Think i have a bad HD?
Hello Everyone, I am currently in Iraq so all this info is second hand from my wife:) This problem is on a late 2007 iMac 2.4ghz. Has leopard installed
She told me that she was surfing in Firefox when the program became very slow and the icon was the swirling colors for a long time. It would not stop doing that and she didn't know what to do. So she rebooted the machine and when it tried to reboot, it came to a grey screen with a flashing system folder icon on it that had a "question mark" on the folder.
Her quote:
When I go into the disk utility > first aid like the apple site suggest, it's like my HD isn't there. none of the utility options come up (such as repair, etc.). There was another option to restore from back up and I could get as far as selecting a timecapsule dated today at 11:37a, but once selected it just stalls at the next screen 'searching for disks' in the restore destination volume window. I take this to mean it finds no where to restore to - no harddrive?
I purchased the Applecare for it so i am not to worried about the hardware replacement part.
I have read some other posts on this site that putting the OS disk in and going to Disk utility might make the drive show up but you would have to reinstall OS X?
She is looking for the OS disks as i have 2 imacs and both are not the same model.
Another question i have is this machine originally came with Tiger and was upgraded to Leopard. If she has to reinstall the OS, will she also have to install the leopard upgrade or will that be on the TC backup?
I am going to have her take it into the local genius bar and i am not sure what they will do for her there. Will they just replace the harddrive and make her install the OS or will they at least put a fresh 10.4 (what it came with) on it and she will be responsible for Leopard and the TC restore?
Sorry for the long post but it is frustrating being 7000 miles away and cant help...
Unfortunately, it sounds like she restarted from the Mac OS X installation disc already and when she ran Disk Utility from the Installer menu, the internal drive was not visible. Therefore, there not much she can do except take it in and get the hard drive replaced under AppleCare.
Once she gets the iMac back, it will probably have a standard Mac OS X installation on it. If she wants to restore the iMac to the last available Time Machine backup date/time (which should be within one hour of failure), she needs to start up from the Leopard installation disc again and select that same command for +Restore from Backup+ from the Installer's Utilities menu. She should then be able to select the specific backup date/time and target the restore for iMac's new internal drive.
If everything works as it should, the iMac should be back to the way it was to within one hour of the failure.
If she has to reinstall the OS, will she also have to install the leopard upgrade or will that be on the TC backup?
If restoring from Time Machine works as it should, there should be no need to reinstall the OS. Time Machine should recreate the exact snapshot of the drive at "11:37a." Since it was already Leopard, the restored drive will be the same.
I am going to have her take it into the local genius bar and i am not sure what they will do for her there.
They will most likely take in the iMac for repair. The repair will probably be done locally at that store "in back," if it's just a hard drive replacement. She should mention that she has a Time Capsule with the backup. If she brings it with her too, they may do the Restore process for her after fixing the iMac and before returning it to her. It would be worth asking.
She may also want to ask for the bad drive back, if you think there is any sensitive data on it. However, there may be some AppleCare policy that does not allow the replaced drive to be returned.
Also, she can go to the Apple retail store website to make an appointment for the Genuis Bar (to avoid a long wait). Just find her nearest store here.
http://www.apple.com/retail/
Be safe over there...!
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See how this goes first and post back with the results. If you take the zero out path, I think you will need to re-format the drive.
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Message was edited by: WZZZ -
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I
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Thank you for your help, Frank!
To be clear you called the 800 number and explained what the situation was, old machine and lost the original DVD's?
Just checking because if you just called and tried to buy the DVD's they might tell you they no longer sell them but you aren't really trying to buy them your trying to replace the ones that are missing.
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Rember
<https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/15837/rember/>
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<http://guides.macrumors.com/Testing_RAM>
<http://osxdaily.com/2011/05/03/memtest-mac-ram-test/>
<http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1509>
<http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11342> -
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