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Need Help Backing Up Files

sbrhwkp3

sbrhwkp3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 17, 2005
558
85
Lake George, NY
My buddy's hard drive got all messed up when he installed snow leopard, so it needs to be wiped clean and reinstalled.

I can only boot from the DVD install disk.

My question is, how do I back up specific files he wants to save on an external hard drive before I wipe it clean?

I tried just backing up the whole drive by using Restore in disk utility, but it wouldn't work.

Is there anyway I can navigate the hard drive to copy the files I need onto the external while booting from the install disk?

Any other solutions would be greatly appreciated!
 
miles01110 said:
Oh, I see what you're saying. Um... I don't know. If the machine has no OS then you can't really use a program to pick and choose what files you transfer to the external drive.
Click to expand...

When it's in disk utility, I can navigate the hard drive and see the files I need, but I have no way of getting them onto the external.
 
There's no way to "backup" the drive when you boot off of the osx install disk. You could try FireWire target disk mode to see if that works.
 
I remember booting from an install dvd and launching disk utility to wipe the drive on my daughter's badly munged mac mini.

Is there an option to launch finder and copy a few files around after booting from the install dvd? I didn't notice but I wouldn't be surprised if this was somehow possible. You might then be able to copy the files you want to keep to a usb drive before wiping the internal drive.

If you nuked a machine trying to install SL, perhaps this is something you can call Applecare about? They might be able to talk you through a recovery method that doesn't involve wiping macintosh hd until after you have backed up what you want to keep.

The only down side of the Linux Live cd is it might not speak HPFS (Apple) and might only speak FAT/NTFS (windows) and ext3 (Linux).
 
r0k said:
I remember booting from an install dvd and launching disk utility to wipe the drive on my daughter's badly munged mac mini.

Is there an option to launch finder and copy a few files around after booting from the install dvd? I didn't notice but I wouldn't be surprised if this was somehow possible. You might then be able to copy the files you want to keep to a usb drive before wiping the internal drive.

If you nuked a machine trying to install SL, perhaps this is something you can call Applecare about? They might be able to talk you through a recovery method that doesn't involve wiping macintosh hd until after you have backed up what you want to keep.

The only down side of the Linux Live cd is it might not speak HPFS (Apple) and might only speak FAT/NTFS (windows) and ext3 (Linux).
Click to expand...

I have no idea what the Linux Live CD is.

I just tried doing the firewire transfer, but his hard disk won't mount on my desktop.

I'm not sure what to do. It's getting really frustrating. I know the hard drive isn't totally butchered because I can navigate it when I'm in disk utility.

Anyone else have any suggestions?
 
BobZune said:
In addition to the disk utility, the Terminal should be available under the utilities (I haven't checked it under SnowLeopard, but saw it at http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050510151249986

cp would be the copy command ("man cp" without quotes for help). The disk(s) are mounted under /Volumes. Good luck!
Click to expand...

Thanks Bob, but I found another way!

I'm using an external hard drive and the "Restore" option in Disk Utility to copy all of the files from the mac onto the external hard drive.

Once that's finished, I'll check the drive and make sure it got all the files. If all went well, I'll wipe the disk clean, reinstall os x, and copy all of the hard disk files back over.

Bingo bango!
 
Thanks for the update. Restore may (at least try to) copy the corrupt parts too. Tell us how it works out.
 
BobZune said:
Thanks for the update. Restore may (at least try to) copy the corrupt parts too. Tell us how it works out.
Click to expand...

It's not. About half way through, it comes up with an error that says "Restore Failure. Could not restore - device not configured."

Not sure where to go from here yet.
 
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