Rebuild with Disk Warrior

My hard drive failed the other day. I ran Disk Utility on it and when trying to repair permissions, I got errors saying that Disk Utility could not fix problems because of a drive failure.
I tried Drive Genius to do some diagnostics, but it couldn't do anything to the drive.
So, I can rebuild the drive with Disk Warrior, but it can't replace it. It will let me preview it. So, I can move the files to another drive. But what do I do after that? I assume I have to wipe the drive and reformat it. But then how do I get the backed up info onto that drive? Can I use Disk Utility for that? I know there's a Restore feature. If I can get the files onto the drive, will it be bootable?
Also, the drive is healthy, according to Disk Warrior, but should this be an indication that it's time for a new drive?

Kurt, it occurs to me that Al might be trying to rebuild that drive while still booted from it. He didn't mention it, but you didn't ask. If that's the problem, Disk Warrior would, as always, return the message that it can rebuild the directory info but can't replace it.
I'm sure Al already knows this. However, even very experienced people get in a hurry and forget that they must boot (and run Disk Warrior) from another drive (or from the CD / DVD that Alsoft ships to purchasers, which has both Disk Warrior and an OS X boot system on it) if they want to actually complete a repair of their main boot HD.
If you boot from the drive that you're trying to scan and repair, Disk Warrior will play nice and scan it, and can do various other graphing and diagnostic functions, but DW will refuse to whack, optimize and replace the directory & table files -- which is what performs the actual DW magic.

Similar Messages

Assistance with Disk Warrior and Flashing Question Mark

Hello, guys!
I need a help. My computer was not booting and kept flashing question mark. I've tried First Aid, didn't help. Then I've checked with Apple store technicians, after all they reccommentd me to run Disk Warrior v.4. I did, but it couldn't create a directory for the files. What does it mean? What would be next step?
Thank you very much for any advice.
Message was edited by: Host

Hi, Olimpia. If your hard drive's directory is very, very badly damaged, DiskWarrior may not be able to reconstruct it. Did you see an error message in Diskwarrior that said something like that? If so, you have no choice but to use something like Data Rescue II to recover what files it can, and then erase and zero the hard drive and start over.
If you didn't see any error message, but Diskwarrior seemed to be taking a very long time and didn't appear to be doing anything, it was probably still working and just needed time and patience. I've seen several reports of Diskwarrior successfully rebuilding badly damaged directories but taking several days to do it, and one instance when it successfully completed a rebuild after *14 days* of continuous work. If it doesn't show any error message, just let it keep on working.

Can't repair disk with Disk Warrior

Earlier I posted this message:
I have used the Tiger installation disc to attempt to repair disk permissions and repair disk. When I run verify disk, it indictes "keys out of order" and gives me a "repair disk" message. When I run the repair disk from the installation DVD, the blue bar moves about 1/2 way. Then everything freezes.
The reply advised me to get Disk Warrior, which I did. I am attempting to rebuild the directory and I get a parenthetic message (Speed inhibited by disk malfunction). The wheel spins for hours and ultimately the arrow reappears and is frozen. Any idea where to go next?

Hi, Lucy -
If the damage to the directory is substantial, it can take DiskWarrior a while to fix it. Suggest you let it sit there and run - it may not appear that anything is happening, but it probably is.

G5 will only re-start with Disk Warrior CD! Not Hard Drive...

I just ran Disk Warrior. Now when the computer re-starts, it keeps re-booting on the CD drive.
How do I change to the regular hard drive.
I've tried ejecting the CD. I've turned computer off for several minutes. It still re-starts on CD.
Thanks.

Sean,
Macintosh: How to Eject a Disc When Other Options Do Not Work, and if that doesn't work, restart the computer, then hold down the mouse button.
;~)

Problem with Disk Warrior

Greetings.
I'm attempting to run DW 3.0.3 rev 39 on my back-up computer, an iMac 400 on which I recently installed 10.3.9. Main computer is in the shop.
Computer boots up from DW disk OK, however, during "rebuilding directory," the computer freezes during step 8, "reading from CD, one moment please."
Any idea what's going on?
Thanks.

