Now what? HDD full, won't boot, need to back up data

First, this machine belongs to my daughter who doesn't watch things like file size.....Ok, I know I need to do a re-install since all other simple solutions haven't worked and I see the HDD is at 100% capacity and the machine will not boot to the start up disk. However, Disk Utility can't perform a backup image operation, it says file too large, and it doesn't have the ability to select specific folders to image, just the whole freakin drive.
When trying an Archive and Install operation, that option is not an option, it tells me I have to erase and re-install. OK, fine, but I need to pull her User folder files before I erase everything.
It seems I'm out of backup options, but is there any use to Single Mode Use or Terminal? - anyone have any solutions to copying this user folder to my attached USB drive?

Another option would be to replace the internal drive and put the old one in an external enclosure, and install the OS onto it and have it move all the data from the old drive, but this would depend on what all is stored on the old drive and how big it is, upgrading would be up to you, otherwise taking it into the Genius Bar would be one of the only other options.

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I have a new mac book pro/LION and can't access my back up data when I click on "enter time machine". I need the back up data that I could access on my old mac book pro (that is now broken). Tnx so much

I have a new mac book pro/LION and can't access my back up data when I click on "enter time machine". I need the back up data that I could access on my old mac book pro (that is now broken). I can only access time machine back up data that I've obtained since starting the new mac book pro. Tnx so much

Try doing a click-and-hold on the Time Machine icon in the Dock, then select "Browse Other Time Machine Disks".
By the way, you've been misled by poor field labeling on this forum into typing a large part of your message into the field intended for the subject. In the future just type a short summary of your post into that field and type the whole message into the field below that.

I have an iMac OSLion. After accidently deleting the printer, I have reset the printer system. Then plug printer in and hoped it would recognize it, but no. Now what do I do to get the printer back?

I have an IMac OS Lion. After accidently deleting the printer I have reset the printing system, and plugged the printer in again, and hoped the computer would recognize it, but no it didn't. Now what do I do to get the printer back again?

Hello.
You'll probably have to add the printer again. You can do it like this:
System Preferences > Print & Scan. Click on the '+' icon and choose your printer.
Morgan

Help request - T500 started with no BIOs battery or HDD. Now installed, but laptop won't boot fully.

The laptop now won't boot to windows...
Sequence of events - investigating issue inside laptop, (CMOS battery creating strong bad smell). The CMOS battery, HDD, and palm rest were all not installed.
The laptop was turned on in this state.
Some error or message screens came up.
As I tried to fix, I first realized and replaced the CMOS battery, then later the HDD, and later the palm rest.
At some point, with the CMOS battery in or out, and HDD either in or out, the laptop said it needed a correct system date. I went into BIOS and just selected 3/27/2015, and left the time with whatever it was showing.
This resulted in allowing the boot to progress to the screen stating that it could not start up, and asking to run in safe mode, safe mode with networking, last good configuration, or normally.
I tried safe mode, last known good, and normally. All of them resulted in the windows logo and loading bar (XP), and then it showed an error screen for a fraction of a second... and looped back to the boot sequence leading back to asking whether to try safe mode, safe with network, last known good, normal.
Then, later I installed the palmrest, in case that was related.
Still, the boot efforts all resulted in the same thing... an extremely briefly-displayed error page (too brief to read anything), and then instantly booting back to the safemode/last known, normal, etc option screen.
I canged the graphics to the integrated graphics, just to try... no change in result.
What is needed to allowing it to boot fully and normally?
Thank you very much for any help
9yr old T500, 2082-3HU, XP SP3 32bit, original 120GB Hitatchi Traveler HDD, dedicated Radeon, 2GB 2x1

<<0x0000007b >>
...means that Windows can't grok the boot device. Things to try:
1. When the PC is booting, press F8 to get a boot menu for Windows. Do you have a "last known good config" option? Try it.
2. Do you have a Windows retail disk, or a friend who has one? Boot on it and do a repair.
3. Open the BIOS. Can you find a setting for hard drive controller mode, IDE or AHCI? What does it say? Try switching to the other mode.
<<Any benefit of trying to reformat the HDD and reinstal an OS from scratch?>>
Yes, of course. It will fix the problem, as long as you're sure that the hardware is sound. But that's not guaranteed. Hot plugging a drive to a booting computer is not good practice--you have the potential for ground faults, corruption of the MBR, or whatever.

MAC BOOK PRO (MID 2009)START UP FULL/WON'T BOOT?

13 MAC BOOK PRO (MID 2009) HAS LOCKED UP DUE TO A FULL START UP DISK. IT WILL NOT BOOT , I JUST GET THE GREY SCREEN W/ THE LOGO. I DO HAVE A 27" iMAC (LATE 2009) RUNNING 10.8.4 AND A FIRE WIRE, CAN I USE THE IMAC TO HELP BOOT MY PRO? I THINK I CAN, JUST DO NOT KNOW THE PROCESS. ANY HELP WOULD BE GREATLY APPREIECIATED

Alecballchin wrote:
...how do i delete the user files, on the target computer? i cant trash them?
You placed the users files into the Trash can and then Finder > Empty Trash, this sends a message to the other drive that the files don't exist anymore.
If you can't Trash the files it doesn't matter really.
Unmount the drive by dragging it's icon to the Trash can turns into a Eject.
Now on the problem Mac you boot holding the Shift Key down, this enters Safe Mode and should hopefully get you into the machine to delete files. Reboot normally to exit safe mode.
If you can't do this, then it depends upon what operating system is on the machine, you either need the 10.6 boot disks or can hold Command R and boot into RecoveryHD and then erase the MacintoshHD partition and reinstall OS X, your programs and files from backup.
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6
Erase, formatting, OS X installs on Mac's

I erased my hard drive and now my Macbook pro won't boot

I bought a new macbook pro the other day, so I decided to erase the hard drive on my 2010 Macbook pro and reinstall my OS cleanly. I erased the hard drive and tried an internet recovery. It downloaded the recovery and would not boot. Tried resetting everything you could name of and it doesn't help. Can't get anywhere with command R, it just freezes. Safe mode won't boot. Command V, eventually ends with an error saying to return to old smc. I pulled the hard drive out and put it in another mac from about the same year and through internet recovery, actually loaded OS Lion back on it. I put it back in the problem mac, and it just freezes at the apple logo and spinning wheel. Can't understand why erasing the hard drive would effect any hardware, but maybe it messed with logic board somehow? I've now tried using the Recovery partition, since OS Lion was loaded on the drive, but it freezes there as well. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Are you sure it came with Lion?
Check out the support page for what build shipped with which OS.
PJRS

2nd HDD bay with HDD = notebook won't boot with HDD in 2nd HDD bay

I recently came into a Pavilion DV9308 Notebook. It was in decent shape, well looked new and since I like tinkering with laptops and the motherboard had the dreaded NVIDIA GPU failure going on, I sent the motherboard out to my motherboard dude and he put a newer NVIDIA video chip in, made some adjustments and modifications to the heatsink cooler etc. Along with my modifications including vent holes and sealing up the fan blowing assembly so when the fan turned on the hot air would leave the laptop it now runs Windows 7 64 bit with a 64GB Kingston OS SSHD and 4GB DDR2 800mhz ram. It runs like lightning and impresses people when they see it boot up in 15 seconds.
The problem is and the whole reason I picked this notebook to restore is because it has two acutal hard drive bays. Well ever since I've gotten the notebook It will not boot with a hard drive in both bays or a hard drive in Bay #2. I had to send the repaired motherboard back once because one of the ram slots wasn't working so this is happening on two different motherboards. I cannot find a reason why this is happening and have yet to find anyone that can help me with this. Can anyone explain to me what I'm doing wrong? I have all the correct drivers I think and the laptop runs at 130"F when pushed to the max! That is amazing compared to what it originally ran. It would be awesome if someone could please help me with this. Thanks.

Hello jason9922. I understand your notebook won't boot with a hard drive in the second bay.
When you say that the notebook won't boot with a drive in the second bay what exactly do you mean? Does the CAPS LOCK key flash or do you get an error?
When you have the hard drive installed can you access the BIOS? If so, is the hard drive detected within the BIOS?
I'll keep an eye out for your response. Have a great day!
Please click the white star under my name to give me Kudos as a way to say "Thanks!"
Click the "Accept as Solution" button if I resolve your issue.

IMac dropped, now flashing question mark, won't boot up

I been searching for days on this forum trying to find a solution. After I dropped my iMac it won't boot up. I get the folder question mark flashing thing. Using the installation disk, I can boot up and run disk utility. There I can see the hard drive, but I can't verify it, unmount it, or anything other than erase it. Did the hardware test at start up and says everything is fine. Tried to boot from external hard drive and view the internal hard drive but it doesn't recognize it.
All I want to do is recover some files. Tried the transfer option by holding down the T button but the firewire icon doesn't show up unless I have the install CD in or the external hard drive attached.
I can see it in System Profiler as disk1 when I boot from the external hard drive.
HELP!!!

Hi Holly
Welcome to Apple Discussions
"Ouch"
The good news is that it still boots from the Install Disk and an External HD and you may get off light if it only needs a new Internal HD.
The bad news is that there is no way for us to tell exactly which component was damaged? It could be any thing from a loose STAT connection, a busted HD or worst case the Drive Controller on the Logic board.
*It really needs to go to an Apple Store or a good Apple Service Provider to be tested and serviced.*
If your in the States see this link > http://www.apple.com/buy/locator/service/
If outside the States use this link > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1434?viewlocale=en_US
Dennis

Imac won't boot; needs repair. But what part to replace?

My iMac G3 tray loading 266mhz will not boot.. i press the power button, the screen makes starting noise and the i can hear the cooling fan.. but the screen is still black and the power light is orange.
Tried a new pram battery
Tried resetting the CUDA button and waiting for all power to be drained
Tried switching the ram
Tried new power cable
No keyboard commands work; computer does not boot at all
Now I just need to know what part to replace
Power supply?
Motherboard?
CPU board?
How can I diagnose which part is not working?

Flyback Transformer
The dark screen and a zapping or crackling sound are classic symptoms of a blown transformer.
There is a test you can preform to see if it is the flyback transformer:
1. Unplug the computer and remover the bottom cover of the iMac and disconnect the main video cable. That's the one held in by 2 screws.
2. Try to startup the computer with the video cable disconnected.
3. Listen carefully to the iMac. Does it sound like it is starting up? Do you heard the normal hard drive sounds? If so, then your flyback transformer is dead. If you don't hear the normal startup sounds and it shuts down right away, the the problem is something else. Like a bad power supply or something like that.
Special shout out & thanks to djon for the above valuable information.

Upgraded to Mavericks. Now External HDD Enclosure Won't Mount. Is there a fix?

Upgraded to Mavericks. Now I can't get my external HDD enclosure to mount. A little about this enclosure, as it's not the usual settup . I have four 3TB HDDs in a RAID5 settup. The most unique part is that they are formatted as a Windows NT Filesystem (Tuxera NTFS). Basically, when I set this up, I had to get a lot of info from a Windows-formatted HDD, but also be able to read/write afterwards. It's worked fine for ~ 1 year, but now that I've upgraded to Mavericks, nothing will mount. I ran Disk Utility, where I see the HDDs (I've partitioned them into four drives of varying sizes), but they are greyed out. I tried to mount them, but it says it won't and that I should run First Aid. So I did...tried to "Repair Disk," but it just gets stuck on "Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required." For over an hour it's been on that message.
So, does anybody out there have a fix? I've read several similar posts about people having a hard time mounting and, overall, dealing with external HDDs after upgrading to Mavericks. But nothing seemed to fit my exact circumstances. Lastly, I should mention that I've used both Firewire and USB connections. Both resulted in the same.
Thanks.

I can't help with specifics for your issue, but some general thoughts:
The upgrade and the disk problem may be a coincidence. It would help you if you could verify that the drive still works fine on a windows machine. If you run a windows virtual machine or have a windows pc, or a friend does, verify full functioning that way. If it still won't mount on the mac, try to copy/backup it's data onto the windows machine (maybe another external drive connected to it. You could then scrub the disk in windows, leave it unpartitioned, unformatted. Connect it back to the mac and format it as HFS+ (Mac extended journalled) and transfer the data back to it by sharing the windows machine external drive and connecting the two machines with a network cable.

MacBook Pro won't boot, need urgent help.

Okay, let's get the full back story on the computer. I bought it in March 2007, I had a strange light column on my display so I took it into Apple in October to get it fixed along with an issue I was having with AirPort Express, so the computer comes back and they replaced just about everything logic board, display, keyboard / top case of the laptop.. the only thing I don't think they replaced was the hard drive and the bottom part of the case.
March 2008 rolls by and my AppleCare expires. April comes and my computer begins doing this thing where 6-8 hours of use it just "freezes" the mouse still moves and you can still click for a few moments but then it just goes stops doing everything except mouse movement, try to reboot and it makes the chime and just shows the white screen and refuses to work the rest of the day, the next day it always does the same thing. Then the time became shorter, 4 hours, 2 hours, 30 minutes. I was at school at the time and didn't care to mess with it so I just stored it away.
A month later I come back, turn it back on boots up perfectly within 30 seconds and works fine for an hour then repeats the previous crash like symptoms. I ask my computer friends and they suggest it's a dying hard drive - so I send that in to get replaced and pay out of my pocket. No luck. Then my friend points out that while it won't actually boot to CD if you hold "C" on boot up, if there isn't a CD there it detects that and shows the correct error... meaning the CD app just isn't loading on the RAM. Fine... I paid for a new RAM stick. Boots up, immediately crashes.
Boot command results:
Flash P-RAM: works and sometimes allows boot.
cmd-S: never works
cmd-V: never works
C: worked right after I replaced the harddrive, hasn't worked since.
T: starts in target disk mode, don't have a second computer to see if drive is browsable.
Any ideas? Is it the Logic Board? Will Apple cover it since they recently replaced it or no? How much will it cost to get a new one?

1) I already said that and I'm not complaining that it's Apple's fault, I'm trying to fix it so I can have a working computer.
2) I'll trust people that work in IT over the pompous "omg-i-got-the-job-so-all-my-friends-will-think-im-in-the-know-on-the-iphone" high schoolers Apple hires at the local Apple store. One told me that Firefox wasn't an approved web browser when I last took it in because the Airport Express card was crap. Hence why I'm asking here where people have actually seen this problem before and recognize the symptoms instead of some kid to read from a script of troubleshooting and then charge me $120 to send it to a tech and get it checked out.
I took it to ProMac my local Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP)of people who have been working with Macs for the last 15 years, and for $50 they're going to look at it and tell me what they think tomorrow, I'll post the results for anyone else having similar issues.

Mac Book HDD Full, Won't Login

I have a 13" Macbook (black) with a 150GB HDD. I have been copying movie files to the computer and disregarded a message saying "the hard drive is full". The hard drive filled up and the computer froze (after the above message). The computer will boot to the login window, but will not allow a login - the screen changes to a blue screen for a time and then returns to a login screen.
I'd like to find a way to access the HDD and remove some of the files. I have a desktop Mac as well.
Thanks,
kayjh

Yes, the trash was emptied and Finder showed the drive with 17GB.
In the end, we did an Archive and Install to cure the problem. I checked the Apple support knowledge database which had an entry for the exact same symptoms, but on a 2007 iMac (20" and 24"). The advice was to Archive and Install.
Of course you need to have enough HDD space to install a new operating system image, but I guess 17GB was enough. My nephew comlained that he got an iTunes error saying that the music had been created with a later version of iTunes. I expect that connecting to the internet and doing a software update should resolve that problem.
Thanks for the replies.
kayjh

Software Update Interrupted... now my MacBook Pro won't boot

I'm not really sure what happened. I was installing the 10.5.5 software update, as well as a few other things using Software Update and got to the point when I had to restart my computer. So I tell the computer to restart and then wander off for a minute or two.
When I came back the computer was off, I was gone for barely two minutes, so I know that the updates hadn't installed and I'm assuming something happened to interrupt the install. But now the machine doesn't boot at all.
I get the gray screen with the Apple symbol, and then the computer freezes at as light blue colored screen. Can't use the mouse or anything, not even a "beachball of death" as it were.
I have no idea what to do, I'm using my Windows partition right now. Any suggestions?

Or maybe simply by booting off your MacOS Install Disk and "updating MacOS" (sometimes you can "update" your MacOS with the install CD, if you're on the same version ...
Otherwise you could need to reinstall MacOS (hard but better than a piece of steel ...)

Kernel panic and now my MacBook Pro won't boot

My MacBook Pro had been acting a little strange for a while - sometimes applications like Final Cut Express and iTunes would "unexpectedly quit" when I tried to open them and wouldn't work until after a restart. Now, the screen went dim and I got the "you need to restart your computer" message. I did, and it worked for a few minutes, and did it again. Now all it does when I turn it on is chimes, shows the Apple logo as if it is going to start up, and then dies. It is the original Core Duo one so it's out of warranty. Is this the logic board? If not is there any hope of it working again?

Kernel panics are usually cause by hardware problems. Disconnect all devices from your computer & check out the following KB Article & User Tip:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106805 Mac OS X: "Broken folder" icon, prohibitory sign, or *kernel panic when computer starts*
User Tips: Kernel Panics
!http://i50.tinypic.com/izvwo1.gif!

Bios Update now Yogo Pro 2 won't boot

I wanted to do a fresh install but my restore files are in Windows 8 and I wanted 8.1. I used my 8.1 pro disk and created a bootable media for installing using USB. I had to go into the BIOS and change it to legacy before it would see the USB drive. Went ahead and deleted all the partitions then created a single new one for windows. The installation worked flawlessly then I went ahead with the driver installs. The very first driver was the firmware update. The system updated the firmware without any issues but once it rebooted I only receive the following message "Default Boot Device Missing or Boot Failed. Insert recovery Media or hit any key. The select 'boot manager" to chose a new boot device or to boot to recovery media. When I go hit any key it leaves me with no boot options probably due to them being legacy options. I've tried F2 on startup to get into the bios and change it back to legacy but this never works.. I have also tried F12 trying to get it to let me select the startup drive. I really no idea how to proceed. Regards, Kurt
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Good news.. I figured it out. I had to do a CTRL-ALT-DEL and not use the power button then hit F2 to get into the bios to change back to legacy now all is good.
Regards,
Kurt

Now what? HDD full, won't boot, need to back up data

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