Toast MacBook Pro?

[Killerbob]

My friends MacBook Pro from 2012, with Yosemite installed on it, has experienced a melt down. Basically whenever it starts up, you get to type in the password (FileVault is enabled), and it starts going through the startup process. However, about 15 seconds in, the bar has barely started moving, the MacBook just shuts down.

I tried booting up in safe mode, but the same thing happens. I then connected it to my Mac Pro via Thunderbolt, booted the MacBook up in Target Disk mode, and was able to get the user directory offloaded.

As you can see on the attached picture of the boot process, the last message is "Invalid node structure (4, 18441)", "The volume Macintosh HD could not be verified completely.", "Boot task failed: fsck-safe", "Shutting down in 3 seconds."

Do I have any way to recover from this, or is it a complete reinstall?

 

[killawat]

Looks like your directories are corrupt. I would try to use DiskWarrior v.5, but it's not free. I guess its not super urgent since you were able to save some of the data. Is this HDD or SSD?

 

[duervo]

Try reinstall of OS X, but I suspect that the 750GB Hitachi HDD is dying. If so, I'd replace it with a 500GB SSD.

 

[Killerbob]

I tried reinstalling OSX but the process failed rather quickly. I do have DiskWarrior, and I will try that.

Thx. for the feedback!

 

[snaky69]

Hard drive has likely kicked the bucket.

 

[JohnDS]

Hard to say whether the SSD is dying or is only had directory corruption.

Here is what I would do:

1. Get an external drive USB3 drive as large as or larger than the total amount of data on your friend's drive.
2. Use Disk Utility to format it as Apple Extended Format (Journalled).
3. With the external still connected, connect to your friend's computer using target disk mode.
4. Open Disk utility and use it to Restore your friend's internal drive to the new external drive.
5. Use Disk Utility to erase your friend's internal drive and format it as Apple Extended Format (Journalled).
6. Use Disk Utility to Restore the contents of the external back to your friend's internal.
7. See if your friend's computer will now boot.

Assuming it does, there is one more step to take. Reformatting your friend's drive will probably have wiped the recovery partition. (You can check by seeing if you can boot your friend's computer while holding down command-r).

If the recovery partition is gone, there are two ways to restore it.

1. Simply upgrade to El Capitan. This will create a fresh recovery partition.
or
2. Download and re-install Yosemite. You can download Yosemite by going to "previous purchases" in the App Store.

 

[JohnDS]

Here is another and perhaps better alternative which will also give your friend a clean install of El Capitan:

1. Get an external drive USB3 drive as large as or larger than the total amount of data on your friend's drive.
2. Use Disk Utility to format it as Apple Extended Format (Journalled).
3. With the external still connected, connect to your friend's computer using target disk mode.
4. Open Disk utility and use it to Restore your friend's internal drive to the new external drive.
5. Use Disk Utility to erase your friend's internal drive and format it as Apple Extended Format (Journalled).
6. Download El Capitan from the Apple store and install it on your friend's internal hard drive.
7. When the install asks you to reboot, instead shut down both computers.
8. Connect the external drive to your friend's computer.
7. Boot your friend's computer. This should start the rest of the El Capitan installation.
8. When El Capitan asks if you have data to transfer, select the external drive. Migration assistant should copy over the data, settings and apps.
9. Run Software Update

1o. Check to see if you have a recovery partition by booting your friend's computer while holding down command-r).

If the recovery partition is gone, there are two ways to restore simply redownload and re-install El Capitan.