volume not mounted?

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Level 1

4 points

volume not mounted?

My new mac book pro won't start up. Disk utility says the volume not mounted. This has happened twice. The first time was 2 days after I bought it. Apple support had me erase the hard drive and reinstall everything. Don't want to go through that again as this time I have stuff to loose and am not backed up. Just got a portable HD for christmas to back up and now this again. Where do I start?

Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Dec 31, 2009 9:40 PM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Jan 1, 2010 5:51 AM in response to groove56

The Mac OS forums and MacBOOK Pro, rather than here, though glad to try to help.

Do use a couple backups. TimeMachine and one other.

Boot from another hard drive or DVD to repair your drive.

New drive should not fail, but they can, and even a zero all isn't perfect. Erase is just quick initialize and doesn't test for weak sectors.

Install OS X to your external on a small partition. You'll want that to run repairs and maintenance, and use the rest of the drive for backup purpose until you get 2nd. Yes, two backup sets that you alternate.

The best way to 'fix' a drive is from in Windows or from CD.

Invest in Disk Warrior as soon as you can also, unfortunate but Apple First Aid doesn't cut it, and HFS+ seems to have its own weaknesses and failings.

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