Disk repair failed how can I back up my files when I can't boot from the start up disk

When disk repair fails, and I can't boot from the hard drive how can I get to my files to back them up. I have a seagate 1 TB connected to the USB port.

Perubbit,
which model MacBook Pro do you have, and which version of OS X is installed on it?

Similar Messages

How do I back up my files when I can't go to the startup?

Hello,
my iMac (10.6.4) has been slow lately so I run my Disk Utility to figure out what's wrong.
It told me to repair the disk using the installer cd so I did it, but seems like it can't fix it either
and I can't go to the start up no more. (It stays forever at the apple logo and spinning thing...)
This is what I saw when I was running the Disk Utility from my installer cd.
It says there's 'invalid node structure'
So I think there's no way else than formatting my HD but is there any way to back up my files at this point?
I have 1T external hd (usb) that I want to back up everything before formatting my computer.
Plese help!
Thank you.

…is there any way to back up my files at this point?
Only if you have a bootable backup/clone or Time Machine backup on an ext HD or have another computer that you can connect the faulty one to that's been placed in target disk mode.

HT1338 how do you delete from the start up disk- message keeps saying ful

How do you delete files off of the start up disk to make more space?

You open a Finder window, navigate to the location with files you want to delete. In the window, drag the file you want to delete to the Trash (waste basket) icon in the Dock, and release it there. Periodically, click-hold (or right click) on the Trash icon and select Empty Trash, which will delete the files to free up the disk space. (You can select more than one file at once.)
A good place to initially look is your Downloads folder, which normally has a quick link in the sidebar of a Finder window. Most people tend to accumulate stuff they don't need to keep there.

How do I remove files from the start up disk

I am unable to synch my iphone, or upgrade itunes because I get an error message asking me to delete files. It tells me to go to the start up disk and delete files. My MAC has 2GB, so far I have used 159MB

For hints on how to free disk/SSD storage see
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5872318?tstart=0
and
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5939678?tstart=60

How do I force-eject a CD when I cannot even get to the start-up screen?

Friends, Let me first apologize for getting myself into this mess, in the first place.
I bought a second-hand iBook G4 in the U.S., for a friend of mine, and brought it to South America, where I am living for one year, but far from any Mac Repair Center. I am getting the computer ready, to give to my friend, as a gift.
The computer was working perfectly here for the few weeks that I have had it. It has OS 10.3.9 installed, but no OS9. I wanted to install OS9, so that I could give my friend some older software to use with it.
(In fact, I inserted the software CDROM that I was going to give to my friend, into the second computer, to install the program before giving him the disk also. This was an important mistake.)
Moreover, the OS9 disk that came with this second "new" computer does not appear to be the same one that shipped with the computer originally. Consequently, when I tried to install OS9 Classic, it would not install correctly from this disk (although it was indeed made for installing OS9 to another iBookG4, but not this one, apparently.)
Consequently, as a short-cut, I simply copied my own Classic "system folder" from my own (completely) identical iBookG4, transferred it to a pen drive, and was going to move it to the second computer. Not all of the files copied successfully, however (some printer descriptions, for example), but most of them did.
So, I transferred what I could, in the meantime, and now I had a new Classic "system folder" on the second computer.
When starting up the Mac Classic environment there, however, the Classic environment would crash, and in that case I would just close the Classic environment altogether and continue normally in OSX mode, trying to solve the problem. I realized that my "copy" was not good enough.
Then I got the idea to make an "archive" of the original classic folder on my own computer, and then transfer the archive, to see if it would make a more perfect copy this way. It archived perfectly indeed, and at half the size, so I assumed that I would now have all the necessary documents, once it was transferred and decompressed onto the second computer.
Meanwhile, I decided to erase the incomplete corrupt copy of the (classic) system folder on the second computer, to avoid confusion when the new copy was transferred. As I moved it to the trash, the computer told me that it was being used by the system, and that it therefore could not be deleted. Since the classic environment was not running, I assumed that this was some sort of error, meant to protect the folder from accidental deletion regardless of the circumstances. Consequently I re-named the folder, and then deleted it successfully, and received no error message.
I went back to the first computer, to copy the new, archived classic folder to my pen drive. When I did, and returned to the second computer, I noticed that the screen was black there, but the disk, still spinning.
I checked to see if it was the display, or the connection, or if the computer was sleeping, or the screen saver activated, but none was the case.
I re-booted, but there was no start-up chime. The disk spun normally (or perhaps more loudly than normal).
I re-booted, holding down P and R, but no results. The display was completely black (i.e., no ilumination whatsoever, not merely a dark screen, but rather black).
I concluded that the source of the problem was what I had done with the classic folder (renaming it or deleting it).
I got the idea of inserting the system disk, to reboot from the CDROM, but the problem was that there was already a software disk inside, and it would not eject when the eject button was pushed.
I found some suggestions online. I rebooted holding down the track-pad button, for example. No results.
I rebooted holding down CMD OPT SHIFT O F, (or whatever the combinations were that were suggested). No results. I cannot even get a terminal screen to appear, much less a gray screen.
If I close the lid while the computer is running, the computer will NOT go into sleep mode. (So much for the suggestion about forcing an eject from sleep mode).
I noticed a comment online that there might be a force-eject hole inside the felt, but I do not know how to move the felt back well enough to see, nor do I know where to look, or whether there is even such a hole on this model. (if you know of a diagram or photograph online, please direct me)
(Incidentally, if it is any help regarding the model, it is of serial no. UV445CLX_ _ _ , assembled in Taiwan)
How can I force eject the CDROM inside?
Is the solution to reboot from the system software disk, once I succeed in ejecting the CDROM?

