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TheRef

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 16, 2009
1
0
My iMac ran a software update last night, but the program kicked out before it completed. When I went to reboot this morning, I had the Mac icon on a grey screen, with a little line rolling around in a circle below it. It's been hung up there all day. I've read in other posts that I should do a clean install of the system software. Problem is, my hard drive is absolutely packed and the computer is telling me that I don't have enough space to do even a baisc installation without all the bells and whistles. Because the machine won't boot, I can't get into the drive to transfer or delete any files in order to create the necessary space for the installation. Any suggestions?
 
my dad had this problem on his mbp
it started out as this and then a week later it started flashing a folder thing
it turned out that he had corrupted files on his harddrive
you can try using disk warrior but it didn't work for us
I had connect my macbook to it with a firewire cable
and start up while holding 't' to go into target disk mode
then I ended spending several hours going through all his files and transferring them to an external hd
it ended up that he only had a couple corrupted files
then I used the boot disc to open disk utility and wipe the hd clean and reformat it
then reinstalled os x and copied the files back over
the bad thing about corrupted files is os x cant handle them, you cant copy them or delete them

IT SUCKS
 
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