IMac Not Booting

[bgibbz]

Hey, so basically we have had a 2009 IMac sitting in our basement untouched for about 5 years (with the exception of about 3 months ago when I installed El Capitan). My younger sister decided she wanted to use it for school, so I set it up again. When I first plugged it in and booted up, it booted fine. I then began reordering all of the accounts, essentially deleting every one in my families acounts while storing the data in a users folder at the same time. I also organized a bunch of the files, updated the machine, and installed a couple programs. I then rebooted it in order to finalize the updates, but after that it would not boot up again. The screen would turn on, I would get the Apple logo and the loading bar, but at a bout half way the screen would turn white and nothing would happen. I left it on for about 18 hours in that state to see if it would eventually boot, but nothing happened. Since then, I have reset the NVRAM, booted into recovery mode and checked the disk (said it found and fixed an error but it still doesnt work), and reinstalled the OS. Yet, this problem persists. At this point, im assuming the 7 year old hardrive is dead/dying, but I am wondering if there is maybe another explanation? Also, is there a way I can recover any of the data from drive if it is dead, like away to back it up from recovery mode? 

 

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

[Electronics Wizardy]

The os probably got screwed up due to a bad hdd. Change the hdd. If you care about the data on the hdd send it to a data recovery place, if you want the data, use something like ddrescue to copy the contents to another hdd or an image file. You can install the hdd via firewire or usb if you don't want to take it all apart.

[bgibbz]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The os probably got screwed up due to a bad hdd. Change the hdd. If you care about the data on the hdd send it to a data recovery place, if you want the data, use something like ddrescue to copy the contents to another hdd or an image file. You can install the hdd via firewire or usb if you don't want to take it all apart.

Ok. Thanks for your help.