Is my G4 hard drive Dead?

[Cape51]

I went to install an older version of PhotoShop on my G4 Cube. Got a message saying 'installer not working' then 'finder not working'. Removed install disk and then rebooted. i get a chime but just a grey apple and spinning wheel. I used the OSX disk utility and got a message that says memory failed. Can i retrieve the programs on the hard drive?

 

[jmgalvin]

If you can boot from the cd, as it appears you can, try double clicking the hard drive on your desktop and see it opens ok. If so, move everything to some other drive, like an outboard one.

You might also try booting into safe mode to se if the machine will work.
Shut down the computer.
Press the Power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, press and hold the Shift key.
Release the Shift key when the spinning progress indicator appears below the gray apple on the screen

If the above works, your machine is probably ok but something on the drive is botched. If so, start from the cd and run disk utility repair and see if that fixes things.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4 & G5

 

[Cape51]

Pressing the shift key only makes the unit shut down and try to reboot again.
The disk utility won't do a repair. I get a message saying invalid key length and disk first aid cannot repair them.

 

[jmgalvin]

If you can boot from the cd, the machine should recognize an outboard drive. If so, You should be able to move all files/folders to that drive.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4 & G5