Unable to access internal Hard drive

[Danster]

Hello

This is kind of hard to explain because it's confusing to me, but I'll try to explain exactly what happened and hopefully someone can suggest helpful solutions to my problem.

Okay first thing, my iMac G5 is about 4 years old and I've not had any problems so far, apart from random Kernal Panics ( Speed touch modems )

Last week I bought an external 160GB Lacie hard drive as my 80 GB internal was getting too small. I have since been using it to store large avi. files, tv series etc. I've been accessing the HD, ejecting and turning it off when not in use, I've had no problems with it.

This morning I turn on my iMac as usual and notice I forgot to turn the power off from my external HD so it's switched on and spinning when my iMac is booting up.
At the login screen I try to log into my account, but I get the loading, spinning beachball for 5 minutes...so decide to restart my iMac by holding the power button down, before I turn it back on I switch the external HD off.

When my iMac starts up again I get a gray screen with a floating 0S9 looking folder with flashing Finder icon and a ?

Now this is the problem I have, I cannot access my internal hard drive whatsoever, I put the Tiger installation disks in and it could not recognise any storage device. I rang Applecare and they told me to restart whilst holding down X to force boot my mac to load up the HD but I only got the same flashing finder? icon.

I'm currently using my iMac with Tiger installed on my external Lacie HD, as I don't have another computer to access the internet

Here's a SS of my disk utility

The guy at Applecare said, as my iMac is about 4 years old I'd have to pay for him to tell me how to fix it or another alternative would be to carry my iMac (Which weighs about 5 tonnes) to my nearest appleshop (50 miles away with no car )where they can inspect it.

Now my suspicion is that my internal HD is not broke since this problem occured when I had my external HD switched on for the first time as I started up my iMac.

I ran my hardware test and everything recieved a (Passed) test including Mass Storage.

What I really need is to be able to start up form my internal but I cannot access it in anyway, disk utility I get that messege as in the screenshot, every other method I know my internal HD is simly not there.

I'm really sorry for the long and confusing post, I have valuble college documents I must work on over this easter holidays and cannot afford to loose them, as well as the 50 GB of important programs and files on my internal.

Any help in this messey, confusing and sticky situation would be much appreciated

Thanks.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Have you tried booting while holding down the Option Key and choosing an option?

Did you run Disc Utility from the OS Install Disc? That error message is one usually seen when running Disc Utility from the internal Hard Drive as in:

Macintosh HD ~> Applications ~> Utilities ~> Disc Utility

If you haven't run Disc Utility from the Install Disc then try that ... I do realise you have stated you can't boot your Mac at all but I have to still advise the above before we proceed any further ....

I'm curious about the Flashing OS 9 Icon ... is it possible to boot into Classic? Then you could set the boot option in Sys Prefs to OS X .... look into that too

 

[Danster]

Have you tried booting while holding down the Option Key and choosing an option?

Did you run Disc Utility from the OS Install Disc? That error message is one usually seen when running Disc Utility from the internal Hard Drive as in:

Macintosh HD ~> Applications ~> Utilities ~> Disc Utility

If you haven't run Disc Utility from the Install Disc then try that ... I do realise you have stated you can't boot your Mac at all but I have to still advise the above before we proceed any further ....

I'm curious about the Flashing OS 9 Icon ... is it possible to boot into Classic? Then you could set the boot option in Sys Prefs to OS X .... look into that too

Hi S-P

I just tried holding down the option while booting and got only a refresh and -> icon with nothing else. I tried clicking on both and nothing happened.

I did run the disk utility using the installation disks and it was the same result as I get now running OSX from an external

This is what it says when I try to verify. Also at the bottom it says (Not mounted) does that mean anything?


I try to mount it and i get

I'm suspicious of my internal having corrupt files which is why it cannot be accessed ?

Could this be solved by erasing the internal using the disk utility, then would I be able to reinstall a fresh OS on it ?

Though I'd like to try and salvage any files from it before attempting this.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

I found this at Apple Discussion Forum. It has reference to the Error you mentioned above.

Just for clarifications sake ... you can't boot your Mac and the status report from Disc Utility is that the internal HD isn't mounted?

You have installed the OS onto the LaCie Ext which is at the heart of this issue and are trying to unsuccessfully boot from that?

See if this or this helps.

 

[Danster]

Thanks for your help but I used Disk Warrior to scan tmy internal HD and it concluded that it was 'Severerly Corrupt' but it managed to salvage most of my files and restore the HD to working order, I've just backed up all my files and reinstalled my OS.

Hurrah!

Disk Warrior really is a brilliant program!

 

[Walrus666]

Thanks for your help but I used Disk Warrior to scan tmy internal HD and it concluded that it was 'Severerly Corrupt' but it managed to salvage most of my files and restore the HD to working order, I've just backed up all my files and reinstalled my OS.

Hurrah!

Disk Warrior really is a brilliant program!

Disk Warrior is definitely a "must have" utility. I just picked up version four over the weekend along with TechTool Pro.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Thanks for your help but I used Disk Warrior to scan tmy internal HD

Yeah, in my 1st link the advice given was:

You will need to use a third party utility like Disk Warrior or Tech Tool Pro.

So I'm glad you had one or the other.

I have Tech Tool Deluxe which came with my AppleCare PP. Hopefully it's at least as good as DW or TTP.