filesystem problems

tr333

Registered
i was trying to burn an iso image to cd from Toast when the computer froze. i held down the power button to reset the macmini, and when it restarted, it came up with a flashing '?'/macOS icon. after loading a linux livecd, it appears that the filesystem has somehow been corrupted (it can't mount the filesystem). is there any way to fix this or at least get the data from the disk before reformatting?
 
I'm trying to understand why you would make a rather minute situation worse by hitting the power button to force it off. No matter what OS your using, doing this is NOT the best option, but only as a VERY LAST resort. Remember that operating systems need to shutdown a lot of background processes cleanly which is why a proper shutdown is required.

A simple "Apple-Option-Esc" would have allowed you to force-quit the application, as would Ctrl-clicking the icon on the Dock if it was there (it would have given you the option). You could have also brought up the Finder and searched for Activity Monitor to stop the hanging application. Remember that OS X is much more stable than OS 9, so the OS shouldn't have locked up. If the OS had locked up, you would have experienced a kernel panic and a message on your screen to reboot your computer.


If the filesystem is corrupted, then there's not much you can do. You can try mounting the drive using the LiveCD of whatever Linux distro you're using (make sure that the hfsplus module is loaded so that this will work), but if it doesn't mount when you try it then I'm guessing you're going to have to reinstall cleanly, sacrificing your data. I'm sorry to have to say it but it looks this way right now. :(
 
looks like i have to reformat.

i tried the apple+option+esc, but nothing appeared after 10 seconds so i thought something had gone wrong.

thanks for the info.
 
Sorry to have to tell you that. If it's any consolation, my wife once deleted all of our files on our 10 GB backup drive in haste to format a floppy and save a file in it. All of our first-born's baby pictures were gone in a matter of seconds. Thankfully, we had backed up a majority of them but the ones we lost are all gone forever. :(
 
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