Question How can I get my imac hard drive info when it won't boot up

[Ineedhelpasap]

I been having lots of problems with my computers my imac won't boot up anymore it shows a file with a question mark in the middle I don't wanna lose my data at all how can I make it work again. Or how can I get my data without opening the imac I need help please my career it's on the line and I'm late returning this assignments.

 

[txsouthpaw]

I been having lots of problems with my computers my imac won't boot up anymore it shows a file with a question mark in the middle I don't wanna lose my data at all how can I make it work again. Or how can I get my data without opening the imac I need help please my career it's on the line and I'm late returning this assignments.

If you have another Mac or PC handy, you can download and burn to disc most any Linux Distro (i.e. Ubuntu, Fedora, or Mint). Once the disc is burned, boot from it using the boot menu or BIOS settings for boot order. Once the live desktop loads, you should be able to access your hard drive from the file manager. The necessary files can be copied to an external HDD or USB stick. Good luck and I hope this helps.

 

[Bruceregan]

Hi,

You need to reinstall the operating system and then use Recovery software that can restore datas from reinstalled or resized partition like remo recover. Then within a certain time you can able recover all the datas back or remove the hard drive from the pc . connect it with some other mac system and then use the software option.One thing you have to be sure is never install the tool in the same logical drive as it will harm the available datas completely...

 

[Ijack]

If your data is important - really important - don't mess about trying to solve this yourself. You will almost certainly make matters worse. Although if you have an OS X disk it is worth booting from this and seeing if Disk Utility can see the drive. If not the drive is probably dead.

Booting a Mac from a Linux Live CD is not a trivial matter - this is not a PC where things are easy. As for reinstalling the OS and then trying to recover the data - that's a sure way to say goodbye to any chance of recovering your data (assuming you are not an expert in Mac data recovery). What you can do, if you have a spare USB drive, is to install the OS on that. It's just possible that when you boot from that drive you may be able to recover some data from the internal drive. This is a safe option as it doesn't involve making any changes to the internal disk; but it does rely upon you being sure of what you are doing.

Really you should take it to a repair shop that deals with Macs. The worst case situation, if the disk is dead, is that they may have to send it to a specialized data recovery service who can take the disk apart and recover the data from it; this is not a cheap process. And learn the lesson next time that you never keep just one copy of important data - that's what backups were invented for.

 

[Bruceregan]

Hi,

If your data is in some some other volume apart from the one where os is yet to be installed. Even if you try installing the os try it with a existing partition which doesn't contain much data in it..

 

[Scottter]

Were you able to see it in FW Target Mode?

Some ideas...

Either boot this one in Target mode...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661

And recovering from another Mac, or booting this Mac from another HDD, then using Data Rescue...

http://software.bigbigsoft.com/data-recovery-mac

(Has a Free Demo to see if it could or not, but you'll need another drive to recover to).

rccharles on file recovery...

"Stellar Phoenix Macintosh - Mac data recovery software, recovers data from damaged, deleted, or corrupted volumes and even from initialized disks."
They have a trial version, so I guess you can see if your data can be recovered...
http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-data-recovery.htm

FileSalvage is an extremely powerful Macintosh application for exploring and recovering deleted files from a drive or volume. FileSalvage is designed to restore files that have:
* been accidentally deleted.
* become unreadable due to media faults.
* been stored on a drive before it was re-initialized/formatted.
http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id= 1

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11073082#11073082

DiskWarrior from Alsoft...

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

Using Scavenge mode.

 

[xdslman]

Hi,

You need to reinstall the operating system and then use Recovery software that can restore datas from reinstalled or resized partition like remo recover. Then within a certain time you can able recover all the datas back or remove the hard drive from the pc . connect it with some other mac system and then use the software option.One thing you have to be sure is never install the tool in the same logical drive as it will harm the available datas completely...

Quite likely the most useless and worst idea ever!! You must be a troll to tell someone that...WOW!