You cannot boot an iBook from an external USB drive--only a firewire drive. Actually, the drive is just a drive--it is the enclosure that determines USB vs. FireWire. If you could find an appropriate firewire enclosure, you could remove the drive from the USB enclosure and place it in a firewire enclosure and then be able to boot from that. Or you could just purchase an external firewire drive if those are available where you are.
FireWire external drives are quite useful. One option would be to mount the external drive on the good iBook, format it properly for OS X with Disk Utility, and then use a program like Super Duper to make an exact clone of your internal hard drive. This is a popular way of backing up your stuff. You can boot from either the internal or the external. This means that if your internal hard drive were to die, you would have all your stuff on the external, and could run off of that. Since you are already using the USB for backup, it would probably be best to acquire a new firewire drive for troubleshooting and testing if you decide to go this route, since you really don't want to lose your existing backup.
If you did have a bootable clone, you could see if the sick iBook would boot from it or not. However, it may be more productive to pursue your other thread about the boot problem. I see that Richard has joined the thread as I had hoped he would. He actually works on iBooks and is very knowledgeable.
Also, if you do get the second ibook working and want to install OS9, you might want to post a question in the "Mac OS X v 10.3 Panther and earlier" forum. I'm not up on this myself, but I believe there is something about installing OS 9 drivers while formating or something like that. I believe the smart guys on that forum could give you some guidance so that you can avoid the problems you encountered earlier.
Good luck!

Super Slow boot from any start up disk.

I have a Macbook Pro that takes about 5+ minutes to boot up. The really weird thing is that this occurs when booting from different drives. I have tried two different drives with Snow Leopard on them and then wiped one and tried to install leopard fresh from the original system disks.
I have tried swapping in different ram and resetting SMC and pram. No luck.
So apparently there is something going on during startup that doesn't have to do with the drive installed. Anyone have any idea what that might be and how to fix it?
thanks.

