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mikefromearth

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 6, 2011
2
0
Hi everyone,

I'm in a bit of a pickle.

I tried to upgrade to 10.7 and somehow corrupted my HD so it wont boot, cant be repaired, wont mount and wont backup. At the same time, in Disk Utility, I can go in and view the entire contents of the HD so I know the whole thing is not corrupt.

I need to copy my user file to an external HD so I can wipe my drive and reinstall OS X. Is there any software I can boot into that will allow me to copy specific files to an external HD? The only other route I can think of would be to remove the HD, install a new one, install OS X, buy a SATA-USB converter, plug in the old HD and copy over the files. Unfortunately I cant afford to buy a new HD at the moment.

So there I am.

Any useful responses will be met with joy!

Thanks again.

Mike

PS I know this question may have been answered previously but I am in a time bind (aka work in 15 minutes) and I need to get this fixed ASAP. I apologize!
 
Have you tried this:

Recovery HD

OS X Lion includes a built in set of utilities in the Recovery HD. Restart your Mac and hold down the Command key and the R key (Command-R), and keep holding them until the Apple icon appears, indicating that your Mac is starting up. After the Recovery HD is finished starting up, you should see a desktop with a Mac OS X menu bar and a "Mac OS X Utilities" application window. Note: If you see a login window or your own desktop and icons, it is possible that you didn't hold Command-R early enough. Restart and try again.

In order to reinstall OS X Lion, you will need to be connected to an Ethernet or Wi-Fi network. The Wi-Fi menu item is in the upper-right corner of the screen. Click the icon to display all available Wi-Fi networks. Click your preferred network name and, if needed, enter a username and/or password.
 
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