Installation of 10.8 on 10.7, partition damage

[huski]

Hi,

I was 10.7 user, I decided to upgrade to 10.8. Consequently I purchased the installer through App Store. The installation was crashing due to apparent disk errors. I did try running Disk Utility but wasn't able to fix the errors, I was getting the same message about errors not being fixable. The installation was giving me an option to install to the old 10.7.5 system. Unfortunately, the option was bringing me back to the installer. So after repeated attempts to reboot my Mac, where the only thing that I was getting was the 10.8 installation (installation was stating up automatically after rebooting). I figured out that I should try to make a different partition active. Unfortunately that did mess up the Mac completely. The laptop would boot up to the question mark sign (no bootable driver found). I found an old DVD with 10.6.4 installation does not even see my old partition. Disk utility finds it but does not allow me to mount it or make any actions to this partition. Is there a way I could fix this? I would like to boot to my old partition with 10.7.5 without loosing the data.

 

[MacForScience]

How old is the Mac?

You have disk corruption, or possibly a failing hard drive.

Your best bet is to restore from backup.

If Disk Utility can't repair the volume, then you can also try something like TechTool Pro.

Cheers

 

[huski]

Thanks for getting back to me. the Mac is from 2010. Would this tool let me boot from the CD and fix the HDD?

 

[MacForScience]

I believe TechTool Pro let's you create a boot CD.

At three years old, that is when you expect to start seeing 2.5" drives fail. My guess is your issue is not software repairable.

Do you have a backup?

Cheers

 

[huski]

I only have a back up for some of my documents not for the system file. Having said that, it's my "leisure" laptop. I've proper remote and hard backups for all the working files. My guess is that I messed up MBR completely when trying to get out from this stupid loop (after rebooting installer was starting automatically). Even if the HDD is damaged it used to start fine. I managed to boot it through GParted iso, any suggestions how can i fix damaged partition table through this thing?