I would approach them. The thing is in Czech Republic where I live the law grants us two years warranty. As Apple only provides one year warranty (Apple care is not supported in Czech Rep.) the second year is probably covered by Apple local apple dealers which reflects in Apple prices heavily, which are at about 3/2 to twice bigger than in US.
Anyway this means that very few stores here are really happy to help with anything their customer wants (There is very little selection so either you cannot be picky, or you can buy mac abroad which has many downsides as well). I took it there yesterday and they sent it for diagnostics (I had previous experience with people working in local service center and honestly I'll be afraid to let them repair a mixer, let alone my beloved Mac), now I am trying to contact them about it and convince them that the part should be replaced under it's own warranty as they already replaced it about half a year ago. But I am afraid that won't be possible, as I suspect them of using old parts on machines not covered by Apple original warranty as they have to pay for them.
But back to my issue. I didn't really mean the soldering. That would be a last resort, or I'd have to be sure where exactly the problem is or I would have to have a new logic board at hand. I study robotics and although I am by no means an expert on such things, I have managed to repair a thing or two at a fraction of a new part price for another few years.
Anyway, the day before yesterday I sat near my MBP, installed the new security update few hours before that, copying some stuff from one drive to another via Firewire. I unplugged the first drive after a while and plugged in the second one. No strange sound, no burning, but the port couldn't even power a LED on the drive. I connected the first one, dead as well. So I tried USB which worked just fine. I thought it may have been caused by the update, so I restarted - no luck (Another problem appeared - slow start...and rather horribly slow one. The system was apparently searching for something, because the blue screen stayed on for about ten minutes after 5 minute booting and then it jumped right to the GUI with few apps already running in about a second), repaired permissions - no luck, backed up my stuff and tried a fresh install as the system was a bit cluttered and I planned on doing that sometime soon anyway, but that didn't help either. So I went hunting for a solution online. I tried probably every possible restart of this and that (PMU, unplugging everything and taking out battery and letting it rest overnight, SMC...you name it). In system profiler there was something like that Firewire cannot recognize a connected device (Not sure now really, I'd have to go through 263 page long pdf to find out. It was the same message mentioned above. I tried logging in safe mode, that was a bit slow but went rather smoothly, still no luck with FW. I went to verbose mode, which ran just fine, I don't really remember any strange messages, but after a minute or two presented the same blue screen and ran the GUI for some reason. That repeated every time. Also booting from SL DVD took about 15 minutes.
That's pretty much the whole story. From searching for a few hours I am now aware of a partial solution by deleting all Firewire related kext files, but I have no machine to test it on at the moment. That would of course cause FW not to work (Which I would hate really as I bought three new drives about a month ago and USB is a pain to backup to), but at least the booting should go smoothly.
I had an issue or two previously with my MBP, one of which was caused by the faulty graphics (hopefully new board, no questions asked) and the other one was probably caused by some so called expert repairing the first issue who wasn't even able to connect the display properly. For some reason they replaced the whole clamshell module with a brand new LCD which was nice.
Sorry for so long post, I guess I am just not able to keep things short.
Thanks, John.

Getting an error when I try to boot from my snow leopard disk

I want to install Snow Leopard on a partion on my new iMac. But when I try to boot from my old Snow Leopard-startup-disk all that happens is that I hear some beeping noise from the iMac.
Would apreciate any help.
Best Regards
Andreas.

If your machine shipped with Lion, most likely you cannot install SL, since it won't run on it. Details in Don't install a version of Mac OS X earlier than what came with your Mac

How do I delete files from the start up disk?

I keep getting the messsage that my start up disk is full and I shoudl delte files, which I have tried to do, by putting stuff inthe trash and emptying it, but that does not seem to be enough and I keep getting the message. ireally don't ahve much stored on my computer except for a lot of photos. Could the photos be the problem?

Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
Then reboot. That will temporarily free up some space.
According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of your data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
If you're using Time Machine to back up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of files you've recently deleted. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as "Backups." The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself.
To locate large files, you can use Spotlight. That method may not find large folders that contain a lot of small files.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one.
Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
Install ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click the line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
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). You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders. It may take some minutes for ODS to list all the files.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything while running ODS as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

I replaced my hard drive on my late 2006 Macbook Pro. I tried to do a reinstall of Tiger 10.4.5 from my start up disk. I get an error that states "can't install on this computer." HELP

I replaced my hard drive on my late 2006 Macbook Pro. I used the disk utility and erased the drive and formatted it to OSX Journaled . When I tried to install the OS from the start up disks I got the error "Can't install on this computer. I have verified the drive.
I have used Super Duper to copy my old drive to my new drive. But I wanted to do a fresh install. How do I go about this?

Did you do the Super Duper clone before you tried to reinstall the OS? If so, the original install disc is likely earlier than 10.4.11, and that may be why you are getting the message.
When trying to reinstall the OS, did you select the "Archive and Install" option? If not, you might try that. Here's a link that might help:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1103.html
Good luck!

