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Shifftali · Apr 21, 2017, 01:49 PM

I removed my IMAC (EMC No. 2118) (late 2007 or 2008?) hard drive after my power supply died and I didn't want to spend the money to replace it as the computer was already around ten years old. I have a SATA external drive reader (that I bought a while back to extract the data from an old lap top hard drive). The pins from this SATA connector fit into the iMac desktop hard drive, but when I plug it in, my computer is not reading the drive. There is another connection to the left of the usual SATA pins that be needed to hook up. Please Help! Below are all the relevant pictures, thanks4

Curlyben · Apr 21, 2017, 01:57 PM

What machine are you trying to use to read this data ?
When did you last access anything on it ?

Shifftali · Apr 21, 2017, 02:21 PM

I see the pics never went through. I'm using a SATA to USB adapter connector (a sabrent model number EC-UK25. The computer was working a few months ago.

Here also is a caveat: while taking out the hard drive (and previously plugging and unplugging the wire in in hopes to check the power supply and LED pins while the computer was opened up) I stupidly forgot one time and then zapped the hard drive from the outside and now there's a small burn mark on the outside case of the hard drive but no visible damage on the control board. I hope this didn't kill the drive, and do you think the data is still extractable?

Appzalien · Apr 22, 2017, 01:02 PM

What he means is are you trying to access the drive with a PC other than another iMAC. Since Apple uses a different type of format than say Windows, a PC with an NTFS OS will probably not see the MAC drives format (HFS+ ?). With out more information its tough to help you. The case of a hard drive can be used as a ground for the board and therefore could easily damage the electronics of the board if shorted and not necessarily be visible damage. Even if both systems are iMAC if the new one is from 2016 it may have a different file system. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System

Shifftali · Apr 23, 2017, 02:48 PM

Thank you for your reply. Yes, I'm trying to read the iMac desktop HD from my windows computer. So I probably need the correct software. BUT I still hope there is no damage to the data from the short. Is there any hope at all for me to recover the data?
when i plug in the HD into the SATA adapter, even if my computer cant read the hard drive data, shouldnt it at least make like a humming noise ?? (as it does when i plug in a different, other, Hard Drive...)

Shifftali · Apr 23, 2017, 03:16 PM

Thank you for your reply. Yes, I'm trying to read the iMac desktop HD from my windows computer. So I probably need the software. BUT I still hope there is no damage to the data from the short. Is there any hope at all for me to recover the data? 

Appzalien · Apr 25, 2017, 08:13 AM

There are two connections for every sata drive, one is for data transfer and the other for power (the wider one). If you had a sata data cable (perhaps your PC came with an extra) you could try connecting the iMAC drive directly inside the Windows PC with the door open using a sata power connection from the PC's power supply and connecting the iMAC drives sata data cord directly to the motherboard sata inputs. The problem is, even if the drive spins up, I doubt you can access it from inside Windows since the two use different file systems as mentioned above. Although if the drive spins up you might be able to use a boot disk with a linux operating system (live cd) that can recognize both files systems to transfer data from one to the other. I have never done this but it should be pretty straight forward. Live Linux cds are free but which one to use I don't know. There are also boot disks that use linux as the basis for the operation of the utilities included. That might be the way to go. What you need is a boot disk that can recognize both NTFS (or fat32) and HFS+ and will allow access and transfer of data. Look here: https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...mac-windows-pc Pay special note to this line in the tutorial: "Meanwhile, your external hard drive is probably formatted in a version of Apple’s Hierarchical File System (HFS). Windows PCs won’t normally read that without an additional software driver, such as Erik Larsson’s HFSExplorer or the DiskInternals Linux Reader. (It’s a Windows program that reads Linux and Mac disks.) Both are free".