Hi Jerry,
I had a similar problem about a year ago. Eventually I had to do a reinstall of 10.3.9.
You might try booting from your install disk and running Disk Repair. If it finds problems, keep running it until it indicates your system is OK.
Then try running DW...
Hope this helps,
Bob

How do I restore files from External Harddrive - Disk warrior cannot rebuild

Hi Guys
I have a External Hard drive that I can see via Disk Ulitity and shows in finder - but I cannot see the actual files and directories, hence not being able to copy them to a new external hard drive
When I connect the External Harddrive to my Macbook I'm getting the message
"OS X can't repair the disk "Untitled"
You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can’t save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can."
Disk Utility says I have free space so it is recognising the files. I have Time Machine backups on this external harddrive "Untitled" that I need to critical use.
Basically how do I get the files off this external harddrive before it fully stops working? I have tried rebuilding the disk with Disk Warrior but this does not work.
Thank you anyone! I hope someone can help!

Well, I would skip the Firewire since it isn't essential. Connect the backup drive to your new Retina when it arrives, but before you turn it on for the first time. When you then turn it on you will begin in the Setup Assistant where you will have an opportunity to restore your files from a backup drive or another computer. Select the appropriate option. You can then restore (migrate) your Home folder, third-party applications and support files, and system preferences. Once that is completed when the computer restarts you will be all set up in your old Home folder.
Note that you will be transferring files over a USB connection. Depending upon how much data you are transferring this may take a very long time, so be patient. A USB drive's typical transfer rate is about 12 GBs/hour.

