Imac Crashed - Help

[Lost in LOS]

I never had a crash on my windows PC but now have a disaster on my IMac 27. First my backup disk stop working so I erased and to it to back up all, still had problems. Then I upgraded iTunes and my apps disappeared, with lots of effort go my iPhone apps back. Backup still not accessible so reformatted it and turned it on hoping it would copy hard drive overnight. In the morning when I turned on computer I see it crashed. When I turn it on I get the opening sound, the screen lights up, then apple insignia, then progress bar starts and computer shuts down. I turned computer off many times and always does the same.

Can get to the Mac utilities by pressing combo of keys and. Mac OS X Utilities comes up. Has 4 options

Disk utility will not repair. There is a disk1 a Mac OS base system that also shows up (don't know what that is since I unplugged my backup disk which doesn't work). The only thing the utility window allows me to do is erase it

When I click on reinstall Lion it checks then says checking with apple then shows my hard drive. I cannot click on that because it says. This disk is locked. I have no idea how to unlock and have tried everything. My disk was password protected but I don't know if it is that. I can't get computer open to the password window

If I connect time machine it shows up but says no backup found

Last choice is get online help. I did all the things it said

My lion is valid but it's downloaded from apple and I can't get it to try and reload or format without buying a new Lion install disk. Don't even know I'd it will work. The disk utility will let me Format the disk but I will lose all my info which would have been backed up on the time machine backup disk which is kaput

Any help appreciated

[nullx8]

Well sounds very much like a hardware issue,

Pretty sure it has nothing to do with the os.

Backups gone ? Well sure you wipedthe disk before and thecomputer crashed before its created a new one.

First make sure the disk is okay by checking it in host mode.

Probably get a new disk install leopard, and you good to go.

Send me pm if you running out of options.

[Jimi007]

Huh, I had a problem just like that. I had to start over and reinstall everything. I went back to 10.6.8 after it happened a second time with 10.7.2. Disc Warrior might be able to fix it, if you can find a bootable copy here in Thailand. When you do get it running again, use Carbon Cloner to backup to an external hard drive. It saves everything including your settings, unlike time machine...

Do you have another Mac computer? You can connect to you iMac with a firewire cable and start it in target mode, then run disc utility. If not, you need a bootable drive or DVD. Then start with the option key held down. Then choose your boot drive.

Is you iMac under warranty? Call Apple care... Good luck. It may be a pain in the ass to get everything back to the way it was before...

Edited January 23, 2012 by Jimi007

[nullx8]

Disc Warrior might be able to fix it

i would not play with a disc in a production machine, the time consumed are not in relation to the cost at all .. (besides the fact that the Cost of the software is equal to 2TB of harddisc space)

since harddiscs are worn components anyway (does not matter if its a Windows or MAC or Unix machine) ...

the safe way is to simply replace the disc to avoid other suprises later on.

the first "shoot" time machine makes includes just a complete mirror of your entire system, (thats why you it takes forever to do the first backup)

Edited January 24, 2012 by nullx8

[Lost in LOS]

Well good news. After two days of messing around and a couple of hours with tech support I can retrieve info and then format hard drive. Here is whats happening as I type.

Rebooting computer while holding command and R gets me into the recovery window. There I can try to copy lion onto my hard disk, but it is locked. What I didn't realize is I can put an external drive in and lion can be installed on that with one of my 4 options. First I had to format with disk utilities the tell it to reinstall lion but on new drive (lion was originally bout online from apple store) by picking another of the 4 options. This disk was unlocked and in 3 hours put info on it an it started the computer. Now in the computer it is still telling me the hard drive is bad and must reformat ( as well as the backup) but I can read all my files in finder and slide them onto the new 500gig backup drive. That's what I am doing now. Appears from the Internet many people had this problem with lional but I couldn't find this explanation anywhere. A pain in the butt but info is saved and I will repair or buy new backup disk for time machine AND I will back up files to another disk manually every week. I will set up computer after copying files and hope for the best and will report back. Really time consuming but at least I saved years of info, some not replaceable.

