Macbook Hard Drive issues (backup help)

[skillz1318]

I get a circle with a line through it when booting up (similiar to a no smoking sign) which sounds like I need to to a new install.

I do not have my data backed up (external time machine drive broke 2 weeks ago and didn't get a new one yet)

I borrowed a friends external firewire drive today at work.

Can I install Leopard to this external drive and boot from it and then use migration assistant to grab data from my non-bootable drive?

Then copy the external to the main hard drive?

How would I go about doing this?

Thanks in advance!!!!

 

[Hellhammer]

http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_doesn't_boot

Don't erase the HD yet but try the other things

 

[skillz1318]

Ill try a few of the reset techniques...if I do have to install OS X to an external drive how would I do that? Then I can copy files from the bad hard drive to ensure I don't lose any data.

Thanks

 

[Hellhammer]

Ill try a few of the reset techniques...if I do have to install OS X to an external drive how would I do that? Then I can copy files from the bad hard drive to ensure I don't lose any data.

Thanks

You can reinstall the OS X without losing any data.

Just pop in the OS X disk and select the external HD as volume and click install. Then boot from it and transfer the files

 

[Avery1]

By default MacOS doesn't provide any sort of data security at the disk level -- password or encryption.

So, if you haven't enabled FileVault, you should be able to remove the HDD and plug it into another machine that is already booted, then copy off your data (I've done this with a desktop drive). Removing a HDD from a MacBook is probably a bit involved (I haven't done it), but is an alternative approach akin to the above one.

Good luck!

 

[skillz1318]

I will try installing Mac OS to my external drive after work and then copying files I want from the non-bootable hard drive after work.

I don't want to open up my 1G macbook pro to remove the hard drive unless I really have to...

Thanks for your help guys.