MacBook help! (1 Viewer)

[Bob Loblaw]

I was installing Snow Leopard onto my MacBook last night using an install DVD, and mid-install, it stopped. I tried re-installing, and got nowhere. I tried to quit Mac OSX installer, and was unable to restart my MacBook using the HD (running OSX 10.5.8, Leopard). And now I'm stuck. I can't repair the disk. I can't start it back up. I'm lost. Help!!!I took it to the Genius Bar today, and they were no help. Basically, said he could install Snow Leopard, but that I'd lose all my data/files. I said that I didn't want to do that as all of my kids photos are on the hard drive, as well as all my music. He gave me a print out on how to do data recovery myself. Is there anything else I can do? Unfortunately, I didn't backup my data prior to trying the installation (I know, stupid).

 

[Bob Loblaw]

The steps that I was given were:* buy a 2.5" SATA USB or Firewire enclosure from Best Buy* remove HD and place in enclosure* connect enclosure to another Mac (I don't have another, so I would need to use a friend's)* transfer data from my HD to friend's Mac* backup data from friend's Mac to an external HD* install Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6.3) onto my MacBook* transfer data from external HD back onto my MacBook* hope and pray my friend deletes my data/files after I get my MacBook back up and runningDoes this seem right? Is this something that a father of 3 kids can do at home? The "genius" at the Genius Bar said this would save me about $300 at a minimum if I went to a data recovery service company.

 

[Bob Loblaw]

Anyone?

 

[KGB]

Not to be a jerk, but this is why they have nerds. Everyone thinks because they can surf the net, they can do advanced things on titer computer.I can change my oil, but I'm smart enough not to try and replace my engine.Good luck though.

 

[Abraham]

You need to find a third party data recovery company to save the old files. Pay them what it's worth to you or don't. Then go back and get a fresh install at the store. Then find someone to send you last week's link to 50g free at box.net and start backing up your important stuff to it.

 

[Buddy Ball 2K3]

My wife tried to plug one of our external hard drives (windows) into her mac to back up all the pics she put on over the past few months. Five minutes later she said she is selling it. Sorry no help here.

 

[Hawks64]

You need to find a third party data recovery company to save the old files. Pay them what it's worth to you or don't. Then go back and get a fresh install at the store. Then find someone to send you last week's link to 50g free at box.net and start backing up your important stuff to it.

If you aren't capable of removing the HD yourself it's best to pay someone else to do it for you as Colin suggests. The Genius Bar might be able to pull the drive for you, so I would check with them and see if they will. If they will plugging it into a HD enclosure is easy so that part you can handle youself. I would NOT take it to Best Buy though.

 

[Cunk]

The only thing I can offer is put in the install disk and keep the "C" key down after you hear the bong. This should start up the computer from the install disc. It will take a while but let it complete starting up from the disc. Once that's done go up into the menu and repair disc permissions. Hope this helps.

 

[Bob Loblaw]

You need to find a third party data recovery company to save the old files. Pay them what it's worth to you or don't. Then go back and get a fresh install at the store. Then find someone to send you last week's link to 50g free at box.net and start backing up your important stuff to it.

If you aren't capable of removing the HD yourself it's best to pay someone else to do it for you as Colin suggests. The Genius Bar might be able to pull the drive for you, so I would check with them and see if they will. If they will plugging it into a HD enclosure is easy so that part you can handle youself. I would NOT take it to Best Buy though.

He showed me how to remove some screws and where the HD is located so I can pull it out. I bought the enclosure at Best Buy after I left the Apple store. Now I need to find a Mac to borrow.

 

[[icon]]

Now I need to find a Mac to borrow.

Wherever would one do that in the bay area? Seriously though... sucks this happened. Surprised the Genius bar isn't willing to help you more at this stage. is the system out of warranty without applecare?

 

[Bob Loblaw]

The only thing I can offer is put in the install disk and keep the "C" key down after you hear the bong. This should start up the computer from the install disc. It will take a while but let it complete starting up from the disc. Once that's done go up into the menu and repair disc permissions. Hope this helps.

I tried this prior to the Genius Bar visit. Made it all the way to Verify Disc, and Repair Disc, but received a message that said the disc couldn't be repaired. I asked the Genius to do this step, and he danced around the situation and finally said he wouldn't. I'm not a "Genius". Maybe in his genius-ness, he's had training on how to do it properly, maybe I didn't do it right.

 

[Ministry of Pain]

Buy a new Macbook

 

[Bob Loblaw]

Now I need to find a Mac to borrow.

Wherever would one do that in the bay area? Seriously though... sucks this happened. Surprised the Genius bar isn't willing to help you more at this stage. is the system out of warranty without applecare?

It was "gifted" to us by my wife's 91 yr old grandmother (on her dad's side). She bought it, and didn't use it. So, unsure about warranty or applecare. She doesn't know.

 

[Bob Loblaw]

Buy a new Macbook

Just bought a new house. Money's a little tight right now.

