IMac woke up by itself with clicking pattern. Folder with ? mark now. Can't see HD in Diagnostics. Dead HD?
Hi,
My iMac was asleep all night, but it woke up suddenly by doing a 6-click pattern. 6 clicks, then the sound of something whirling/winding down, silence, then 6 clicks again, sound of something whirling down, repeat.
Last month I suddenly heard my iMac making weird clicks whenever it woke up from sleep. I posted about the problem here. It would take longer than usual to fully wake up, and as it was doing so it'd make lots of clicking sounds before I could use it. Did Diagnostics; Repair Disk said my HD was fine.
I think the problem stems from someone borrowing my computer and using up lots of RAM (tons of programs open), which of course slowed down the computer, so his solution was to just hold down the power button to restart (found out he was too impatient to restart the computer the right way ). I don't know how many times he did it, but I guess 10 times total? Is this enough to mess up the HD?
One day the iMac showed the folder with a question mark on it. I put in my Snow Leopard install disc and ran the OS from it. I went into System Preferences and redirected the computer to start up from the HD (it had been blank, for some reason). Then it rebooted from the HD like normal. I started using the iMac again, and the clicking problem became only intermittent. Eventually the clicking went away altogether, so I continued using the computer, hoping the HD was still all right (wishful thinking). I did make disk copies using Carbon Copy in case I was wrong (I also let Time Machine do its thing every single day).
Today I woke up to the sound of my iMac clicking because it woke up on its own. Again, it was having the old trouble of waking like it did last month. 6 clicks. Wind down. Silence. Repeat. It gave me the grey screen for a few long minutes, then it gave me the folder with the question mark on it. I tried to boot from my Snow Leopard disk, but when I tried to re-direct the boot drive, there was no option for my hard drive at all like last time (just the CD and the network server). I tried entering Diagnostics, but again in the left pane there was NO option for my hard drive like last time, only the CD-ROM with the Snow Leopard CD in it.
Does that basically mean my HD is dead since I can't "see" it? Should I even bother taking it in to Genius? I'm probably going to be buying a new iMac tomorrow. I just hope my Time Machine and Carbon Copy backups will transfer all my files correctly. I've never had to do this before, so I'm pretty nervous about it.
Thanks!
P.S. My iMac is probably 4-5 years old. Purchased refurbished from a non-Apple store. I guess it's just time?
I put the HD back into my iMac's SATA sled and can view the contents of the drive without a problem, once again. The Disk Utility on the iMac indicates that the S.M.A.R.T. Status for the drive is "Not Supported," but that is probably because it is viewing the drive via USB from the sled.
If the drive was failing would I really be able to access it from my iMac via the SATA sled so easily?
At this point I am leaning on taking the whole MBPro, drive and all, into the Genius Bar tomorrow and hopefully getting back a working computer within a week.
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