Kernel Panic PERSISTS :/ after multiple Disk Warrior and Disk Repairs

Hey guys, I need your wisdom!
My OS took a dump on me the other night. Finder froze up and when I restarted, I got this at boot up, (see below, after my whole explaination as to what I've tried).
So, I bought an external drive, partitioned and installed Mavericks OS, along with Disk Warrior.
I ran through everything on DW and it seemed to find issues and repair the problems. Then I ran it through Disk Utility and it all checked out, "ok".
However, when I went to restart with my main OS, it gave the kernel panic error, again.
I'm frustrated, needless to say. I've repeatedly tried to rebuild the drive, repair disk permissions, etc, and every time it seems to "work" but it doesn't.
I am running a data recovery program and it's seeming to find all my files there. But, I really want to just try to resolve this problem to access the drive and do a backup from within.
Please, what are you thoughts on this?
Anonymous UUID: B45A0F2A-373D-60AE-D2C4-25F99F9AE358
Thu Sep 25 11:18:51 2014
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff801b9ce524): "Process 1 exec of /sbin/launchd failed, errno 8"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-2422.115.4/bsd/kern/kern_exec.c:3836
Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff80ada1bdf0 : 0xffffff801b622f79
0xffffff80ada1be70 : 0xffffff801b9ce524
0xffffff80ada1bef0 : 0xffffff801b9ae467
0xffffff80ada1bf10 : 0xffffff801b9e2bc1
0xffffff80ada1bf50 : 0xffffff801b620b3b
0xffffff80ada1bf80 : 0xffffff801b6dca73
0xffffff80ada1bfa0 : 0xffffff801b6f3942
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: init
Mac OS version:
Not yet set
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 13.4.0: Sun Aug 17 19:50:11 PDT 2014; root:xnu-2422.115.4~1/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: 9477416E-7BCA-3679-AF97-E1EAAD3DD5A0
Kernel slide: 0x000000001b400000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff801b600000
System model name: MacBook5,1 (Mac-F42D89C8)
System uptime in nanoseconds: 1410682262
last loaded kext at 1149667042: com.apple.driver.AppleUSBTCKeyEventDriver 240.2 (addr 0xffffff7f9d34d000, size 16384)
loaded kexts:
com.rogueamoeba.InstantOn 6.0.1
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBTCKeyEventDriver 240.2
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBTCKeyboard 240.2
com.apple.driver.AppleFileSystemDriver 3.0.1
com.apple.AppleFSCompression.AppleFSCompressionTypeDataless 1.0.0d1
com.apple.AppleFSCompression.AppleFSCompressionTypeLZVN 1.0.0d1
com.apple.AppleFSCompression.AppleFSCompressionTypeZlib 1.0.0d1
com.apple.BootCache 35
com.apple.driver.AppleIRController 325.7
com.apple.iokit.SCSITaskUserClient 3.6.7
com.apple.driver.XsanFilter 404
com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIBlockStorage 2.6.0
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBOHCI 656.4.1
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBHub 683.4.0
com.apple.nvenet 2.0.21
com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort 3.0.5
com.apple.driver.AirPort.Brcm4331 700.20.22
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBEHCI 660.4.0
com.apple.driver.AppleSmartBatteryManager 161.0.0
com.apple.driver.AppleRTC 2.0
com.apple.driver.AppleHPET 1.8
com.apple.driver.AppleACPIButtons 2.0
com.apple.driver.AppleSMBIOS 2.1
com.apple.driver.AppleACPIEC 2.0
com.apple.driver.AppleAPIC 1.7
com.apple.driver.AppleIntelCPUPowerManagementClient 217.92.1
com.apple.nke.applicationfirewall 153
com.apple.security.quarantine 3
com.apple.driver.AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement 217.92.1
com.apple.iokit.IOUSBHIDDriver 660.4.0
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBMergeNub 650.4.0
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBComposite 656.4.1
com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIMultimediaCommandsDevice 3.6.7
com.apple.iokit.IOBDStorageFamily 1.7
com.apple.iokit.IODVDStorageFamily 1.7.1
com.apple.iokit.IOCDStorageFamily 1.7.1
com.apple.iokit.IOAHCISerialATAPI 2.6.1
com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily 3.6.7
com.apple.iokit.IOUSBUserClient 660.4.2
com.apple.driver.NVSMU 2.2.9
com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIFamily 2.6.5
com.apple.iokit.IO80211Family 640.36
com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily 3.2
com.apple.iokit.IOUSBFamily 686.4.1
com.apple.driver.AppleEFINVRAM 2.0
com.apple.driver.AppleEFIRuntime 2.0
com.apple.iokit.IOHIDFamily 2.0.0
com.apple.iokit.IOSMBusFamily 1.1
com.apple.security.sandbox 278.11.1
com.apple.kext.AppleMatch 1.0.0d1
com.apple.security.TMSafetyNet 7
com.apple.driver.AppleKeyStore 2
com.apple.driver.DiskImages 371.1
com.apple.iokit.IOStorageFamily 1.9
com.apple.iokit.IOReportFamily 23
com.apple.driver.AppleFDEKeyStore 28.30
com.apple.driver.AppleACPIPlatform 2.0
com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily 2.9
com.apple.iokit.IOACPIFamily 1.4
com.apple.kec.corecrypto 1.0
com.apple.kec.pthread 1
Model: MacBook5,1, BootROM MB51.007D.B03, 2 processors, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GHz, 4 GB, SMC 1.32f8
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, PCI, 256 MB
Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x859B, 0x435432353636344243313036372E4D313653
Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM1, 2 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x859B, 0x435432353636344243313036372E4D313653
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x8D), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.100.22)
Bluetooth: Version 4.2.7f3 14616, 3 services, 23 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: Wi-Fi, AirPort, en1
Serial ATA Device: ST95005620AS, 500.11 GB
Serial ATA Device: HL-DT-ST DVDRW GS21N
USB Device: Built-in iSight
USB Device: External USB 3.0
USB Device: Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
USB Device: IR Receiver
USB Device: BRCM2046 Hub
USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller
Thunderbolt Bus:

gybek wrote:
Um, so what about the TM backup, will it not transfer over the kernel panic errors?
Target Disk Mode requires a second Mac. It puts a "bad" Mac which may have hardware issues and cannot boot properly, in a mode where the internal drive can be mounted on a second Mac as an external Thunderbolt/Firewire drive.
1. Power cycle Kernel-Panic MAC (KP-MAC) in TDM by holding the T key at the chime. If you see a floating FW symbol, then the KP-MAC is in TDM.
2. Use a second Mac (Good-MAC) and connect the KP-MAC via Thunderbolt/FW cables as appropriate. This may require a TB-to-FW adapter, a FW800-to-FW400 "gender-bender" and an appropriate cable.
3. Once the KP-MAC drive is visible on the G-MAC, you can either create a full disk image backup of the KP-MAC Disk.
4. You can also configure an external drive as a TM target and backup KP-MAC's internal drive via TM with appropriate TM Options.
5. In this case the KP-MAC OS is not in use, just the hardware/firmware which is required to put it in TDM.
This can be useful when your graphics card or display may not work properly, but the CPU/Memory/Disk ar relatively unaffected.
How do I even do a TM backup on that original drive from my temp OS?
As suggested earlier, TM can be used.
Linc suggested using Disk Utility and doing it that way to make a backup and then transferring over everything to a newly installed OS that way.
In TDM, if a TM backup is not possible, for any number of reasons, Disk Utility can create an image of KP-MAC's drive which can be moved to any desired location and files can be extracted as necessary.
Another option is to create an external bootable OS on a USB/FW disk, boot from it, assuming that KP-MAC can be booted and does not have significant HW issues, and create a Disk Image to an external disk destination.
It's almost 15 years of my life on there.
Hence the need for a very good backup/restore strategy.

