What to do if your Mac HDD crashes?
Archives Forums/MacOS X Discussion/What to do if your Mac HDD crashes?
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| So it looks like HDD in my Mac G4 crashed. I tried to repair/reinstall MacOSX inserting dvd and pressing C during start up, but it takes forever and nothing happens except circle going round and round. I replaced original HDD with new one 17GB but then after some time Mac just turns off. Any hints what can I do? best Roman |
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| Try the `zapping the p-ram` keyboard combination, not sure what it is though. |
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| Buy a proper PC! *Dabz ducks* ;) Dabz |
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| Boot it while holding down T, so that it boots as a firewire disk. Connect it to another machine and see if the disk comes up. If it does, it's not the disk. Try booting with cmd-v to get verbose mode (might tell you what's wrong). Se http://davespicks.com/writing/programming/mackeys.html for other boot options. |
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| >>Buy a proper PC!<< Give some proper advice. Windows Vista? HA! |
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| Well a Mac is a PC as in "personal computer"(try to look for what was a Mini-Computer, you could argue that it's a micro-computer but I doubt Apple have used this term since the Lisa), and Windows Vista is an OS. Furthermore technically there isn't much difference anymore in between Apple computers and Windows PC, and the advice isn't so bad since I have seen some Hackintosh's running pretty good. I don't know of any diagnostic tool bootable CD for G4, but the G3 I had was delivered with a Apple Test CD which was made exactly for that. |
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| ...Take the Mac and throw it out the window... |
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| Wait...Macs aren't capable of crashning!!! THIS DENIES ALL HARDWARE LAWS!!! APOCALYPSE!!! REPENT! REPENT!!! |
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| Hmm lots of "useful info" being posted in here then :P Heres what i would have tried first (mabe something you can try if it happens again - it *may* have saved your data :) try to boot up a linux(4mac) live cd, assuming it can read the OSX=BSD??? flesystem (i guess so as it reads everything else), or a bootable osx filetools cd if it exists. See if it can still read the filesystem. If its just the OS (or that part of the disk) thats knackered you might still be able to get at the data. Copy it to a usb HDD / burn dvds and then re-install OSX/buy new disk. Our IT department uses this data revovery technique all time for fixing 'unrecoverable' windows tantrums & (lesser) media failiures as its faster than using most bootable tools. Why it doesnt work with a new HDD though - no idea, thought macs didnt crash ;P If it is switching off automatically with no warnings or anything, if it was a normal PC i would suspect overheat. |
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