How to Salvage Data before Disk Reformat
I can only boot up in Disk Utility. From there, how can I access my files to copy them to protect my data?
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)
In such a case the only thing you can do is use Disk Utility to clone the drive to another drive that has been fully erased. However, if the volume is corrupted in some way, then Disk Utility may not be able to clone it.
In this case you would have to boot from another drive so you could access the data and transfer it to a backup drive. If you don't have an external, bootable clone then you can use Target Disk Mode to connect to another computer that is working. Both computers need to have Firewire ports and you will need a Firewire cable to connect them.