External Hard Drive won't mount - tried Disk Warrior, am backing up as a .dmg...will this work?

Hi Guys,
Hopefully someone can help! Fairly desperate situation here...
I backed up around 700GB of data to an Iomega external hard drive (supplied by the client), using my Macbook Pro...all was fine when I unmounted the drive at the end of the backup.
The client took the drive away and called me to say he mounted the drive in Windows (on a PC), and he was able to work with the files for a time, but now the drive won't mount...
I collected the drive, hooked it up to my Mac Pro, but OSX tells me it can't mount the drive. It shows up in Disk Utility in the sidebar, but not on the desktop...
I tried repairing the disk using Disk Utility and with Disk Warrior, both tell me the disk cannot be repaired...
I am currently making a backup of the drive as a .dmg file, using a program called Disk Drill...it's slow as I expected, but I'm still not sure the .dmg will mount...because surely it's just making a copy of the data exactly, of which some part is not mounting (a mount directory or something???)
Is there any way you guys can think of me somehow taking the data and backing it up onto another disk?
Specialist recovery services seem to think there shouldn't be any problem recovering the data, and of couse, as a costly last resort, that's what I'll have to do, but does anyone know how they may go about doing it? It is something vastly complicated such as a command line thing?
Sorry about the length of this question...just hope someone can help!
Thanks in advance...

You didn't say what format (filesystem type) the disk was.
However, I'd say your analysis is probably correct. Something has corrupted the disk. You can make a disk image copy to the .dmg which will preserve the data, such as it is, but I doubt extremely if it will fix any file system corruption.
Furthermore, if both Disk Utility and Disk Warrior have said the disk is unreadable I'm dubious that anything else will magically repair it and that recovery probably consists of snuffling through the disk block by block.
However if the filesystem is FAT (Windows) there may be other (Windows) utilities that can fix it.
You said you 'backed up the data'. Does that mean you still have the original data on your MBP? Are you trying to recover the client's changes?

Deleting a partition with Disk Utility

I have 5 partitions on my external drive. One is corrupted to the extent that I can not erase it with D/U.
I had tried to repair the partition with Disk Warrior, but it appears that would take many, many hours.
Can I delete the partition without deleting the other four?
Thanks for any help.

No, Disk Utility will erase them all, use DW.

Slow Mac, Disk Warrior Help!

Okay, I used Disk Warrior like you told me. I built a directory graph which said that 34% are out of order. Optimized directory have zero items out of order.
When I to Repair Permissions, I get the same error after trying 3X, (2903,-8902).
Any ideas what that means?

"You" proably means "us" or something. The important thing to do is "I am starting to do preventative maintenace" with Disk Warrior.
Throw SuperDuper into the mix.
Rerun the Combo Update.
Then sit back and relax and don't fret, and never ever use older version of OS X for repairing permissions. And make sure you are current (so you should be running from an emergency partition, as well as having your backups and such).
Install OS X on an alternate drive and update.
Backup or clone to sparse disk image and keep safe.
Label new volume "Emergency" and keep it cleaned.
Keep your working system backed up also. Sparse image is great for even 100GB images.
Now if you need to you can restore, clone, migrate.
And there is always the Google Cloud:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-94794.html
Sounds like it could be you are using an older version of DW than 4.1.1??
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/support.html

PhotoShop CC 2014 - Blowing Directories on Hard Drives - Should Ship with a free Version of Disk Warrior ;-)

