And I shall call it Lazarus. My iMac that is. And I promise this will be my last post about it.

My Mac world spins blissfully on once again as last weekend I was able to install a new hard drive in my iMac. I purchased a 500 GB Seagate drive, and with the help of my dog (who insisted on sitting right next to me so she could take in the wonderful smell of computer), installed the drive in about 30 minutes. It’s quite amazing to peer into the innards of a computer as well engineered as the iMac.

I was also able to use a USB to SATA converter to get all my data off my old drive, so no valuable photos, music, or graphics files were lost. I did try to run DiskWarrior with no success, which affirmed how totally hosed the drive really was. The short of it is, I’m back in business.

Just like my experience creating this blog, there is so much here for me to consider in correlation to the learning process for students. I don’t think there is any refuting how powerful a learning experience can be when it is motivating and guided by self-interest. I spoke at length about this in one of my previous posts, so I won’t rehash it all again.

Tomorrow I plan to return to thoughts that are more directly tied to technology in the education process. Thanks for sticking with my ramblings about my computer issues.

This has been quite an experience.  I should probably clarify one thing quickly before I update where I’m at and where my iMac is at.

I’m not cheap.  Really.  I know it might seem like I’m trying to get out of this without spending any money, but that’s not the case at all.  I’m trying to get the most knowledge out of this experience as possible.  If I wanted to go the cheap way, I’d just take the machine in and have it fixed.  There’s no risk in that.  If I ran a risk vs. cost analysis of trying to fix the machine myself, the results would prove that I’m not taking the fiscally responsible path.  But, I can’t resist.  It’s like when you were a kid and you took apart the toaster to see what it looked like on the inside.  It’s a completely inquisitive, problem-based learning opportunity.  I could probably write five different posts on the relationship of this experience to the way learning happens in the classroom.  Maybe I will in the future.

On to the update.  It got gory last night.  I opened up the iMac and began pulling out its innards as it yelled out “Freedom.”  I’ve gone past the point of no return.  Here’s the proof.

I have a friend who is going to let me borrow a SATA connection interface so I can see if I can connect the drive directly to my MacBook Pro and retrieve any data.  Thanks to Jay Blackman for that suggestion.  Also, Adam Christianson from The MacCast sent me a very helpful email recommending I give DiskWarrior a try.  If I can get the data off the drive, and since I already have the computer in pieces, I think I’m going to purchase a higher capacity hard drive to replace the old drive.  See, I don’t mind spending some money.

Well, that’s where we’re at right now.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I will once again get to see the pictures, listen to the music, and work on the graphics projects that I fear may never be seen, heard, or worked on again.

Let me start off by stating one very important fact.  I am an idiot.  If we can all start from here, I think this will go much more smoothly.

So yesterday morning I realized it had been quite a while since I ran a software update on my 24″ iMac that is still running Tiger.  There were several updates that needed to be downloaded, including the Intel security update.  Of course I didn’t run a backup before doing this, why would I do something so logical?  After all the updates downloaded, I restarted the machine, and that’s when the fun began.

The machine froze up during the reboot, and I had to restart it.  Not a good idea.  The second time it rebooted, I got the wonderful broken folder icon that told me things were going downhill quickly.  I hunted down my install DVD, and booted up from the disk.  I tried to run a disk repair, but was told I have an invalid node structure.  I thought that was getting a bit too personal.

I went ahead and continued to make things worse by restarting the computer again, and the iMac automatically booted from the cd.  I decided to try an archive and install installation in the hope that I wouldn’t lose all the data I haven’t backed up in far too long, but when the installation process got to the volume to install selection screen, my hard drive wasn’t listed.  In fact, nothing was listed.  I then tried to boot into target mode to see if I could access my files from my MacBook Pro, but the only thing my MBP could find on the iMac was the install disk.

The short of it…I’m in trouble.  I can’t access my hard drive with any of the means I am aware of.  I know the logical thing to do at this point would be to bring the machine into Apple (of course I don’t have Apple Care on it anymore) and let them have at it.  But the thing is, I don’t want to.  I got myself into this mess, and I’d kind of like to get myself out of it.  Or at least have people tell me how to get myself out.  So here’s my request.  I’m begging for help.  Does anyone have any idea how I can get back to good?

I’m thinking the next thing to try would be to disassemble the iMac and reseat the hard drive in the hope that it will once again come up as available so I can try the archive and install.  WIth my luck, I’ll end up breaking everything.

Can anyone help?  Or does anyone know anyone who can make a suggestion?  I’ve already established that I’m an idiot, so that suggestion won’t help at the moment.  I’ll just go ahead and post this and hope.