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Snow Leopard: invalid node structure + rainbow beach ball + Backup help.

D

Dreamer2go

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 23, 2007
679
303
Long story short:

My computer, in the past 2 weeks, is faulty. Every time I open up Safari, it freezes for 1-2 minutes with the rainbow spinning beachball.
Loading iTunes is the same.

After researching, it's due to the hard drive failing.
I did a safe boot, and hopefully clearing some cache. After restarting the computer from safe boot, my computer can't boot anymore.

In Snow Leopard's installation CD, I tried to repair the disk, but "invalid node structure" message came up.
I can't repair it.


LUCKILY, I have a windows partition, and that part of the harddrive is working fine.

I only need to backup: Documents, Pictures and Music.... the rest can be gone because I'm getting the new retina Macbook Pro this week....
(Talk about hardware failure at the right moment)

My questions are:

1) How can I back up my files? Time Machine can't be loaded unless you're in OSX right?
2) Do I have to drag/drop Macintosh files from Windows (via Bootcamp) to an external hard drive?

3) For Music: If I copy the itunes folder, will it still retain the playlists etc?
my iPad/iPhone's music relies on the playlist heavily.

4) Contacts: If I just drag/drop the contacts now, when I have Mountain Lion installed, will it appear normally?

Thank you for the help!
I hope I can back up everything before it's too late!!!
 
If you have a failing hard drive, clearing caches is not going to do anything for that.

If your hard drive has a mechanical failure, then you don't want to use the Windows partition either, as further use will encourage the drive to die. I'm not sure about Windows's abilities at reading HFS+ Mac format partitions, so you should read up on this before trying.

If it is just a disk format problem on your OS X partition, then you may want to buy Disk Warrior, which is much better at fixing things than Disk Utility. You should check the drive SMART status in Disk Utility, as this will give some indication of whether the hardware is failing, or whether the format is just corrupted.

Disk Warrior is well worth the money, if you value your files.

If you are getting a new Mac, then you be able to transfer everything from the old Mac using Migration Assistant. However, that requires both Macs to be booted up. (The alternative is Target mode, where you use the old computer as if it were an external drive on your new one). However, if the disk can't be read properly, you may not get everything.

You should ALWAYS have a backup copy of your files. Hard drives fail, computers get stolen, catch fire, houses flood, etc, etc.
FILES THAT ARE NOT BACKED UP ARE WAITING TO BE LOST.
Get an external drive, plug it in and let Time Machine do its thing.

I don't wish to kick a man while he's down: but I'm afraid that I have limited sympathy for people who don't have a backup of their files. The internet is filled with similar stories of people who lose or nearly lose all their files because they have no backup. Apple advertises Time Machine and its Time Capsule hardware pretty heavily, and every external drive manufacturer out there markets its drives for the purposes of backups.

This is something that you need to do, and Apple has made it childs-play since TM was introduced in 2007.

I hope you get this sorted, but I hope that it will make you (and others) realise the importance of backups.
 
Last edited:
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