Q: Computer dead since updating to Maverick... HELP
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Nov 9, 2013 4:33 AMby FrenchToast,You could try the tips and steps described here: http://superuser.com/questions/84446/how-to-mount-a-hfs-partition-in-ubuntu-as-r ead-write.
Obviously, you'll need an Ubuntu LiveCD or its USB equivalent, and an external drive that can host the amount of data you're trying to salvage, plus a little bit of time...
You also may have trouble disabling journaling in OS X, especially if you can't start Disk Utility.
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Nov 9, 2013 5:18 AMby WZZZ,HelpfulRepair Disk is greyed out normally. You need to be booted from the install DVD or a clone. One option is to boot into Single User mode and run fsck there until it comes clean. Follow the directions at Use fsck if necessary
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417
But first, just try a Safe Boot: Shift down at the startup chime, and give it much more time than a normal boot.
Will it boot to the recovery partition Cmd-R? If it does, you can repair the disk from there.
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Nov 9, 2013 6:00 PMby iMacNuoobs,As you can see from my other post, I've been having problems with getting onto recovery mode.
Wheneve I tried to get to Safe Mode, I can get to the apple logo screen, and nothing happens.
I did read that I am supposed to wait for much longer than usual for the startu, but nothing happened for more than an hour... Is that normal?
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Nov 10, 2013 1:30 AMby FrenchToast,"fsck" stands for "file system check", and it's just a way to ensure that your volume (the partition you're checking) is OK, not just that the physical drive has no defect.
In your case, it looks like you can't unlock the Recovery Partition you've created when first installing Maverick. Unless you are ready to lose all the data on this drive (in which case you can just proceed to reinstall Maverick after erasing the whole drive, not just the partitions you created), your best choice is to proceed as I suggested: use an Ubuntu Live CD to access the drive (come to think of it, in read-only mode, it would just work), mount it in Ubuntu, plug a USB drive big enough to host the amount of data you want to backup, copy your data onto it (or them), then reinstall Mavericks from scratch, after erasing the whole drive.
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Nov 10, 2013 3:44 AMby Frederick0245,One other option could be to buy and install another HDD then boot and install Mavericks to the new drive.
With the new Mavericks OS running you should then be able to see your original drive and hopefully at least be able to get to your data on the old drive. If all goes to plan and after you have put your data away safe then you can first try running repair from disk utility on the old drive and then if needed re-format the old drive and reuse as necessary.
This was how I recovered from a problem once.
I now have 3 HDD drives installed all running with different OS's suited to my various applications that I use.
Regards
Fred
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Nov 10, 2013 7:48 AMby iMacNuoobs,Thanks, Fred. I will have to run out and get an internal hard drive... But before I do that, let me ask this:
I was searching around in frustration for answers and saw the part that FrenchToast mentioned about being booted from an Install DVD. I have my original mac os dvd with me, which is 10. 6.4 I believe? I booted from that and The repair disk option is still greyed out. I tried to back up my data in this disk utility, which seemed to work for hours, and the next morning I wake up and find that it gave me an error near the very end of the process.
If I just re-install the old OS on my computer, will that wipe out all the previous data? Or is there a reason I got an error with the backup that I can fix?
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Nov 10, 2013 9:01 AMby FrenchToast,The Snow Leopard install DVD will contain OS X 10.6.3, which was the latest retail version sold by Apple; all subsequent versions came as updates.
When you boot up this install DVD, you can't access Disk Utility right away. You must go through the install routine first, i.e. choose your language, until the Tools menu is available, at which point you can open Disk Utility. That's where you can choose to wipe your drive out if you want to.
Reinstalling without erasing your drive shouldn't remove all your personal data, but the old "archive and install" option you could use in Tiger is no longer valid in SL. It means that although your documents will still be there, the content of your user account's library will be overwritten. All your applications preferences will be gone.
Up to you. Now, from the install DVD, you should have access to the content of your startup volume. You should be able to copy your personal data onto another drive at that point.
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Nov 10, 2013 10:00 AMby iMacNuoobs,I just tried to install Snow Leopard onto Mackitosh HD without erasing the drive, and I got yet another error saying the contents of this disk can't be changed. How ridiculous....
I have tried to back up using the disk utility through the Snow Leopard installer, but keep gettin input/output error.
There seems to be no option that works right now... Sigh
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Nov 10, 2013 10:59 AMby WZZZ,I just tried to install Snow Leopard onto Mackitosh HD without erasing the drive, and I got yet another error saying the contents of this disk can't be changed. How ridiculous....
You can't go back to Snow like that. You must first erase the drive and then install it. Or if you had a backup of some kind you wouldn't need to do that. As far as I know the following applies to Mav, not just Lion or ML.
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Nov 10, 2013 11:17 AMby FrenchToast,In recent versions of OS X (i.e., Lion and above), the use of an install DVD has been abandoned in favor of creating a recovery partition. The idea is not to have to carry around (and possibly, lose) a physical DVD, with the possible downside that if your hard drive fails, you lose both your startup volume and the recovery partition, but that's another debate.
In this regard, and like WZZZ said, you first need to erase your hard drive (preferably the whole drive, not just the partitions you have created on it) in order to reinstall Snow Leopard, so as to be able to upgrade to Maverick at a later time.
First, you must back up your data, if you don't want to lose them. Hence my proposal to use an Ubuntu LiveCD... Of course, you can also run Ubuntu live from a big USB drive and, if it's big enough to store both the Linux distribution and the data you want to backup, you won't have to multiply the storage units to do you backup.
