[HM] beyond hmmmmmmmm

[Duane Murphy]

--- At Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:28:52 +0000, michaelP wrote:

>hi everyone, thanks for everything, but something crucial has intervened (I
>am now working from my friend's iMac): whilst working in a normal fashion
>(iMac, G4, 800Hz, OS 9.2) and attempting to read a PDF application manual
>from a MacFormat magazine CD, Acrobat crashed and I had to shutdown using
>the button towards the back of the iMac. On rebooting the iMac could find no
>bootable disk and came up with an alternating question mark. After several
>attempts this persisted. I then booted up from a System 9 install CD and
>found the following: at the point of displaying the internal hard drive it
>came up with a dialogue box that said the disk was unreadable and did I want
>to intialise it... Does this mean the hard drive is totally nobbled and
>defunct or should I attempt to intialise it and perhaps re-install
>everything? Could the hard drive be recoverable, and if so, how?

Run do not walk to <http://www.alsoft.com/> and find DiskWarrior for OS
9. You might have to dig to find it, they have pretty much shifted to OS X.

Disk Warrior will have a very good chance of recovering you drive. If
anything can recover the drive then DiskWarrior can usually do it. 

If Disk Warrior fails, then about your only recourse to recover any data
is an expensive disk data recovery place. I've never used one so I can't
recommend anything.

Good luck,

 ...Duane