Can I backup my (nearly dead) mac through Boot Camp?

[lakerbob]

Hi,

I've got an Intel 24" imac. It crashes during startup (it reaches the apple screen then shuts down). I've tried the disk utility, single user mode, fsck, pram, and so on. I get a sibling link error, nothing works. I also am not able to do an archive re-install, I only get the option to erase my hard drive and start over,

But, I can boot up vista using boot camp. And, I downloaded macdrive, and I can see my files on the osx partition. I bought a WD my book external hard drive which came pre- formatted for mac and am currently copying my user folder to that drive. Any advice on this? Is this the best way to preserve my data? Are there any specific files or folders that I should copy? Is there a way I can restore my mac to its original condition before the crash? I stupidly had not done any backups.

I also bought diskwarrior, but the website says that the invalid sibling link spells serious trouble and I am worried that it either won't work or I will lose my data when I run it.

Thanks

 

[EricNau]

Your user's (as well as any other users that may be installed on your Mac) "Home" folder is the most important to backup, as it contains all of your data. So it sounds like you're on the right track.

I see no reason why you can't perform this manual backup through Boot Camp, but if that doesn't seem to work, you may want to try using Target Disk Mode.

 

[lakerbob]

Back up my user folders, and then ran diskwarrior which worked great and fixed everything. Backup didn't turn out to be needed. Hooked up the new external hard drive and turned on time machine like I should have in the first place. Feeling pretty bullet proof right now.