Disk Utility  to Restore

My Macbook Pro (2011)OS: Lion is not starting up as usual. I have tried resetting the PVRAM option and also safe mode option. But its not making any difference. I would like to restore my files using disk utility. Whenever I select the restore tab, Macintosh HD is greyed out and then when I try to select an image, it opens to the system files, but does not allow me to select any. Also how does one specify the Destination.?
Can anyone provide a detailed solution. I did not use Time machine (really very silly).
But I would like to definitely recover some important files.
Thanks in advance

Where did you store the image?

Similar Messages

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    Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation and after having selected both my destination and source drives, the operation begins but soon fails due to input/output error. If I try to create an image of the drive it gives me the same error message. Any help would be much appreciated.

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    ..Step by Step to fix your Mac
    https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/

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