Please Help! OSX Mavericks DL Has Corrupted My HD

[raf66]

Hi everyone. I've got a serious problem and was hoping for some help.

I've got an '09 iMac that has been great. It is our lone family/home computer and has thousands of family pics, important docs and lots of music. All OS software has been religiously updated and the computer itself has been treated with kid gloves since purchasing it new several years ago. Until now it has worked perfectly.

Today I DL OSX Maverick and afterward, as it was installing, I got an error message that said the HD was corrupted and Maverick couldn't be installed. It then restarted and is now saying it's installing OSX. Does that mean it's writing over my previous operating system, as in a new install like when we first purchased the computer? Has the computer "crashed" to the point that I'm about to lose EVERYTHING? I'd like to turn the doggone machine off to stop the install but I'm afraid that will cause even more irreparable damage.

Please help.

 

[cjmillsnun]

1. Mavericks will not have corrupted your HD. It possibly was already on the way out.

2. Do you have a time machine backup?

3. Mavericks is likely doing an in place (or upgrade) install. It is likely everything will be there when it has finished.

 

[raf66]

1. Mavericks will not have corrupted your HD. It possibly was already on the way out.

2. Do you have a time machine backup?

3. Mavericks is likely doing an in place (or upgrade) install. It is likely everything will be there when it has finished.

Thanks for the reply. No time machine backup because the external HD I was using went bad a year or so ago. I know. Shame on me for not replacing it to ensure protection. I just thought I'd be fine since I'd never experienced a problem.

Initially it let me into disk utility and I did a repair/verify and it came back clean and it showed that 100GB or so had been used on the disk. When I restarted it is when it jumped straight to "installing OSX". It shows I still have 15 minutes before it's completed.