Considering DiskWarrior for Mac that doesn't boot without CD

So my Macbook's HD decided to pack up today, have been scouring the net for solutions. Am Repairing Disc, using the Disc Utility, having booted the Macbook from Snow Leopard CD.

Here's the thing, I have 100gb worth of my baby's photos and videos on the HD (yea, I know, back up now idiot, believe me, I'm kicking myself) which has packed in, which I can't seem to access. While running the Disk Repair, I can see like a million "invalid record count" and "Invalid node structure" errors, which means that most of my files aren't salvageable. Probably.

But from seeing a DiskWarrior site, I'm inclined to try anything to recover my data. THe HD sees that the capacity of the disk has 6.9gb left, so I assume I can recover some/most of my files.

My question is, if I can't create an image of the HD, and save this onto an external hard drive (which is my first option that I'm trying now), how does DiskWarrior work if I can't boot without the Snow Leopard disk?

What the hell can I do?

ok now I'm definitely stuck.....

I seem to be unable to back up my data to an External HD using Disk Utility's image creation.

Help pls...... what the flip do I do.........

edit...

The disk error that comes up when trying to create an image of the HD is "Unable to create .dng (input/output error)".... anyone know what that means? What are my options to capture my data?

blueroom said:

Why not replace the internal drive first, reinstall OS X and get an external 2.5" SATA / USB enclosure and try to recover the files from your now operation MB.

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Will that work, if the current HD is unmountable now?

Plus, DiskWarrior is about a third of the cost of buying a new internal drive.....

blueroom said:

Is the drive reliable? Is it a software or hardware crash? Where are you going to backup your photos to? Sounds like you need an external backup drive anyway so either way you're going to have to get another drive.

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This is the first time this has ever happened, so I guess it's pretty reliable. Because the HD is not mounted, I'm assuming the data is still there. I was planning on creating an image using Disk Utility and having that saved on my External HD. But I haven't been able to create a disk image due to the error stated in a post above. I can't verify and repair the HD, due to the "invalid record count" and "Invalid node structure" errors.

So I have the internal HD, that contains the data which I can't see because the disk isn't able to be mounted due to some errors, I have an external HD that I'm needing to extract the data to, and I'm unable to verify and repair the internal HD.

Running out of ideas, which is why the whole DiskWarrior idea came up, as I'm running out of options and freaking out.....

Thanks for your help...... Just saw your edit.....

I'm using a WD External HD, which is the best.... just bought it at the end of last year. The MB is the 2009 13" MacBook 2.2, the model before they dropped it to produce the Macbook Pro's which are the norm now.

blueroom said:

If there's nothing on the WD HD you could try installing a bootable copy of OSX on it, then hold down Option to boot from it. Copy your files off your internal drive to it with any luck.
You could then overwrite the internal drive with the external WD with something like Carbon Copy Cloner (assuming the internal drive is only soft errors)

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Bit the bullet and took it in as its still under warranty...... Hope they can recover it all......

elstinger said:

Bit the bullet and took it in as its still under warranty...... Hope they can recover it all......

Click to expand...

Bad news.... Apple techs seem to think that the HD is mechanically faulty, and won't be able to restore any data.....

Seeing as it's probably going to cost over 2K to recover any data, what do you guys reckon my best bet would be to try and recover myself?

This is turning out to be the worst weekend ever....