HT1455 iMac shuts down itself in the middle of Safe Boot progress bar loading

Question

Hi, Im using a late 2009 iMac 21.5'' on Mountain Lion. (Originally Snow Leopard I THINK)
I got the dreaded grey screen one day and after I did more reseach i tried using the Safe Boot way.
Now Ive encountered a new problem, everytime I turn on my mac, it shows the Apple logo and the Safe Boot progress bar.
Not even reaching halfway through the bar, it just shuts down itself, every single time.. please help?
Btw, I',m using a wireless keyboard, I had to go around borrowing a windows keyboard from my friends, I dont know if anyone can shade some light if i can use wireless to do the keyboard pressing thing when it starts up?
I've also tried inserting my original OS installation disc and press C..it just shows a grey screen, then the disc got ejected, then the Apple logo with the progress bar and then shuts down itself.
Please help, I just need to go into my system one more time and backup my important datas before i go for the 1TB Seagate Replacement Program.
Thank you so much, appreciate it!

Answer 1

hendry17 wrote:
Is that similar with this article http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1553 on 'Instruction for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk utility' ?
No, that copies the entire drive IF it's entirely readable which you don't need, you only REALLY need is your files as everything else (OSX and programs) can be replaced)
Ds store: I read your article on creating a data recovery.
This is designed to install OS X onto a external drive, boot from it and then:
1: Attempt data recovery via normal drag and drop methods on your Users folders.
2: If the above fails, to see if the internal drive is working via Disk Utility, and/or use Data Rescue software ($100) to attempt recovery of the files themselves, bypassing the file structure and whatever is causing the problem.
3: Build your extenral boot drive of everything the way you need it, then Carbon Copy Cloner the external onto the internal drive (new or erased whatever the case may be)
May I ask you why not port powered?
Mac's have been shutting off ports that are drawing too much current, like what port powered hard drives do.
Am planning to get myself a 3TB external HDD 3,5" for all my backups in time for my AASP journey
Too large for a boot drive, you basically want a external boot drive equal too or slightly larger than the boot drive your recovering from, because later you can use it as a bootable clone backup of the entire boot drive and store it for emergencies.
These large drives like 1TB and 3TB are sometimes problematic (especially with 10.6) when formatting. Also I advise all boot drives be Zero erased before OS X is installed or cloned onto it to reduce bad sectors,  a zero erase on a 3TB drive could take 6-10 hours.
If you want to use the 3TB, use it for file backup, not for your bootable clone your creating with the instructions I gave.
You see later on, once you got all your data off the internal boot drive, you build the external boot drive just like you would do a brand new erased internal drive. You add programs and whatnot, tweak it how you like. Because later on your use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the external onto the erased or new internal drive. Get it?
So 3TB is excessive if your internal boot drive is only 500GB, you will have 2.5TB left over.
Sure you can partition, but I don't advise having so many backups on one piece of physical media, you drop it, lose it or fry it, you lost everything.
So more and seperate pieces of backup are safer in that regard, hardware and software redundancy.
Most commonly used backup methods
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents