Question Mark File, Holding Down Option/Alt, Cursor Appears But Usual Icons (HDD) and (Recovery Disk) Do Not
Hello out there,
My Macbook Pro (coming on 2 years old now) recently had issues with starting up. I found on Apple's website the support forum which stated holding down alt while booting will allow you to choose either your HDD or a Recovery Disk. For the past few reboots I was able to do this, maybe over a 36 hour period (I always chose HDD.) Now, though, when I hold down alt and power on the notebook, only the cursor appears over a gray screen. No icons show up at all. When I press "N" the usual globe across a disk drive blinks. I've also tried to boot up holding down shift but to no avail.
I have a ton of documents that weren't backed up. If I throw in the OS X Leopard disc and reinstall from there, I know I'll lose all my data. Is there anyway Apple could find those files after the reset, or does the Drive just get wiped completely? What do you recommend I should do? Take it into Apple? I don't want to lose these files but I also don't want to pay Apple to do something I can do — put in the original disk and reinstall OS X.
Thanks so much! I owe you a beer! ^_^
Could be more than the power. HDD could be old, or just the file system on the disk.
Try ...
Get the external disk, self-powered, at least 2x the current disk
Boot the system from install disks (original) and prepare that disk as two partitions (GUID, with Journaled partitions)
Load the OS onto one of those partitions
Download CarbonCopyClone, and clone the current install disk to the second partition of that external
If the filesystem on the disk or the disk itself is too damaged, copy what you can
You would have a bootable system if nto Lion, with a copy of the data that is on the disk (hopefully).
This is my best advice to at least try to save your data without relying on the internal disk for file operations. You may yet be SOL, but this is a darned good effort to avoid data loss.
And hope the repair bill does not cover so much that a new system is required.
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