Q: Need help to avoid data loss on a corrupt and/or failing hard drive
i don't know what happened. One minute I'm surfing the web and listening to music on iTunes. Then out of nowhere there was a sudden power outage. Didn't last long at all but now when I try to turn on my computer, it begins normally but then shortly after the chime and the apple logo appear, so does a progress indicator bar that I've never seen before today. Before the progress bar is even the size of my pinky nail, the computer just turns itself off. I started it in recovery mode and ran disk utility verify and repair. Verify disk doesn't get far when it says something like - Disk cannot be verified completely. Disk needs to be repaired. So when I click on repair disk, it only runs for maybe a minute before it comes back saying - disk utility cannot repair this disk. Back up as of your many files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed up files. So obviously that's not good. What are my options and is there anything I can do to avoid losing data that isnt already backed up? I've got quite a few things that haven't been backed up and losing some of them would be pretty devastating. This is my primary goal; to lose as little data as possible. My computer is a late 2012 iMac running Mavericks 10.9.5.
Thank you.
iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), 21.5 inch late 2012 model
Posted on Jan 19, 2016 6:27 AM
For what it's worth, everyone who told me that my data was lost was wrong. I have struggled with what to say concerning this post. Because in my heart I feel certain that the knowledge I requested could have been shared with me from most of the people who posted an answer to my original question. Perhaps I am wrong but I just do not see how one becomes a bonafide apple expert (level 8 +) without knowing the answer to my original question. I get that you don't want to give information to someone who may be potentially trying to crack into someone else's machine. But telling me wrong information vs telling me you can't help me are two completely different things. And the fact is that the information is available on the internet. So whether my intention was to recover my own data or steal someone else's, the unwillingness to share knowledge is not going to deter someone from doing what they have set out to do. In my case, I recovered all of my data without spending a dime on anything other than Tylenol. But even if my intentions were nefarious, do you really think telling a criminal they can't do something is going to stop them? Maybe my assumptions are wrong. Maybe no knew how to do what I asked. But like I said, that seems unlikely to me. If I am wrong, I apologize to anyone who gave me information that they sincerely believed was accurate. I just find any sort of intellectually dishonesty very offensive.
Also offensive is seeing that my original question branched to new discussion after someone hijacked my post, which was then branched to a third discussion to which I am restricted from accessing. Possibly another weird ASC glitch but offensive nonetheless.
To anyone who may need to know how to do this in the future: Single user mode was the answer to my particular situation. If you find yourself in a similar situation it may be the answer for you. There are no guarantees and every situation is different but if you can see your files while in single user mode then you can more than likely retrieve your files as well. The links below helped me immensely.
http://thinkinginsoftware.blogspot.com/2014/03/mac-osx-not-booting-make-backup-f rom.html
http://alvinalexander.com/mac-os-x/mac-osx-single-user-mode-usb-drive
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030714194313542
Posted on Jan 25, 2016 5:47 AM