I've been drafted to look at a friend's MacBoot which won't boot. It starts, will make the "DING" noise at random, and won't get past the Apple screen and whirligig beneath it.

My first guess would be a bad hard drive, but what do I know? I have directions as to how to swap that out, and have a spare 60 gig 2.5" SATA drive.

Thanks!

4/9/2009 6:21:56 PM

see if it'll boot off of a leopard DVD. pop the dvd in, hold down the option key while you turn it on, you should see the EFI boot menu, just click the CD when it comes up.

if you can boot off of that, it's probably the drive. try wiping it and reinstalling leopard.

or, if you have the OS discs that came with it, depending on how old it is, there will be a version of apple hardware test on one of the discs that you can boot to. pop in one of them, hold down the D key while you boot, if you see a little blue chip picture, that's it. go through all of that.

4/9/2009 6:26:24 PM

Reformat isn't yet an option - gonna try a new drive first, install on it, and see if I find anything on the old HDD. As an English grad student, there's some stuff she'd like to keep. Will sweat that later with my BlacX dock

4/9/2009 6:35:21 PM

lawl

at least try booting from a disc first before you take the time to open the case

4/9/2009 6:37:01 PM

if she has a mac she should have been using time machine, problem solved

4/9/2009 6:43:21 PM

^^ didn't have it

be this a lesson, kids: backup important sh!t

4/9/2009 6:46:58 PM

I thought macs never broke?

4/9/2009 6:55:52 PM

^ lies!


Ubuntu tells me the files are still there, so I reckon something corrupted OSX.

Now to figure out how to access HFS+ files to copy them (/media/disk/users/Beth/...) to my computer? Damn these necessary permissions!

4/9/2009 7:48:15 PM

Rebooted back into Windows, will now try HFSExplorer.

4/9/2009 9:21:05 PM

Ok, one last thing... where are sticky notes kept on the hard drive? I don't see any semblance to that under Applications or Users... and right now am working on borrowed time after having kept the drive in a freezer the last three days!

4/22/2009 5:23:32 PM

If you have another mac you could boot it into target disk mode (hold f on boot) and plug the failed mac into other mac via firewire. The other mac will see the failed mac's disk as an external drive and you can copy shit off.

If you have an external drive you might also be able to make an image of the local disk from the OSX cd onto the external drive.

4/22/2009 5:27:40 PM

probably in some files in ~/Library/Application Support/Stickies, or something like that.

I don't have my Mac at the moment to check, but you could probably copy that folder and restore it on the new drive

4/22/2009 5:37:22 PM

thanks, I'll give 'er a shot!

4/22/2009 5:39:05 PM

So is the drive hosed or is the filesystem corrupted?

If it's the latter, that shouldn't be too hard to fix. You should have tried booting in to verbose mode (hold apple-v at startup) to see what was stopping it from booting in the first place.

4/22/2009 5:42:17 PM

to be safe, maybe also grab /Library/Application Support/Stickies, and do a Spotlight search for folders named Stickies to see if there are any more.

or, just open stickies, rearrange them so they're all visible, and take a screenshot and just save the image file

4/22/2009 5:43:16 PM

The drive is out of the machine, OSX was hosed, and the drive is following... managed to get first round of files off, then she wanted her stickies... after a recent repair at her apartment it seems the computer suffered some dust inhalation.

CL told me Users/Username/Library/StickiesDatabase
so I'm trying to copy that directory on the drive connected to my BlacX dock running MacDrive 7. Whew.

4/22/2009 5:47:01 PM

Ok just restarted after winexplorer crashed... got stickiesdatabase, it's 5.5 megs, must be it...


what is this??

4/22/2009 5:53:35 PM

umm, dunno - guess it's saying that Windows can't open a Mac application database, which makes sense

4/22/2009 6:04:35 PM

Fair 'nuff...
I can salvage the info out of the file - will mess with it on the Mac and its new, err, functional hdd later. 95% gibberish formatting, and the rest, the random musings of however long this thing's been in use.

Thanks, everyone!

4/22/2009 6:11:05 PM

Stickies Xfer a success. Next up, the sound doesn't work. @#$%^&* you Justin Long!

4/22/2009 10:24:57 PM

i'm lost as to what you're doing here.....

did you put a new drive in?
Did you reinstall OS X cleanly on the new drive, and then copy the old files and apps onto the new drive? or did you try to clone the whole drive?

if you installed a new drive, and reinstalled OS X from the DVD, i don't see how there could possibly be a problem with the sound

4/22/2009 10:31:24 PM

OK... I removed the old drive and have copied the old files (documents, audio, video, and the stickynotes) - not the applications, to my Dell laptop. These files now also exist on a WD firewire/USB drive.
The original 120GB drive is biting the dust, so I placed a spare 60GB drive in for the meantime to make sure this thing's not completely boned. Everything I've done has been through Windows' HFSexplorer or MacDrive.

So, it's got a new-to-it 60GB drive for now, with new 10.4.9 install, haven't copied everything over yet; not a clone since OSX wouldn't boot earlier.
I've left the 120GB be, short of copyng files off it while it cooperates.

She said the sound (except the startup ding) wasn't working before this hard drive started to die.

4/22/2009 10:49:43 PM

Update: new, 250 GB hard drive has arrived. Yet another new install of OSX 10.4.9. Sound, except for startup "diiiing," doesn't work still.

Also, when trying to copy files off the HFS+ - partitioned external hard drive, I can see files, but not copy everything with ease, sothing ado with .ds_store and .localized being hidden pains in the A, and thus prohibiting whole-directory/subdirectory copying, such as old Garageband and iTunes.

4/29/2009 10:17:27 PM