Since installing PS CC 2014 I have had serious problems.
Problems one could expect from a 'new' software.
However, having my drives' directories damaged due to Scratch Disks is something I have never seen before.
I had PS use an SSD as Scratch Disk. As this became full, I assigned another scratch disk (This time a RAID0).
As it ran full (200GB of PS Scratch) All the other files on that drive vanished. And photoshop was no longer able to even save the current document
(event though the destination had enough space avail.) See screenshot:(Watch the finder status in the back, the doc to be saved was 200MB and my disk had 3.38 GB avail.
But PS would not let me save due to scratch disks full)
Anyway, back to the serious problem. The RAID0 scratch disk, after I quit PS, was not longer mountable.
Trying to repair it with DU reported:
And trying with terminal This:
** /dev/rdisk13
Executing fsck_hfs (version hfs-226.1.1).
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Checking extents overflow file.
** Checking catalog file.
** Rebuilding catalog B-tree.
CreateNewBTree returned -34
Disk full error
So I went ahead and did some research and found Disk Warrior.
It was able to rebuild my catalog and I am up an running again.
But having to spend $99 on a PS bug is not so nice. I have been able to recreate this problem 3 times the past hours.
The problem occurs only when PS is using the RAID as Scratch disk. If I try to fill the drive by writing to it via terminal or Finder,
i just get a Disk is Full. PS on the other hand will blow the catalog and make the disk unmountable...
Any Ideas ?

Thanks for your reply, Chris Cox. I've checked the Windows System Event Log and here are the details:
Details (Tab) of same error (Photoshop)
I noticed since Jan 5, 2015, Photoshop has crashed a lot. I run Adobe Illustrator with it but it doesn't give the same errors. Other applications run fine too, so I'm not sure if it as you mentioned that it is the "system" that is crashing so often.
(You seem to have suggested a video card upgrade. I will work on that next. Thanks)
I hope you or anyone who can, help me with this problem with Photoshop and the issue with my account in Creative Cloud.
Looking forward to your help. Thank you.

Is It OK To Use Disk Warrior To Rebuild A TM HD ?

I have a USB 2.0 1TB HD which is partitioned equally in two.
TM uses one of the partitions and at present takes up about 200GB.
I have only been using it a couple of weeks and 2 days ago I upgraded from Leopard to SL.
I have just run Disk Warrior on it and it reports that 32% of the files are out of place.
This seems quite alarming in such a short time so I was about to rebuild it. However, it just occurred to me that it might be like that for a good reason and rebuilding may cause harm.
Is it safe to rebuild?

Ian R. Brown wrote:
I noticed you warned me against using DW 4.1 in SL.
Could you explain why not please or point me to some article?
DW 4.1 is not compatible with SL. don't use it and don't pay any attention to any errors it reports. there are big differences in file system in snow leopard from leopard and DW 4.1 does not know about them. this is mentioned on the disk warrior site but it appears to be down at the moment so i can not provide a link.
Disk Utility in its usually understated way tells me that the HD appears to be OK.
I sometimes wonder whether DW is programmed to come up with alarmist figures to justify its use!

Disk Warrior with PC???

Good Morning,
I hope somebody can help!
I work in tech support for PC however I couldn't be any more of a mac novoice. My sisters Macbook Pro will not boot and I have gone through various diagnosis tips from various forums online.
The problem is with the following
'Keys Out of Order'
'Rebuilding B-tree'
The Volume HD could not be reapired'
The built in disk utility advises that I need to back up files and reformat/reinstall OS. The whole problem is that my sister has STUPIDLY never backed anything up and has files on there that are ridiciously important to her.
I have found a download for 'Disk Warrior' which seems like it could be a saviour, however the only other computer I have is my Windows Laptop and an extrernal hard drive...is there anything I can do at all??
Thanks so much in advance

ellengrac4 wrote:
Can I just ask, is this an actual hardware problem where a new hard drive is needed or if worst comes to the worst, would it be possible to format and reinstall?
Can't tell whether the drive has a hardware problem yet, but it could have.
How old is this Mac and what version of OS X is on it?
Can I just ask for my cards on the table and ask if her data/files are at all able to be saved and whats the cheapest/easiest way for a fix?
Maybe, but as the Mac won't boot this requires that you remove the drive and access it externally from this Mac (with a new drive fitted) or some other Mac.
She has an appt at the genius bar at apple on Monday..will they just say the same thing?
Again I can't tell what they will say, but they might. I do know that without a backup I would not let the Genius bar work on the machine (if the data is important).
Answer question 1 and we will look at some alternatives, but the version of OSX has a part to play in what can be done, so which version is it?

Disk Warrior not compatible with OS 10.4.6?

