Boot drive not seen anymore

The boot drive (Seagate 120Gb) on my G4 PowerMac (10.4.10) suddenly
disappeared. I was playing some game and the spinning ball came on and I
couldn't get rid of it - so I stopped the machine and re-booted. I got
the ? in the middle of the screen and nothing else. So I re-booted from
a CD, went to Disk Utility and all it sees is is the DVD drive. I have
reset the PRAM and the PMU but no joy.

I have here a PowerBook; is it possible to connect the drive to the
Powerbook and look at it and recover some/all data (and what would be
good s/w for this)?

Or do I have to go to a data recovery company? In that case anyone knows
of a good one in Berkshire, UK - or nearest to it.

What other options are available?

Thanks for any help!
--
Regards,

Karel

www.golem.demon.co.uk
www.yiquan.org.uk

In article , Karel
Koskuba wrote:

> The boot drive (Seagate 120Gb) on my G4 PowerMac (10.4.10) suddenly
> disappeared. I was playing some game and the spinning ball came on and I
> couldn't get rid of it - so I stopped the machine and re-booted. I got
> the ? in the middle of the screen and nothing else. So I re-booted from
> a CD, went to Disk Utility and all it sees is is the DVD drive. I have
> reset the PRAM and the PMU but no joy.

a blinking ? means it couldn't find a bootable system. since disk
utility didn't see the drive, it sounds like the drive has failed
completely, rather than just the system being corrupted somehow.

> I have here a PowerBook; is it possible to connect the drive to the
> Powerbook and look at it and recover some/all data (and what would be
> good s/w for this)?

you can boot it into firewire target mode by holding down the 't' key
when booting it. that will turn the g4 into a giant hard drive. attach
it to the powerbook with a firewire cable and see what you can find.
or, remove the drive from the g4 and put it into a firewire enclosure
and try it.

if the drive is accessible, back up whatever you can.

> Or do I have to go to a data recovery company? In that case anyone knows
> of a good one in Berkshire, UK - or nearest to it.

can't help you with a company over there, however, drivesavers in
california is excellent.

> What other options are available?

if the drive physically failed, not many. hopefully you can access the
data without expensive recovery services.