Deleted hidden 'private' folder on Macintosh HD...

[Breeder]

Ugh. So I was cleaning out my HD with 'WhatSize' and saw the 'private folder', which was about 4.6 GB. Thinking nothing of it and also suspecting that this might be the folder responsible for the my auto-depleting harddrive I trashed it. Upon stupidly emptying the trash I found that some files were emptied while most of them survived. Noticing that I wasn't able to open iTunes or even reinstall it, I restarted the computer. Now, I can't get into Snow Leopard and have to use Windows (I have Bootcamp).

I tried doing the "ditto /volumes..." command in single-user mode, but it says it couldn't find my username. I tried looking up the username with the 'launch ctl load' command, but it can't find the Directory Services file.

Is there any way I can get Snow Lepoard back without losing any space? I have a lot of important media that I would really like to keep (photos, films, music, etc.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Queso]

Oops. Yeah, by removing that you've basically hosed a whole bunch of essential UNIX files. You ought to be able to pop in the OSX install disk and run the "Archive and Install" option to get OSX working again without affecting your data. If you have another Mac to hand though to be on the safe side you ought to boot into Target Disk mode and copy off the Users directory and everything under it.

 

[Breeder]

I noticed that I have access to the content on my drive through Windows. Maybe I could move the misplaced files back into the private folder. Could this work? Also, I am not sure what OS I am actually on. I bought this Macbook Pro back in the Summer of 2007 and haven't changed the OS.

 

[Breeder]

Windows/Mac external hard drive problem

So for reasons stated in a different thread, I cannot log into my Mac OSX. I can however log into Windows running on Bootcamp. I have to do an Archive and Install on my Mac and instead of quickly jumping into it I would like to backup my Mac files if anything goes wrong. I can access all Mac files through Windows. My problem is with backing them up. If I use a G-Drive that I have previously used for Mac, will I have to reformat it? If not how could I successfully store my Mac media on Windows so use it on Mac OSX in the future?

I ask this now because I do now have the G-Drive's power supply, but should arrive at my home in a few days. I do have an empty 160 GB iPod with USB cable. But if I store everything on that in Windows I'm afraid I would have to reformat it again if I wanted to use it in Mac OSX, which would erase everything. There seems to be no way around this!