Going back, like XP

Matsaki

Matsaki

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If I make a misstake and I can't open OS X. In windows I think you can start in safe mode and undo the misstake?

I was installing UBUNTU on an exernal disk, but for soem reason my original OS X is not working and was affected. Disc Utility can see the disk, repait permissions and check hard drive ok.

But I can still not boot from it. NowI try DiskWarrior but for the last 15 min it has been stucked on "Locating directory data" so I guess some thing is wrong :(

I did not tryt any other apps, for fixing broken hard drives yet. If DiskWarrior don't work I will try TechTool and Genius. Then it's no more options then to reinstall :(
 
Well yes if you have a Time Machine backup connected or you have a second disk you backup using the bootable clone procedure. SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner or Time Machine (with an second hard disk & install disk) are your friends in this kind of situation.

Now in your case (since you never backup) you have several options, fist there is an Archive & Install to save your Pictures, iTunes Library and Applications. Also you could see if you can repair it from another Mac be mounting it in FireWire Disk Mode and see if you can repair it from there. Make sure you have a good Leopard disk to try the repairs with though.
 
You say you were installing Ubuntu on an external disk. Did you complete that installation successfully?

Things might have changed since the last time I tried to install Ubuntu, but last I checked it did not support installing onto external HDs. It would let you start, but it would fail when it reached the point where it should install a bootloader. It sounds like it might have installed a bootloader onto your internal drive, and I can imagine how that could cause problems.

How have you tried booting from your disk, and at what point does it not work? Do you see a gray screen, or a flashing question mark?

There are a few ways to choose a boot disk. If you haven't already, try these:

- Boot up while holding down the Option key on the keyboard. A list of volumes will appear. Does your OS X partition appear here?

- Boot from your OS X installation disk, and select Startup Disk from the Utilities menu. What appears there? If possible, try changing the startup disk and then changing it back. This will, I think, overwrite any third-party bootloader that Ubuntu might have installed.

When dealing with boot issues, it is sometimes helpful to zap the PRAM (or the nvram, as I think it's called nowadays). To do this, hold down the command, option, P and R keys while starting up. Keep them pressed until you hear the Mac's startup chime three times.
 
If you are attempting a repair with DiskWarrior, that's probably your best chance at this point. Keep in mind that you need to let DiskWarrior do its work, and that can take a considerable amount of time. Disk Warrior often can take several hours, or even several DAYS to complete its rebuild. In my experience, I have had one (ultimately successful) completion in only 35 hours! More normal is 10 - 30 minutes - but be patient, it's a good tool...
 
Why???
I am now trying to re.partition my external Iomega with Disk Utils. After that I want to use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a new bootable OS X and then backup the data from my broken Macbook Pro.

But whe I launch CCC it says:

The target volume will not boot PowerPC Macs. PowerPC Macs can only boot from a hard drive that is partitioned with the Apple Partition Map format.
Click to expand...

Why is it not formated as bootable???
 
Make sure it is journaled.

I made the mistake of cloning to a non-journaled Ex-HD. Data is there . . . you can use it . . . but I could not actually boot off of it, I also could not update the OS. Once I enabled journaling, it worked.

--J.D.
 
Matsaki said:
Why is it not formated as bootable???
Click to expand...
PowerPC and Intel Macs require a different partitioning style for bootable drives. PPC Macs use the Apple Partition Map, while Intel Macs use GUID. As far as I know, the only way to change from one to the other is to completely reformat the drive, erasing all data on all partitions. Since you already said you were repartitioning, maybe this isn't a problem. You can select the partitioning scheme in Disk Utility by clicking on the Options button in the Partition tab.
 
Thanks Mikuro and all,
I was able to use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the disk contents to a external HD and then reformat the broken HD and clone back. And voula it is working again :)
 
Hmm,
Every time I run "repair permissions" with Disk Utils I get:

Permissions differ on "usr/lib/ruby", should be lrwxr-xr-x , they are drwxr-xr-x .
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/afpLoad" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "usr/bin/setregion" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Permissions differ on "Developer/Examples/JavaWebObjects/DataBaseSetUp/dbdump.sh", should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rwxrwxr-x .
Permissions differ on "Developer/Examples/JavaWebObjects/DatabaseSetup/dbdump.sh", should be -rwxrwxr-x , they are -rw-rw-r-- .
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Versions/A/Resources/runner" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/Printers/IOMs/LPRIOM.plugin/Contents/MacOS/LPRIOMHelper" has been modified and will not be repaired.

Permissions repair complete
Click to expand...

When I run DiskWarrior and chose rebuild directory I get errors to, and I can not chose repair permissions in DW as it's greyd out and says I need a full Mac OS X install???
 
I forgot about this since I have DW on a partition with TechTools and can, if I feel the need, repair permissions. I discovered on a similar subject that if I boot off the DW disk I cannot repair permissions.

So . . . simply stick in the DW, install it, run it and try fixing permissions that way.

Or . . . if you have access to the Interwebs, get Onyx and fix them that way--it takes a long time in OS 10.5.

--J.D.
 
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