the HD not backup up onto other media. Drive Genius may be worth looking at, too.
You'll want to protect your electronics from future power glitches. Be warned that common inexpensive surge protectors use as few as one MOV to clamp power spikes, and are are essentially one-shot protection devices --- the first surge that comes down the line will pretty well remove any future protection from such surge outlets (a green status LED is meaningless). Better surge protectors use multiple redundant MOVs along with inductors and capacitors; they cost more but can provide real protection. The reference surge protector in the lab where I work is the Tripp Lite Isobar line (prices are lower on Amazon than on their website).
An even better choice would be an Uninterpretable Power Supply (UPS), which will protect against momentary brownouts and blackouts as well as power surges. I've used various APC BackUPS models. Connect the UPS to the Mac via USB cable, and in OS X 10.3 and later, Energy Saver will then show a UPS tab where you can set the Mac to shut down gracefully in case of an extended power outage.

Similar Messages

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    Message was edited by: spudnuty

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