 

[PinkydaPimp]

If you have access to another mac, you can try to boot yours in target disk mode and transfer your data that way:http://osxdaily.com/2010/04/07/how-to-boot-a-mac-in-target-disk-mode/Another option is to buy a drive and install OS X on it and try booting from that drive to retrieve your data.http://www.cultofmac.com/180925/how-to-make-a-bootable-disk-or-usb-drive-of-os-x-mountain-lion/Once you backup your data, you will want to format the internal drive, then do a clean install.

 

[Bob Loblaw]

Two questions:1. If I buy a used MacBook off of Craigslist, prior to handing over cash, how do I make sure its "clean" of anything that could potentially hurt it? Is there a dialogue box the seller can pull up on the MacBook as evidence of "cleanliness"?2. Let's say I borrow someone's MacBook. If I attach the enclosure to the borrowed Mac, and also attach an external HD to the borrowed Mac, and then drag and drop data/files from my HD to the external HD, does any of my data go onto borrowed Mac? My wife is a teacher and her work laptop is a MacBook Pro. I wouldn't want to corrupt her work laptop with this data transfer. tia

 

[Abraham]

Two questions:1. If I buy a used MacBook off of Craigslist, prior to handing over cash, how do I make sure its "clean" of anything that could potentially hurt it? Is there a dialogue box the seller can pull up on the MacBook as evidence of "cleanliness"?2. Let's say I borrow someone's MacBook. If I attach the enclosure to the borrowed Mac, and also attach an external HD to the borrowed Mac, and then drag and drop data/files from my HD to the external HD, does any of my data go onto borrowed Mac? My wife is a teacher and her work laptop is a MacBook Pro. I wouldn't want to corrupt her work laptop with this data transfer. tia

I've bought a ton of Macbooks off of CL. The seller almost always takes it to the store ahead of time to do a wipe. If they don't, I do and get it restored to factory settings. They do it for free (although it can take a few minutes).

 

[Abraham]

Macbook Air help please - my Air has 86.74 gigs of "other" in storage. When I look at "All My Files" and delete a bunch of big ones, basically nothing changes. I'm guessing I have some applications or software on here that are taking up a bunch of room but I don't know how to look/find them. I have Chrome, iLife, and Office on here. Not sure where there are 80+ gigs of "stuff"....

 

[Abraham]

Macbook Air help please - my Air has 86.74 gigs of "other" in storage. When I look at "All My Files" and delete a bunch of big ones, basically nothing changes. I'm guessing I have some applications or software on here that are taking up a bunch of room but I don't know how to look/find them. I have Chrome, iLife, and Office on here. Not sure where there are 80+ gigs of "stuff"....

 

[Gawain]

Macbook Air help please - my Air has 86.74 gigs of "other" in storage. When I look at "All My Files" and delete a bunch of big ones, basically nothing changes. I'm guessing I have some applications or software on here that are taking up a bunch of room but I don't know how to look/find them. I have Chrome, iLife, and Office on here. Not sure where there are 80+ gigs of "stuff"....

Look in your porn folder.

 

[Abraham]

Don't have one of those. All I've ever saved outside of Office, Open Office and Gimp is documents. No music on it at all. No movies. Seriously have no idea how to find what "other" is that is taking up so much room.

 

[Tackling Dummies]

Don't have one of those. All I've ever saved outside of Office, Open Office and Gimp is documents. No music on it at all. No movies. Seriously have no idea how to find what "other" is that is taking up so much room.

check here: http://pondini.org/OSX/LionStorage.html

 

[HellToupee]

Macbook Air help please - my Air has 86.74 gigs of "other" in storage. When I look at "All My Files" and delete a bunch of big ones, basically nothing changes. I'm guessing I have some applications or software on here that are taking up a bunch of room but I don't know how to look/find them. I have Chrome, iLife, and Office on here. Not sure where there are 80+ gigs of "stuff"....

Tme Machine , perhaps?

 

[Cunk]

Don't have one of those. All I've ever saved outside of Office, Open Office and Gimp is documents. No music on it at all. No movies. Seriously have no idea how to find what "other" is that is taking up so much room.

Have you emptied the trash?

 

[Abraham]

Still trying to find an answer.... I don't have any time machine backups... Is there something else or somewhere else I need to be looking? So frustrating. My PC has a HD the same size and I've been saving everything I can think of to it for 4 years and it isn't anywhere near full.

 

[Cunk]

Still trying to find an answer.... I don't have any time machine backups... Is there something else or somewhere else I need to be looking? So frustrating. My PC has a HD the same size and I've been saving everything I can think of to it for 4 years and it isn't anywhere near full.

I wasn't being sarcastic about the trash thing btw. I've seen this happen before.

Perhaps you can try to narrow it down by getting the info on separate folders. You may want to try right clicking on your applications folder hitting "get info" and see how big that folder is. Then whittle it down from there.

 

[[icon]]

Pick up the machine and turn it 90 degrees, making sure that all the open spots in the case are facing down (the ports)
Shake machine violently
See if extra stuff comes out.

