Macintosh HD is unmounted and S.M.A.R.T. verified. How can I retrieve data?

My Macintosh HD became so full that OS X would not boot from it.
I installed OS X on an external hard drive, and booted my computer that way.
My Macintosh HD shows up in Disk Utility and is S.M.A.R.T. verified, but it will not mount.
When I try to Verify Disk or Repair Disk, the operation fails.
When I try to create a disk image in Disk Utility, the operation fails.
When I try to create a disk image in Terminal by running the dd command, the operation fails due to an input/output error.
My only concern is retrieving my data. Any help?

If your Macintosh HD fails and you are unable to boot OS X, unable to Repair Disk in Disk Utility, and unable to create a disk image using the "dd" command in Terminal, you may still be able to recover your data!
- Install OS X on an external hard drive
- Boot from your external hard drive
- Run Terminal and enter this modified "dd" command:
sudo dd bs=512 if=/dev/<Macintosh HD> of=/Volumes/<External Drive Partition/backup.dmg> conv=noerror,sync
- You will then be prompted for your password. Enter it, and your disk image will begin to be created. You will see input/output errors, but the process will continue. This will take some time.
- Once the process is complete, open the disk image. You may get an error that says the image is unmountable because it contains "no mountable file systems", but after a few minutes it should mount anyway.
- Open it and copy your files to an external hard drive. Chances are that only your file system was damaged and your actual data is safe!
- Use Disk Utility to reformat your hard drive and hopefully it does not have physical issues and will function correctly. If your drive turns out to be physically dead, at least you were able to recover all of your data!
Message was edited by: stephenfdavis

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