MacBook Air froze and cannot be restarted! HELP PLEASE! Disk Warrior?

Question

Level 1

0 points

MacBook Air froze and cannot be restarted! HELP PLEASE! Disk Warrior?

Hi! I switched from PC to Mac in January when I bought a MacBook Air. Things have been fine until tonight when Safari froze while I was backing up (how ironic!) some files to an external DVD. I Forced Quit Safari but it would not start again. So I manually turned off the laptop and turned it back on.

But it wouldn't start up normally: giving me the screen with several options like Time Machine Backup, Reinstall Lion, Disk Utility, etc.

Unfortunatley, I didn't do Time Machine. And it would not let me reinstall Lion.

I tried to do Disk Utility repair and it couldn't repair the hard drive 😟

I have tons of files that I don't want to lose so I don't want to just erase everything on the hard drive and reinstall everything.

I did a search online and found something called Disk Warrior which sounds promising. But will it run on my MacBook Air purchased January this year? Its website says it does not work on MacBook Pro June 2012 and after. I'm very confused! It's very upsetting and almost crying.

And if it does work on my MacBook Air, do I need its physical DVD to boot the laptop from? So downloading the Disk Warrior files online now won't do me any good, right? So I'll need to go to a computer store tomorrow to get the software/DVD?

Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you SO MUCH in advance!

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Jul 1, 2013 9:18 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

PlotinusVeritas

Level 6

14,872 points

Jul 1, 2013 10:15 PM in response to iheartitaly

Do you HAVE a time machine backup? if so your files can be extracted from there, OR you can do a total reinstall and then drop the personal files inside time machine onto the clean wiped computer.

Well, your AIR doesn’t have a HD, rather a SSD, basically memory, …a lot of recovery programs arent compatable at all with SSD

Hold down OPTION on startup, enter disk utility, and see IF you can copy your AIR to an external HD for saving your files , if not then,…..ouch.

Format your HD, by doing option button hold on power up, …disk utility,….format HD…….after that, you can download a fresh start from Apple, by choosing “intall Mac OSX Lion/ mountain lion”

Then your AIR will be same as new as it looked out of box.

If you lose your files, remember the only true “religion” of ALL computers is “always assume your computer is going to DIE any day, PERIOD”, and backup , backup, backup,……then make copies of the backups!

The best thing anyone can be told about ANY computer, even an Apple, is "NEVER consider any computer a data storage device, rather a data creation, manipulation, and sending device" backup ALL files daily.

Reply

Answer 2

iheartitaly Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 1, 2013 10:44 PM in response to PlotinusVeritas

Thanks a lot!

Unfortunatley I don't have time machine backup.

So I'm now thinking of getting an external HD tomorrow and see if I can copy my AIR HD to the external.

I do see the Disk Utility (one of the 4 options as mentioned) when booting up. And also Safari which is how I'm able to get online now.

And if I can copy, how do I restore my files back from the external HD?

I think one reason my computer froze and won't start is I have used up almost ALL 120G of storage on the HD. Any advice on how to delete some of the files from the Disk Utility? Or Safe Mode?

Thanks!

Reply

Answer 3

Jul 1, 2013 10:56 PM in response to iheartitaly

If you copy your HD, and wipe it .

You can find the files in the copied HD under the file USERS and USER INFORMATION and sometimes in LIBRARY

All your personal files, documents, etc, will be in subfolders in the main USERS file.

See if you can get into safe mode, and copy your files, or just the ENTIRE “USERS” file.

Then you can wipe your AIR and start anew from there…….

UNLESS your SSD (“hard drive”) is corrupt or damaged, and then fixing it is the only option, but at least youll have saved your files.

For future, always backup your files, every day or week etc. never ever ever trust any computer or consider one a data storage device.

Reply