 

[Abraham]

Still trying to find an answer.... I don't have any time machine backups... Is there something else or somewhere else I need to be looking? So frustrating. My PC has a HD the same size and I've been saving everything I can think of to it for 4 years and it isn't anywhere near full.

I wasn't being sarcastic about the trash thing btw. I've seen this happen before.

Perhaps you can try to narrow it down by getting the info on separate folders. You may want to try right clicking on your applications folder hitting "get info" and see how big that folder is. Then whittle it down from there.

Applications - 5.29 GB

Dropbox - 314 MB

All My Files - 1.3 GB

Desktop - 1.05 GB

Documents - 436 MB

Downloads - 129 MB

Movies - 26 MB

Music - 1.2 GB

Pictures - 45 GB

That only adds up to about 55GB.

Under "About this Mac" it has pictures as 3.6 GB and movies as 8GB. The only stuff on here is pictures/movies taken with my iPhone.

Is it possible it's saving my pictures to multiple places or something? That's the only thing on here with anywhere near the size to eventually add up to 86GB of storage.

 

[Cunk]

Still trying to find an answer.... I don't have any time machine backups... Is there something else or somewhere else I need to be looking? So frustrating. My PC has a HD the same size and I've been saving everything I can think of to it for 4 years and it isn't anywhere near full.

I wasn't being sarcastic about the trash thing btw. I've seen this happen before.

Perhaps you can try to narrow it down by getting the info on separate folders. You may want to try right clicking on your applications folder hitting "get info" and see how big that folder is. Then whittle it down from there.

Applications - 5.29 GB

Dropbox - 314 MB

All My Files - 1.3 GB

Desktop - 1.05 GB

Documents - 436 MB

Downloads - 129 MB

Movies - 26 MB

Music - 1.2 GB

Pictures - 45 GB

That only adds up to about 55GB.

Under "About this Mac" it has pictures as 3.6 GB and movies as 8GB. The only stuff on here is pictures/movies taken with my iPhone.

Is it possible it's saving my pictures to multiple places or something? That's the only thing on here with anywhere near the size to eventually add up to 86GB of storage.

The computer could be backing up all your photos into an iphone backup folder on your comp. Here's a link to the article I saw:

http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/11/iphone-backup-location/

 

[Abraham]

OK, that would make sense. How do I edit/erase that? I already have the pictures on the machine. They don't need to be in the backup.

 

[Bob Loblaw]

All right, so, back in February, I extracted the HDD and put it in the enclosure. Connected the enclosure to a friend's iMac. Transferred the data to his hard drive. After data transfer, then transferred my data to an external HD. Put my internal HDD back into my MacBook. Installed OSX 10.5.8 onto my MacBook, then upgraded to 10.6.8. Connected external hard drive and transferred data to my internal hdd. All my files made it back "home," but I needed to (and still need to) organize some things (iTunes, iPhoto).

Now, I am having an issue with memory, as in running out of it. When I was trying to organize my photos in iPhoto, I would first look in "Finder > All Images." There are 10,000+ items. When I finally scrolled far enough and saw my actual pictures, there were multiples of the same picture. The file names/locations are different. One might be located in the Originals folder (sorry, I don't have the exact file name/location with me right now). Another in a Data folder. Which file is more important to keep? The one in the "New User" files, or from the "Old User" files? Yes, there are sometimes 4 copies of the same image.

If I transfer a pic from "Finder > All Images" to iPhoto, does that create another copy, and take up more memory space?

After I transfer a pic from "Finder > All Images" to iPhoto, if I delete the file from Finder, does it then delete it from iPhoto?

 

[the moops]

Thought maybe I would put this here. Have a 2010 macbook pro unibody. Has a brand new trackpad, battery, and top case/keyboard that were replaced at Apple store for free.

However, it needs a logic board replacement. They want 750 to do it. #### that.

Looks like I can buy a used logic board for 350 or so or a new one for 500. That seem worth it?

I could also probably sell the macbook for 400 or so. If I did that I could buy an Air or something for like 600 bucks out if pocket. 1000 new minus the 400 for my macbook.

Suggestions?

 

[danielmclark]

IMO, buy new, if you can swing the cost. The advances in technology in just the last four years have been fantastic. I wouldn't buy a used parts in this situation, so it kinda comes down to either spending $500 on a new board (and installing it yourself(?) which isn't easy), or spending $600 on a brand new machine.

I'm dreading the day my MBP dies... it's a year older than yours, but it's a 17" model, which they don't sell anymore :(

 

[the moops]

Yea, my wife has a 2007 17" macbook pro. I think it is the first one they made. It has been an awesome computer, but it is on its last legs as well. We are trying to figure out some way to get us both new computers without spending 2000 dollars.

 

[Abraham]

I bought my air on craigslist. First bought the 11" 2gb model and liked it so much I sold it the next week and bought the 11" 4gb with twice the drive space. It's a 2010 I think (has an i3) and I'm kind of beginning to think about my next machine as we'll.

Anyway, Craig's can be a great place to get a relatively new model still with apple care without spending too much.