URGENT HELP REQUIRED!! PowerBook Will Not Boot At All.

I know the title is a little vague, but for some reason now when I turn my PowerBook12" on it will load through Open Firmware, but just as it gets to OS X it will shut down suddenly, as if someone has removed the power suddenly. I try booting off the master CD and use Disk Utility, it says the hard drive is there but cannot do anything with it, such as repair permissions, as it is not mounted I presume.

I'm lost...I cannot do anything. Everything I try results in it shutting down. I have valuable things on the drive that I have not had chance to back up yet. Will a Target Disk Mode let me recover my files?...I'm mainly thinking my iPhoto library, I've not backed it up for a while and its been heavily updated, the rest I think I have copies off.

My iPartition boot CD says the hard drive is there and the OS X partition is still there as it was, but for some reason I just can't boot up into it. Just before this my Finder would not load in any account I logged into, causing me to try a reboot...look what happened! This makes me think its more software corruption, especially after I've had trouble with partitioning, but OS X has been fine up to this point in the grand scale of things.

Anyone PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE URGENTLY HELP ME!! Any help and advice would be greatfully received!

Is there some Unix shortcuts or commands I can do from the terminal from the boot CD or something? I'm very sketchy on UNIX commands but are willing to try everything before I reformat entirely and start again.

What can I do?

(notice the desperation in my voice, it's getting late here and I'm panicing! hehe )

I think my problem is a corrupted catalogue file for hfs+, disk util says invalid key length. The "PowerBookHD" volume, as my OSX volume is called, is not mounted, and clicking mount in diskutil does nothing...what should I do?

fsck gave me an error on the catalog file, invalid key length, volume check failed.

True, I have tried to do an archive and install, but it doesn't register any mounted drives so cannot complete, cannot use the master CDs to do anything apart from look pretty or give error messages!!

I'm currently experimenting in using an Ubuntu Live CD to boot my mac up into that, then to tweak Ubuntu into mounting the macosx partition so I cna view it, so I can then copy and paste to an external drive.

http://jclark.org/weblog/2005/05/24/ubuntumount/

I have managed to mount osx drive in Ubuntu Live, apart from when I get to my user documents area, it has a cross on documents, pictures etc etc...so you think I'll be able to copy and paste them still?...im just trying to get an external drive in the right format so it is write accessible for Ubuntu!...great fun!

So my real option is to spend ALOT of money to get it recovered?...is there not a more manual way to rebuild the partition none-destructively?

Thanks for all your help so far guys!...not gone bed yet until this is done!

My Ubuntu idea is hit and miss, but at least it mounts my mac partition so I can see my files there, intact...just can't get them off very easily.

If Ubuntu can do this, what is stopping Target Disk Mode from working?

I have no other Mac, but might be able to get one tomorrow from a friend. But it's kinda the last night of an assignment! Plus I really need those photos. My girlfriend will be shattered if I haven't got them!

UPDATE:: I have managed to recover my photos using Ubuntu, finally! Hurrah! So now I need my mac back up and running, if format needed, then format is what it shall get now that I have my files.

Anyone hazard a guess how I do this with no mountable partition for my installer CDs to recognise?

Well, reformatted and reinstalled, as an archive and install wouldn't even work. At least I got the bits of data I hadn't got back up saved. dotMac is a real lifesaver when it comes to getting your Mac back up and running!

Thanks everyone for your help!