Thanks to all the help, really appreciate it

[Jimi007]

Disc Warrior might be able to fix it

i would not play with a disc in a production machine, the time consumed are not in relation to the cost at all .. (besides the fact that the Cost of the software is equal to 2TB of harddisc space)

since harddiscs are worn components anyway (does not matter if its a Windows or MAC or Unix machine) ...

the safe way is to simply replace the disc to avoid other suprises later on.

the first "shoot" time machine makes includes just a complete mirror of your entire system, (thats why you it takes forever to do the first backup)

Have you ever used Disc Warrior? It's been around for a long time. It has saved me from a lot of work on many occasions. And by the way Carbon Cloner IMO is way better than time machine in case of a system crash. It's freeware and it's been around about as long as Disc Warrior... But you are right about the price of hard drives these days. Pretty darned cheap! I've never had an IBM (Hitachi now) HD fail. Western Digitals are probably the worst.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Jimi007

[nullx8]

Have you ever used Disc Warrior?

in the old days yes .. even on a daily basis ..

and i agree with you Carbon Cloner is just as same good as the old DOS-Versions of Norton Ghost (simply not possible to make them better)

well Norton got bought .. and the new heros make it just terrible ... (i still used the old DOS Verisons until 2006 or so)

Carbon Cloner is the perfect app to get Office machines quickly on the feet, or reimage a machine.

it saves ages in setup time and well it brings back a complete system.

but for a production machine (and this was my point in my first post) both apps are not practicable.

99,99% of my Income is Computer & Network Related ... so i consider my imac a "Production machine"

if Disc utility can not repair a disc .. this is by far the end of the Road for me.

there is sure software out can do better, but for what ?

Hard-discs are like plastic bags .. the design of this devices is made to be fast and practicable, but this goes on the lifespan,

and if one does fail once .. i wont rescue it and wait for a bigger lost in time, data and therefore Money at some stage later.

since the harddisc prices are so low .. it does by far not make any sense at all ..

imagine after 2 Years a disc Die, in this time your storage requiirements are much higher as they where before,

so instead of pain, this bad blocks become the excuse to upgrade the HDD space by obtain a bigger harddisc as the one you have installed .. which is then (after this 2-3 years) affordable as well at least this is my path to go.

thanks to MobileMe and a few Firewire Discs i have never got any hardware related trouble anyway.

the "big Blocks" run on my MacBook as well via FireWire disc, and as for the little details .. MobileME/iCloud take care of them very well.

Harddisk's .. well out of experience, SeaGate may the best brand ... but they are not really "transportable" (specially the fast ones)

most HP and IBM Discs are Seagate anyway.

[Jimi007]

Have you ever used Disc Warrior?

in the old days yes .. even on a daily basis .. and i agree with you Carbon Cloner is just as same good as the old DOS-Versions of Norton Ghost (simply not possible to make them better) well Norton got bought .. <snip> IBM Discs are Seagate anyway.

Carbon Cloner for Mac was not dos, still isn't. But as you said, it works great. IBM made hard drives in Chon Buri that Apple used in PowerBooks. The same plant is now Hitachi, which is what Apple now uses in their MacBook Pros. I personally only use Hitachi and Seagate drives. I had a Seagate drive fail a bit over a month ago, it was replaced free under warranty. I did notice that their warranty use to be five years is now only two years. I guess they follow you logic in they need to be replaced by something bigger after two years now. I just bought a 3 TB Seagate. I hope it lasts more than two years!

[nullx8]

Carbon Cloner for Mac was not dos, still isn't.

I compared cc with norton ghost (in its original 16bit dos version)

As they both still the only 2 apps really trustworthy and fast do the job with no worries.

[Jimi007]

Carbon Cloner for Mac was not dos, still isn't.

I compared cc with norton ghost (in its original 16bit dos version)

As they both still the only 2 apps really trustworthy and fast do the job with no worries.

Ah, okay I understand what you were saying now!

Cheers, Jimi

[Lost in LOS]

update. I got my computer running and put back in the info. Been working on the computer for 12 hours setting up as before. Pain in the butt. oops, had to contact apple support again, based in singapore so engllish okay, my spot light wouldnt work, no will a back up to my external hard drive complete. We did everything to fix spotlight which would not recogize the computer, but last night, while sleeping spotlight fixed itself. After trying to fix the TM 20+ times the support says they will have to change my hard disk. Without a proper time machine backup this is going to be a nightmare again, i have my files but setting up the computer again will kill me. I used disk utility to check backup disk, 2 TB, it says okay. I erased it countless times and formated journeled, then said to use it for my time machine and tried a backup. it gets about 20% of the way, stops and a window comes up and says it cannot complete. The DU says my disk is good, even so I repaired it many times, and did the whole thing over. Can that disk be bad even though DU says its good, I hate to pay for a new 2TB is this one is good and the TM program is bad? Everything else seems to be working on my computer now but it wont do a backup to my external disk even though DU says it is working and formated properly. Hellllllllllllllp

back up disk is western digatal 2TB and has been working properly for the 13 months I have my 27" imac

Edited January 27, 2012 by Lost in LOS

[nullx8]

could be either timemachine cant read your internal disc.. or your external has issues.

