G4 will not get past boot up screen

Question

My dad's g4 has been making a cloud clicking noise lately which was a clear indicator the hard drive was on it's way out. He went to back up the hard drive one day when he turned the computer on and he says "When I turn on the computer the screen illuminates but the only thing I get is the revolving gear. Computer never boots up or progresses past the revolving gear." We are pretty sure we need to replace the hard drive but he has a lot of information on the hard drive that he would like to remove.
1. How can he get the data off the OEM internal hard drive?
2. What type of hard drive would be ideal for the G4 to run engineering programs like AutoCAD and Pro-E efficiently?
3. Once the hard drive is replaced how do we go about installing an OS, do we have to buy a new OS from Apple?
Thanks,
Britt
Message was edited by: Britt41

Answer 1

For attempting to gain access to the hard disk drive in
a machine with issues, that won't boot regularly, one
could try and see if starting in FireWire Target Disk
Mode would be viable. A dual-ended 6 connection
FireWire 400 (or other suitable) cable would be needed
to connect the two computers via the FireWire ports.
Start the ailing computer up in FW TDM and there
should be an icon on the display of that machine
of the FireWire symbol. Then follow instructions on
the support web page (or in Help in the OS X) to
continue. The data on the suspect computer's HDD
should be available from the healthy computer and
it could be saved to DVD media or a third external
hard disk drive.
Some users have even tried making a clone of a
computer's hard disk drive when attached to another
Mac via this FireWire Target Disk Mode. That may
be a stretch, to expect to save everything; but some
try this and a few have succeeded in being able to
restore (clone back) from a suitable clone on a boot-
able FireWire externally enclosed hard disk drive
where a full computer clone had been made.
Third-party clone utilities are available by download
and they work from there without cost; donationware.
Carbon Copy Cloner has merits; there's SuperDuper, too.
How to use FireWire target disk mode:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
A replacement hard disk drive should be at least
the minimum specifications (per original) and if
a larger capacity, could have a larger buffer or
cache and perhaps have a higher RPM speed.
And be sure to get the correct type; since new
Macs use a SATA (serial ATA) but traditional
ATA drives are what the older 'New World' Macs
have; these are also known as Parallel ATA.
The G4 would use a PATA or ATA/IDE HDD.
(The much older ones had solid SCSI hardware.)
The OS X version last installed in the computer
should have an installer disc; so that could be
used again to put a new system into a new hard
disk drive; the Installer disc has utilities inside;
so a new hard disk drive may need to be formatted
and tested or repaired from the Disk Utility version
found in the drop-down menu of the booted Installer
disc; where optional tools in the utility are accessed.
If getting a fair amount of the information off a failed
drive is difficult or next to impossible, you may have
to consider an external drive enclosure to put this
failed hard disk drive into, and later on, use a healthy
Mac to attempt to gain access to that & recover it.
There are a few good recovery applications available
and they do cost money; some will tell you if there is
a chance at recovery before you buy the application
(The app is often a download; the key is later bought.)
Anyway, I hope this helps a little...
Good luck & happy computing!