I changed the names of the drives while booted in by using the get info of the drives...
And I don't have another Mac...
Sorry for the pettiness of this...should have left it alone
On Recovery
When you forgot the password and you can't use OS X, you have to use the new Recovery.
To boot in Recovery system, press Command and R keys in boot and hold the keys until you see the Apple icon. If you have a Mac with Internet Recovery, read > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718. If your Mac has got a wireless keyboard, hold them when you hear the startup sound
When it starts, select Utilities > Terminal, and type:
resetpassword
Press your user and type your password. Finally, reboot.
This doesn't work for FileVault. If you forget your password with FileVault, you lost your info. Also, you can see if you use Recovery HD or Internet Recovery, or enable it -> http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4904
You can do it with an USB drive > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4848
Yes, I'm on mountain lion and will try the recovery mode thing...
I don't think I changed anything else but the drives names?...but I guess anything is possible...
Thank you for your replies
Ok, I got into recovery and changed the password thru terminal and still can't login...I get the spinning gear type thing beside my password and it brings up a window, unable to log in to my user account at this time
I tried the repair permissions, still nothing...
No, not a fusion drive...I have a Samsung 830 ssd as the main boot drive and the original as backup...I did move my home folder to the back up drive...
This is very odd...but again this is my first mac and didn't know changing the names of the drives would cause this havoc
When did you move the folder?
There is a keychain in that folder, you changed the names of the discs and now the OS can not find your home folder with your keychain.
I am sure you can change that without reinstalling, let me think about it, I'll
be back soon.(15 Minutes)
Is guest login enabled, could you possibly log into that account, if so you could try from there to enable root access, this could be done in Leopard in Directory Utility but I don't know if this is still there in Mountain Lion and if that could be used in a Guest account.
FYI, I am in Leopard so I am not too familiar with changes in OS.
Other Post above updated.
Not sure about the guest directory...I don't think so?
I do so appreciate everyone's input trying to help me with this uncalled for flub up
Not sure what you mean about the symlink?
Ok, I'm in single user mode but don't have a clue what all this means?
This is the method I used to move the folder...
http://m.cnet.com/news/moving-your-home-folder-in-os-x/57365307
Again sorry, I'm on my mobile
This is the method I used to move the folder...
http://m.cnet.com/news/moving-your-home-folder-in-os-x/57365307
Again sorry, I'm on my mobile
Now, I had problems myself, I started up in Single User Mode and I am positive you can repair from there but I forgot to unmount the disks before a restart/reboot, then started up but internet could not connect with dongle, restarted and halfway through it restarted again and again, I then booted from different disk because in other partition the system could not repair the disk, even from external Disk Utility could not repair, ran Diskwarrior and all is well now.
I looked at the page where they show you how to do it, that's actually fairly simple.
The problem you got is simple, you renamed the disk and the OS lost it's home folder (symlink) containing the keychain file which is needed when you log in.
If Root user was enabled before you got this problem you still could log into the root account since the keychain file is somewhere else.
I recommend what I last told you, to install a bare system on the other disk, boot from there and create a new symlink by using the command I gave you.
It is possible in SUM but involves a lot of commands and I still did not figure out completely how to do this.
Note, it is always better to at least have a second bootable OS, if you have issues it is easier to solve, best way is an external bootable disk, I think that even a 8GB USB stick could be used just to be able to boot from it and solve the problems.
Many people don't have a backup disk, I guess you don't have one either, if your mini hard disk crashes you will lose everything.
Ok, bare with me please...I could download the OS and put it on a USB stick, boot from the stick...go into disk utility, or terminal? and change the symlink to the home folder on the second drive?
I assume this all can be done from my PC?...I do not have another mac...just a windows 7 pc...
Again, thank you for your help
No, boot into recovery mode and install a bare system on the disk where your home folder is, DON'T erase and install or partition, just install.
You also could do the same, but install it on a USB stick, you don't need to download anything.(The last one is safer)
Then if installed, boot from it and make a symlink on your normal OS disk which points towards the home folder.
Edit: I installed the OS to the USB and booted from it and changed the name of the back up drive back to the original name that was used when I formatted it after the SSD install and everything seems to be up and going...
I am going to purchase a SSD for the external USB enclosure I have for backups...Since I have the drives setup the way I have them, how would I do back ups to the external drive?...I'm using Carbon Copy Cloner...
Thanks again
Wow, so you got it to work again, happy you solved it.
So, you want to backup both the internal disks to an external, I think the easiest way is to just use CCC to make a copy of your OS disk and then use CCC again but point it to the other disk and make a backup again, in CCC there is a setting to protect the root level(folders) of the disk so it will not delete the rest of the folders(read OS).
This is how I do it but it is a bit confusing, the earlier versions of CCC where less confusing than the current one.
You say you will buy an external SSD for backup, why an SSD if you don't really need to start up from it, yes, backup is faster but SSD's are still not that cheap.
Depends also on how big your data is(100 GB-200GB-.... how big.
Yes, and again I appreciate your help...after you wrote it and I had in front of me it was very obvious what went wrong...even though this is my first mac...again, I appreciate it.
The only thing that is odd is after I got it going I noticed that there are a lot more page outs and not as much free memory now.
I have tried purge in terminal, reset the PRAM...nothing seems to help.
There were never any page outs neither before nor after I upgraded the ram, and before the drive name change incident...I upgraded the ram to 8GB weeks ago.
Even after boot up and just opening lets say, Chrome, and browsing for a bit, there are page outs...is this normal?
And it really doesn't make much sense to go with a SSD for back ups, huh?.
I'll shop around for an HDD, if anyone knows of any decent decent deals online that would be great...doesn't have to be a crazy amount of space.
Again, thank you for your help.
are you in the usa? amazon has some deals as does staples
55 bucks
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvi...e=UTF8&qid=1354212965&sr=1-7&keywords=usb+hdd
64 bucks
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvi...e=UTF8&qid=1354212900&sr=1-2&keywords=usb+hdd