Help! My Mac died! Update!!

[katie111]

we have about a 10 year old Mac and last week it just stopped turning on. Just a blank screen. Then it came back on briefly & died again. We then got a folder with a question mark appearing. It seems that it can't find the operating system. Not sure what to do now. I know we are due for a new computer but my main concern is that all of my photos for the last 10 years are on there in IPhoto. I never backed them up or moved them into Shutterfly or similar. So I'm just praying I can get them back. So my question is what to I do now??

Bring it to the Apple Store? Will they be able to help me & at what cost? Don't think we want another Mac.

Bring it BestBuy or similar? Would they possibly be able to download the pics to a new computer?

Bring it to a local computer repair shop to see if they can fix it or download the pics?

Or have I just lost my pictures forever??

Unfortunately, DH & I are very technically challenged!

 

[Terapin]

I'd bring it back to Apple. You can make an appointment at their Genius Bar online. They will take a look for you and quote you a price to fix it.

 

[ellie05]

There is no way for anyone to know if you have lost your pictures unless they have access to the computer. Therefore no way for us to know the cost. This might be a hard lesson to learn if you so lost all your picture of how important is to back up specially in a 10 year old computer, which I am assuming you didn't do any regular maintenance to it.

I hope the reason you are not getting a other Mac is not because of this issue. Good luck and I would suggest you make an appointment with the Genius Bar instead of calling if you are not very familiar with computers. I hope your pictures are all there.

 

[jiminy14]

I had this very thing happen to me about 6 months ago. Got the same folder with the question mark. My DD researched the problem online, tried a few of the "fixes" but nothing worked. Took it to the Genius Bar at the Apple store and they ran a diagnostic on it. Turns out my hard drive died and I needed a new one. Cost to replace it was $150 plus $20 for some sort of bracket. I think my MAC was around the same age as yours maybe a year younger. I was due for a backup but had put it off which resulted in me losing all of my pictures.
They were very helpful at the Genius Bar and I thought the cost was very reasonable compared to purchasing a new computer.

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

There may be hope - I'm not familiar with Macs since I'm strictly a PC person but when the hard drive failed on our desktop computer, we took it to a local computer repair place who got great reviews and they were able to retrieve our photos.

The hard drive was toast so we bought a new computer but I was so happy they could get to our photos. So maybe you can get yours too!

 

[usnuzuloose]

I would take it in and have them look. But that is why I paid more for the apple product. By now I would have had to buy a different computer through the years. Other ones have always gone out within the first few years.

 

[fsjking]

I would take it to a local computer repair place that deals with macs. It's almost certainly a hard drive issue, which apple will just say it needs a new hard drive and will most likely tell you everything is lost. That's what they told me when I had a hard drive issue. Fortunately, I knew enough about computers to do some diagnoses and was able to back up the hard drive, replace it, and put everything on the new hard drive. The drive may very well be toast, but I'd definitely take it to someone to plug it in and see what can be done. A local center is more likely to give you options if it is recoverable. An apple store is going to probably give you less options.

 

[mountdew1]

If it's a hard drive issue, it might be an easy fix, or it might be a costly fix, depends on what exactly is wrong with the hard drive. If the part of the hard drive that tells your computer how to read the hard drive is bust, then you can still get to the data, you just need to hook it up to another computer and run a program to figure out what is on there and retrieve your important data. Think of it like losing the table of contents to a book. You could go through it page by page and figure out what exactly is on each page, it just takes a while. That a good local computer place can do, might charge you $100-200. (I've done it for a few cases of beer for a friend) If the hard drive itself is dead, bearings, spindle, head, etc had a problem, then the only way to fix it to get the data back is to ship it to a specialist who will disassemble the entire drive, and put the platters (places where the data is stored) into a new setup and then retrieve the data that way. That can easily run $500-several thousand depending on the severity of the issue. Once you get your data back, if you have the original setup software and the Mac met all your computer needs, you can just stick a new hard drive in and rebuild it like new. Once again, your local computer place might charge your $100-200 for that, including the drive.

 

[J.Casto79]

You'lol need to find service locally. Don't waste your time going to an Apple Store, they consider it to be vintage/obsolete.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624

 

[katie111]

Thanks for all the helpful replies! I found a local computer guy who came highly recommended. Called him & he seemed optimistic that he can fix it so keeping my fingers crossed!

 

[katie111]

OP here-

I took my computer to a local computer guy. Hard drive was dead. He was able to restore all the data! He is also going to install a new hard drive & the computer will be up and running again. New hard drive will have 4x the storage of the old one. He said we should be able to get another 4-5 years out of our Mac.

Total cost was $300. Relief at having all of our pictures back is priceless! Best Christmas present this year!!

Definitely learned my lesson & will definitely be backing everything up from now on as well as taking my computer in for regular checkups when things aren't working right.

Thanks for the suggestions.