Macbook Pro Freezing, Can't back up files either to external hard drive either..

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Macbook Pro Freezing, Can't back up files either to external hard drive either..

Hi,

I'm not entirely sure what happened but my Macbook Pro, (Lion/Mac OS X 10.7.5) just started to freeze a lot. I can hardly browse the web or sometimes browse folders. In some ocassions its even difficult to check the Activity monitor or go to Disk Utitlity. I always see the rainbow beach ball of death and in the force quit window I see the red "Not responding."

Because of this issue, I plan on taking my Macbook Pro to Apple but the problem is I can't even back up my files. I just started a time machine and it goes well until in the middle of the transfer it says:

"The backup was not performed because an error occured while copying files to the back up disk.

The problem may be temporary. Try again later to back up. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk."

so I tried a different ext. hard drive and still, it says the same message. Upon being fed up of the situation, I attempted to do the old school copy paste from drive to drive but again, in the middle of the transfer it stops and gives me a a differnet message:

"The finder can't complete the operation because some data in ____ can't be read or written."

I checked the file and its a .MOV a video file from my DSLR. I skipped this file and then again, it said the exact same message on a different video file. I can't just avoid these video files. I'm actually a film maker and all this clips are in desparately in need to be backed up.

Does anyone know how to fix this issue? Atleast backing up the files..

Thanks for the help.

p.s.

Not sure if this is related -- since my Macbook Pro has been running slow I deleted a couple of apps such as Things, DaVinci Resolve and FrameForge Previz.. Which to led to having my spolight indexing. I thought it was only the index thats making it run slow but the index done now and I can't back up my files!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Jun 18, 2013 1:14 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 18, 2013 3:29 AM in response to imangelanjo

How much space do you have remaining on your hard drive.?Have you tried repairing permissions?

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Answer 2

imangelanjo Author

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Jun 18, 2013 3:50 AM in response to Vestan Pance

My Macbook Pro has 50.13GB free out of 319.21 GB

My External Hard Drive has 1TB

and yeah, I did try the verify disk permision and repair disk permission.

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

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209,547 points

Jun 18, 2013 5:46 PM in response to imangelanjo

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:

syslog -k Sender kernel -k Message CSeq "I/O error" | tail | open -f -a TextEdit

Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).

The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.

A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Normally the window will be empty. If you get output like this:

kernel[0] <Debug>: disk0s2: I/O error

the boot drive is failing, or there's some other hardware fault in the storage subsystem.

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Answer 4

imangelanjo Author

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Jun 18, 2013 7:46 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks, so it appears to show that "kernel[0] <Debug>: disk0s2: I/O error" 😟

Any chance you know how to fix the issue? My biggest concern really is backing up my files 😟

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Answer 5

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jun 18, 2013 7:56 PM in response to imangelanjo

There are several ways to back up a Mac that is not fully functional. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.

1. Boot from the Recovery partition or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) Launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.”

2. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, boot the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.

3. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.

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Answer 6

imangelanjo Author

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Jun 20, 2013 1:17 AM in response to Linc Davis

Hey Linc,

I just tried option 2 (target disk mode) and so far no luck I'm still getting stuck at the transfer of some video clips and have been getting the error. I've attached photos below if it helps.

Gets stuck at this point.

then the window will turn into

It says it cant be read or written but it is!

I haven't tried option 1 but I was reading the link on Recovery and it seems its installing the OS X will delete my files "These steps will erase and reformat the storage device."

1. Boot from the Recovery partition or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) Launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.”

...sigh. Please tell me there's something else I can do.

I'm worried the I won't be able to take all my files. 😟

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Answer 7

Jun 20, 2013 1:39 AM in response to imangelanjo

i would suggest partitioning your external hard drive to 2 partitions, installing the OS on one and using it to run carbon copy cloner to backup your non working hard disk to the second partition you have created on your external hard disk

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Answer 8

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jun 20, 2013 7:09 AM in response to imangelanjo

The drive is too far gone to be backed up by ordinary means, so you're in a data-recovery emergency. In my opinion that's a job for professionals, but their services are very expensive. There are do-it-yourself methods, but I have no experience with those and can't give you any guidance. Maybe someone else can.

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Answer 9

imangelanjo Author

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Jun 20, 2013 2:24 PM in response to imangelanjo

Have any of you guys heard of Disk Image/New Image? Its in Disk Utitlity, I usually use it to secure video clips from cards transfering to my mac but I just thought of using it for the entire internal hard drive. I'm just not sure if it will also have the error in the new DMG that its creating.

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Answer 10

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jun 20, 2013 2:34 PM in response to imangelanjo

I'm just not sure if it will also have the error in the new DMG that its creating.

It will.

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Answer 11

Sep 10, 2014 4:43 AM in response to imangelanjo

Did you fix your slow machine problem?

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