Mac mini won't boot - first aid failures to repair

[swimwolfe]

I have an '05 mac mini (pre-intel chip) with OS X 10.4 that while trying to transfer a file to an external hard drive gave me a blue screen (that wouldn't go away). After a hard shut down, I get to the apple and spinning wheel but nothing else happens. Things I've tried:

1) Flashing the PRAM (no change)
2) Booting in safe mode (no change)
3) Booting from Startup CD (holding C on start up) - I can get to disk utility

But when I try to verify/repair the partitioned Macintosh HD drive it says
"Invalid sibling link
Volume check failed

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked:
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error"

My goal is to get to my files on the mini and put them on an external drive (specifically my itunes folder)

Is there some other way to repair this? I have 17 GB left on the main hard drive. Could I partition it and create a new bootable drive without wiping out the data in the original drive?

Thanks!!

swimwolfe

 

[flopticalcube]

Try some of the suggestions here: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070204093925888

particularly fsck_hfs -r

Good luck.

 

[swimwolfe]

How do I know when fsck_hfs is done?

Thanks flopticalcube!

Man I feel silly to ask, but how do I know when fsck_hfs is done? Right now the screen says

** Rebuilding catalog B-tree

I don't want to interrupt it if its still going...but I could sit here all night.

The second thing is what do I do after running this? The article doesn't say what comes after running this.

 

[flopticalcube]

Let it run. It may take a while. You may have to run it twice to complete the fix. Reboot after you are done. I hope it works.