Wiping the HD

[Barbiedoll]

I got my first Mac for Christmas 2 years ago. I have been fumbling around and downloading stuff since then.I have learned a lot and love my Mac. Lately I have been getting a message about not being able to mount the Macintosh HD. Everything seems to be working OK but sometimes things just lock up. I end up shutting it down and then sometimes it wont restart so I remove the battery and power cord and then restart it. I use an external drive for time machine. I was wondering If I could use that as a restore point. I'm leaning more toward just wiping the HD and reloading everything ... but can I use the time machine HD to recover things like my itunes library, mail, docs, etc? or do I need to save them in a special way. What about downloaded apps like adium and handbrake? can I recover these from time machine? I want to make sure I do this right and don't loose all my data in the process. I'm sorry if this is covered someplace else in the forum. I looked but couldn't find anything. Redirect me if I missed it.
Thanks

 

[ViciousShadow21]

it is covered somewhere else im sure but who cares

the answer would be yes you can. just use the os disc and do a complete format and install. then just use your external to recover everything.

 

[pnyc]

If I was you I would give Onyx a try before formating the hard drive and do some clean up, maintenance. It might fix your problems. You can get it here : http://www.titanium.free.fr/index_us.html

 

[Barbiedoll]

Volume failed to mount...

it still says that it failed to mount Mac HD. is that a problem? that's why I was going to reinstall the OS.

 

[ViciousShadow21]

it still says that it failed to mount Mac HD. is that a problem? that's why I was going to reinstall the OS.

did it occur when trying to determine the S.M.A.R.T. status?