I purchased DiskWarrior (version 3.03) last year and used it once on my old 1.6 GHz iMac with OS 10.3.6.
I now have a 2.1 GHz non-Intel iSight iMac with Mac OS 10.4.6.
I have tried twice to start up from the DiskWarrior CD - the first time, I never got beyond the grey apple and very loud fans whirring; the second time, I got another grey icon (sort of like a traffic sign - a circle with a line through it) along with the spinning wheel. Both times I gave up after 30 minutes and turned the iMac off with the power button.
This is a bit expensive for a one time use. It seems that DiskWarrior is not compatible with OS 10.4.6 and/or the iSight iMac? I checked the Alsoft website - v. 3.03 is the latest version available.

Wow! I think that you will either need to wait until your external drive is free to be erased, or to buy another external drive to be able to do everything you want all at once.
Once you have a free drive, divide it into two partitions, including one that is only about 5GB. Install a bare system using your iMac's Install & Restore Disc 1 onto this small partition. Customize your installation by choosing not to install printer drivers, languages, iLife applications, extra fonts or X11. This installation will be a little over 2GB.
When you first visit this system's Desktop, go to Software Update and install only the 10.4.6 Combined Update, any Java updates and possibly QuickTime 7.0.4. Reboot and repair permissions. Remove everything from the Dock but Safari and System Preferences. Drag Disk Utility into the Dock from your Applications/Utilities/ folder.
Launch Safari, go to shirtpocket.com and download and install the cloning utility, SuperDuper! Drag SuperDuper!'s icon from your Utilities folder to the Dock. Register it if you want the added features, or use the unregistered version to make your clones fresh each time.
Next, insert the Disk Warrior disc (any version of Disk Warrior 3.0.3 will do here) and drag DW to your /Applications/Utilities/ folder. Drag Disk Warrior's icon in your Utilities folder to the Dock.
Now you need only boot into your small maintenance partition to launch Disk Warrior so you can run it on your iMac and/or the clone that is on the external's larger partition. And of course, you'll clone your iMac to the larger partition on your external drive by booting into the smaller partition and running SuperDuper! from there.
Simple!

Disk Warrior and 'The Folder with the ? Mark'

Good morning. My MacBook recently crashed and I am left with the dreaded and endlessly blinking 'Question Mark Folder'. I have tried to restart using the System Disk and running Disk Utility but the Hard Drive is nowhere to be found.
I have read in the Discussions that running DiskWarrior may help. I have the program on my PowerBook G4 as well as on an external hard drive, but I do not have a DiskWarrior disc. Is there a way to run the program from these to repair the drive on my MacBook or retrieve my data? If not, is there a way to make a DiskWarrior disc from my .dmg file?
Thanks for your help.
John

Disk Warrior comes on a bootable disc unless you downloaded it or lost yours. You cannot easily make a bootable CD or DVD, but your could put it on a bootable external hard drive that has a bootable copy of OS X (current version) and your copy of DW must be at least 4.0 for Tiger or 4.1 for Leopard.
However, it's most unlikely that DW will help you because the question mark means that important system files are lost or corrupted. The solution is to reinstall OS X. It's possible you can do the following:
How to Perform an Archive and Install
An Archive and Install will NOT erase your hard drive, but you must have sufficient free space for a second OS X installation which could be from 3-9 GBs depending upon the version of OS X and selected installation options. The free space requirement is over and above normal free space requirements which should be at least 6-10 GBs. Read all the linked references carefully before proceeding.
1. Be sure to use Disk Utility first to repair the disk before performing the Archive and Install.
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer.
2. Do not proceed with an Archive and Install if DU reports errors it cannot fix. In that case use Disk Warrior and/or TechTool Pro to repair the hard drive. If neither can repair the drive, then you will have to erase the drive and reinstall from scratch.
3. Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When you reach the screen to select a destination drive click once on the destination drive then click on the Option button. Select the Archive and Install option. You have an option to preserve users and network preferences. Only select this option if you are sure you have no corrupted files in your user accounts. Otherwise leave this option unchecked. Click on the OK button and continue with the OS X Installation.
4. Upon completion of the Archive and Install you will have a Previous System Folder in the root directory. You should retain the PSF until you are sure you do not need to manually transfer any items from the PSF to your newly installed system.
5. After moving any items you want to keep from the PSF you should delete it. You can back it up if you prefer, but you must delete it from the hard drive.
6. You can now download a Combo Updater directly from Apple's download site to update your new system to the desired version as well as install any security or other updates. You can also do this using Software Update.

Rebuild with Disk Warrior

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