Help! iMac doesn't start, alarming audio signals, no hard drive...any hope?
I have a 17" G5 iMac, the iSight model. Bought it pretty much exactly two years ago, when they were first released.
Problem history:
About a year ago (just too late to get Applecare) the superdrive started acting funky, wouldn't burn double layer and wouldn't read some dvd's. Ended up buying an external LaCie burner, that was cheaper than getting the built-in one replaced.
About half a year ago, one vertical line of pixels died in the LCD. Annoying. But it was pretty far to the right, so I could live with it, as it didn't affect performance.
About a month ago, a second vertical line of pixels died....I still tolerated it, as the computer itself was functional, and I'm pretty cheap.
LAST NIGHT: While browsing in firefox, the system freezes. Spinning beach ball, nothing is responding. I end up shutting it down by holding the power button. Now when I turn it on, it keeps making an annoying signal, sounds like a cheap cell phone ring, with a vibrating sound to it. Over and over. Eventually it gives me a blank screen with a folder icon with a blinking question mark. So I read up in the manual, and it says, "in case of blinking question mark, start up the computer while holding the option key, then click on the hard drive icon, and then click on the continue button". I go ahead and boot with the option key....and no hard drive icon appears! Just a refresh button and a continue button. So I'm stuck.
My interpretation: The computer cannot detect the hard drive, for whatever reason, and therefore cannot boot. Does this sound right?
Is this another one of those "common problems" with iMacs from around that time? Cause I'm just about getting tired of those... I only hope that no matter what happens, my hard drive's contents are not lost. This would be disastrous.
Well, it turns out it is a defect hard drive. The cellphone-like sounds, along with a "vibrating" sound are actually made by the hard drive itself, not the Mac.
Our IT specialist says it's most likely the head scraping on the disk surface. Very bad news, as that would really be reducing any chance of my data still being intact...
We extracted the hard drive (major pain in the *** - thanks for the design, Apple!), and it's going to a data recovery specialist.
Lessons learned so far: Be wary Apple's hardware reliability, ergo GET APPLE CARE, and back up your stuff!!
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Vad ska jag göra?
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