Will a Lion reinstall wipe my documents?

Question

Will a Lion reinstall wipe my documents?

I woke up, went to my late 2011 MacBook Pro and it took forever for the display to wake up, and it kept showing beach ball,

After some minutes, the login prompt came up but with the beach ball still spinning.

After waiting for like 3 minutes I decided to shut it down by pressing the power button.

The computer restarted and it's giving me a screen to re-install Lion from a backup or from the app store.

Crazy! I shut it down to see if it will work fine, but I keep getting the same screen re-install screen.

Now what I want to know is will re-installing from the app store wipe away my documents? This is crazy! And don't have a backup to re-install from.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Jun 28, 2012 11:19 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 28, 2012 11:25 AM in response to kriskriskriskris

Hi..

Now what I want to know is will re-installing from the app store wipe away my documents?

Lion is reinstalled by using Lion Recovery

Not by re downloading Lion from the App Store.

A reinstall should not delete your documents, but as with any installation, you should always backup your data first.

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Answer 2

Jun 28, 2012 11:28 AM in response to Carolyn Samit

Thanks for your reply but I see you don't fully understand my problem. Computer starts and basically gives me options as if the computer has just been formatted. I can't access any data, talk less of backing it up.

I selected the re-install from Mac app store and it says my drive is locked, so I guess it's a drive problem.

I'll take it to the apple store later today. But for now I've shut it down, I'll give it some time them try again.

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Answer 3

BB623

Level 4

1,209 points

Jun 28, 2012 11:35 AM in response to kriskriskriskris

Did you try to run in safe mode? Safe mode

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Answer 4

Jun 28, 2012 11:42 AM in response to BB623

After reading your reply I gave that a try but I'm still giving the welcome screen asking me to select my default language.

The screen after that allows me to select disk utility, I'm repairing disk now.

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Answer 5

Jun 28, 2012 11:47 AM in response to kriskriskriskris

Well it can't repair the disk. Am I the only one that always has problems with macs just after going through the airport X-ray scanner?

Years ago my 2004 PowerBook had the same problem just after going through the airport.

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Answer 6

BB623

Level 4

1,209 points

Jun 28, 2012 12:06 PM in response to kriskriskriskris

You have a backup hopefully. Disk Warrior is a good program you ran buy and run from a DVD drive to recover if you don't have a backup. This seems to be a last resort option if you can fix using normal utilities. It sound like me the HD went bad so try to recover what you can.

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Answer 7

Jun 28, 2012 2:58 PM in response to kriskriskriskris

Hopefully you have a good time machine back up of all of your data. After you reinstall LION, then use the restore from time machine back up and all of your documents (which were backed up) will be put back onto your HDD.

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Answer 8

Jun 28, 2012 4:39 PM in response to NightNinjaPDX

Stupid on my part I don't have a backup.

I went to the apple store and they ordered a replacement for the hard drive since disk utility cannot repair it.

It's going to take two days to get a new disk, but meanwhile I'm trying to see how I can get some data out.

I'm installing Lion on a flash drive and see if I can access the internal drive once I'm running Lion on the flash drive.

We shall see.

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