could also the enclosure (i had plenty of disc issues causd by cheap enclosures (including phillips and other brands)

[Lost in LOS]

could be either timemachine cant read your internal disc.. or your external has issues.

could also the enclosure (i had plenty of disc issues causd by cheap enclosures (including phillips and other brands)

Okay thanks

my spotlight fixed itself. the problems left are the time machine backup doesnt work, tried everything 20 times, with and without support. My backup disk is good since I just backed up all manually. Support says it is the hard drive that is bad and they will replace it shortly. This is why I brought a mac, thought this stuff never happened. Oh well.

thanks all for the help

[Jimi007]

update. I got my computer running and put back in the info. Been working on the computer for 12 hours setting up as before. Pain in the butt. oops, had to contact apple support again, based in singapore so engllish okay, my spot light wouldnt work, no will a back up to my external hard drive complete. We did everything to fix spotlight which would not recogize the computer, but last night, while sleeping spotlight fixed itself. After trying to fix the TM 20+ times the support says they will have to change my hard disk. Without a proper time machine backup this is going to be a nightmare again, i have my files but setting up the computer again will kill me. I used disk utility to check backup disk, 2 TB, it says okay. I erased it countless times and formated journeled, then said to use it for my time machine and tried a backup. it gets about 20% of the way, stops and a window comes up and says it cannot complete. The DU says my disk is good, even so I repaired it many times, and did the whole thing over. Can that disk be bad even though DU says its good, I hate to pay for a new 2TB is this one is good and the TM program is bad? Everything else seems to be working on my computer now but it wont do a backup to my external disk even though DU says it is working and formated properly. Hellllllllllllllp

back up disk is western digatal 2TB and has been working properly for the 13 months I have my 27" imac

What's the warranty on your external drive? I just had a Seagate eternal fail, it was three years old and they replaced it for free. And it's seems to me that a hard drive can fail even when disc utility says it's okay. My internal drive is messed up and slow. I ran disc repair and it says it's okay now, ran disc permissions too. Tried to boot off of it and it took forever! I booted of my external drive the I made a copy of the internal on, using the freeware carbon cloner and it boots really fast and works fine! Try carbon cloner! Much better than Time Machine, IMO. I called Apple care, I need to bring in my computer to an Apple repair shop for them to check it... I'll hopefully go tomorrow and get a new drive from them... By the way, Western Digital IMO are the worst brand of hard drives.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Jimi007

[Lost in LOS]

well it took over a week but it appears to be fixed. had a really good guy on support from austraila. I was affraid of apple people here fixing it becasue two of them told me I would lose all my info. Online support told me how to get it.

I wiped my hard disk with zeros, twice, and downloaded eveything in it again and set it all up. When I was about to try it the new lion upgrade, 10.7.3 came out, literly before I was going to try the computer, I downloaded it and all is well.

One trick I learned from all this is the is a file that has all the setup and file info on it. If you copy this file to an external drive, you can slide that into your newly booted system and it will come up perfectly. I didnt know this the first time. Also, when I put my stuff back in before I knew about this file, I slid it into the hard drive, but that is not the way to do it. You slide into this file and it stores all your computer info and files [not programs]. Here is where the file is, if you havent done it alreay I would slide this one file into an external hard drive. Your itunes, desktop, files etc will all come back as it was when you copied it.

In finder, at the top bar click go, then computer, then hard drive, then users, then your home button [it has a little house icon on it and will be named what you originally named it]. just slide that whole folder into an external hard drive and save it if you ever have big problems. I am using time machine back up but like i origianlly said, that crashed as well as the main hard drive.

This particlular file is where the expert wanted me to slide all my info into, not the hard drive file.

This is a safe then sorry method and I will update it monthly

hope it helps someone, i sure wish I knew about it before

[BlaMuek]

How did you get hold of this tech guy in Oz? Suspect I will be needing to contact them this week - do you have a way to by-pass all the hurdles you have to go through when contacting Apple Care?

[Lost in LOS]

How did you get hold of this tech guy in Oz? Suspect I will be needing to contact them this week - do you have a way to by-pass all the hurdles you have to go through when contacting Apple Care?

I went though apple care seveal times untill they were having problems, and said they will connect me to a senior tech, they transfered and this is who i got. start with the regular guys and if your having problems ask for the senior, maybe that will work. He was really good

[BlaMuek]

cheers,

[Lost in LOS]

cheers,

try this number, it gets to the tech support in australia and maybe you can get a tech that way +65 64808300

[BlaMuek]

Thanks LIL, will do.