Q: Disk Utility emergency backup

Purchase an external drive.

Boot from your Recovery Drive (hold down Command R when restarting)

Select to Reinstall OS X

Select your external drive as source. (make sure you format correctly)

You'll be booted from the external drive after installing Mavericks.

You should be able to view your files on your internal drive.

Create a partition on the clone big enough to copy your internal drive using Disk Utility.

Download SuperDuper! to create a clone backup of your internal drive.

SuperDuper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/

Copy: Internal Drive   To: Clone partition

Using: Backup all files

When finished select Do Nothing.

Once you have your files safely copied, you can Erase your internal drive. You can clone back your new Mavericks install. Not sure I would clone back your copy since it might have damaged files.

It's most likely too late for that. He already wiped his computer and re-installed the OS.

He may be able to recover, but it's going to be unlikely at this point.

I would suggest purchasing an external drive. Partition the drive into 2 partitions. Create an 80GB partition and label it ExtOS and the remaining space as ExtData. Install a new OS on the ExtOS partition.

Then purchase Data Recue from Prosoft Engineering. Run a scan of your internal drive and see if it picks up anything. If it does, copy it to ExtData.

Good luck!

I don't think he's erased it yet. He wanted to save some stuff, but the DU operation failed, so that's where's he's at.

He says he did erase:

I decided to wipe out my computer and start again.

If you haven't erased or formatted anything, then try and see if you can boot in "Safe Mode".

Starting up in Safe Mode

To start up into Safe Mode (to Safe Boot), follow these steps.

1. Be sure your Mac is shut down.
2. Press the power button.
3. Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key.
   The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
4. Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple logo and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).

To learn more about Safe Mode, you can read this article here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1564

Let me know if that works for you. Also, do you have another Mac as well? Or external hard drive?

I'm a girl, just for clarification.

  Sorry for the muck up.

How much do you want to save? If the amount isn't large, get an external drive and copy the files from the internal to the external in Finder.

Do you have a backup? If not start one, preferable 2 (or more) on separate external hard drives. Make a backup on each external using Time Machine or a clone program. Once you have the backup, you then will be able to restore desired files to the internal hard drive after you have erased and reformatted.

Clone  - Carbon Copy Cloner          (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)

Clone – Data Backup

Clone – Deja Vu

Clone  - SuperDuper

Clone - Synk

Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested

Commonly Used Backup Methods

Not without another Mac to use Target Disk Mode (which is a process of making the computer that's unable to reach the desktop screen act like a hard drive to the computer its connected to).

I would try booting up in Safe Mode like I mentioned above. If you can login then, you can simply drag and drop the files you want backed up.

Some troubleshooting information to see if the computer will boot.

Startup - Gray, Blue or White screen at boot, w/spinner/progress bar

Startup - Gray Screen

Startup Issues - Resolve

Startup Issues - Resolve (2)