How do you remove files from your start up disk without deleting any files?, How do you remove files from your start up disk without deleting any files?

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone knew how to remove files from the start up disk without deleting any files?
I am unable to add any more photos and even download the latest updates because the start up disk is full....
Is it possible to move the files off the start up disk without deleting them?
I would appreciate feedback,
Thanks
Sammy

Well you can move them to an external drive but this will delete them from the internal drive. Which is what you have to do to free up disk space.

DVD drive won't boot from Leopard or Tiger disks

Hi,
I have had some issues booting from the OS install disks with my DVD drive, is it the drive or is it the software?
Can this be fixed?
Thanks
Tom

There are known issues with some Leopard discs not booting, but if your Tiger disc won't boot either, I would say you probably have a defective optical drive.
-Bmer
Mac Owners Support Group - Join us @ MacOSG.com
  Mac611 Mobile Mac Support - about.Mac611.com
   iTunes:MacOSG Podcast | YouTube.MacOSG.com
                   An Apple User Group 
Have an iPhone or iPod touch? Enter Mac611.com in Safari on it for 'mobile Mac support.'

HT201272 Having a bad day my iTunes library got corrupted and my back up disk has failed how can I restore my purchases from the iTunes store

Having a bad day my iTunes library got corrupted and my back up disk has failed how can I restore my purchases from the iTunes store? When I try it tells me the pruchases have already been downloaded to this computer.

Does your purchased rmusic appears under the Purchased link under Quicklinks on the right-hand side of the iTunes store home page (music can't be re-downloaded in all countries) ? If they do and you don't have the cloud symbol against them so as to re-download them, then do you still have the entries for them in your library i.e. where you would normally click on them to play them ? If you do then try deleting them from there (iTunes will be seeing them and assuming that you still have them somewhere) and they should then get the cloud symbol for re-downloading in the Purchased link.
If you aren't in a country where music can be re-downloaded then you could try contacting iTunes support and see if they will grant you a re-download : http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact/ - click on Contact iTunes Store Support on the right-hand side of the page,

I have a 2008 macbook and i lost the start up disk and forgot the password. how can i put it back to factory mode and change the password

i have a 2008 macbook and i lost the start up disk and forgot the password. how can i put it back to factory mode and change the password

Check out this article http://gigaom.com/apple/reset-os-x-password-without-an-os-x-cd/

How can I back up my important files when I can't sign in due to disk utility?

Hello all,
I've made a big mistake of putting off the start up disk full. Now it's bit me in the foot and I don't want to restart my whole mac when I know there is important items to be backed up. Can I somehow access my user files before repairing/erasing the disk.

I see. That sounds as if the internal HD can't be accessed at all, & you were automatically started in Recovery mode.
You're unable to mount (select it; Right click - Mount) then use verify/repair ?
fsck in Single User mode, occasionally seems to work where DU doesn't :
Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck

I had to use the start up disk on my 2008 laptop and the Iphotos software is no longer. How can i get it back

I had to use the start up disk on my 2008 laptop and the Iphotos software is no longer. How can i get it back

Hello Mac4541,
It sounds like you may have reinstalled OS X on your 2008 MacBook and iPhoto didn't get installed.
Given the specifications of your unit, iPhoto may be on a separate install DVD.
MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008) - Technical Specifications
(as an example, not quite sure of your model)
What’s in the box
MacBook
Display cleaning cloth
60W MagSafe Power Adapter, AC wall plug, and power cord
Lithium-polymer battery
Install/restore DVDs
Printed and electronic documentation
Installed software
Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard (includes Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, Spotlight, Dashboard, Mail, iChat, Safari, Address Book, QuickTime, iCal, DVD Player, Photo Booth, Front Row, Xcode Developer Tools)
iLife ’08 (includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, GarageBand)
See also:
Mac OS X 10.5.5 and later: Installing optional and bundled software - Apple Support
Disc 2 - "Applications Install DVD": Bootable disc that includes Apple Hardware Test, and lets you install other bundled software such as iLife
Hope that's it.
Nubz

Disk repair failed how can I back up my files when I can't boot from the start up disk

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for