Mac won't boot - story

[John]

Buy a new HD, and put on the OS again.....then mount the drive you took out as a backup

Well that's certainly one route I could go down... mounting to a USB stick looked tricky and involved a lot of that fsck stuff in Single User Mode, I'll have to have a look and see what I can do...

I've a question about mounting disks. It says you can mount a disk to a USB stick - but how? My hard drive is 250Gb, I've got 170Gb ish free or something like that. A USB stick is nowhere near that capacity. Do you mount the entire capacity, storage space-wise to the USB stick? Or is the backup on the USB stick simply an "image" of what's on the drive?

[Win2Win]

No idea what you're on about? We don't have that kind of gibberish on a PC

[John]

Can you explain to me how this works: if I backup my hard disk, which is 250Gb capacity, how do I get something that big on to a USB stick, if I choose to back it up on to a USB stick? USB sticks aren't 250Gb...

I guess what I'm asking is, does the backup device need to be the same capacity as the hard drive/hard drive contents itself?

Or, is the backup volume simply a representational image of the data, and if so would not take up the same capacity.. it would be something much smaller.

[sparkyminer]

As a total novice here, you don't save the software as a whole just the important files and then reload the software.

[Win2Win]

I would imagine you just install the OS on a Stick, and boot from that. Depends on how big the Mac OS is though, You only need 2GB's for Vista. (Only!!! )

[John]

I would imagine you just install the OS on a Stick, and boot from that. Depends on how big the Mac OS is though, You only need 2GB's for Vista. (Only!!! )

OK, cool. Is that in addition to backing up all of my files and documents on a USB stick? So, backup anything I want to keep on to a USB stick or a CD.

[John]

I'm back at work tomorrow, so will ask my mac guru colleague if he has any suggestions...

[John]

OK... here's what's going to hopefully happen.

My housemate is going home this weekend and she's bringing back with her on Sunday her firewire cable. Using this I will be able to connect my mac to hers; her mac (the host) will then see mine as an external hard drive (the target). This'll enable me to drag and drop everything I need to keep on to hers.

Then I will erase mine completely. Then reinstall my mac operating system. Once I'm up and running again I'll be able to firewire my files back over.

At least that's the plan! I'm not sure when I'm going to do it, probably the week after next.

These guys were pretty useless, considering this is supposed to be the best mac forum on the 'net: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-...-problems.html

[MattR]

Will she mind you dragging all your porn onto her computer? :wink :D

Seriously though, good luck with it John, hope it works ok and you don't lose any of your data. Glad you backed up just before christmas. :)

[John]

Cheers mate. :) Yeah she won't mind me dragging my porn over, she stars in most of 'em anyway.

I backed up my design and web work, but if this goes tits up I'll lose all my photos... I have them on various sites e.g. Facebook and a few on Flickr but I really need to hope I can save the high-res versions...

[Win2Win]

Is she the one on the right?

[John]

This is going from bad to worse.

Last night I ran an online virus scanner, in safe mode (Windows) called Bit Defender. It found something like 48 infections and 102 something elses, which I removed. Even though I'm erasing and reinstalling anyway, I've had so many advertising pop-ups over the last few weeks in Windows I thought I'd best try to get rid of them.

Instead I ended up getting rid of the functionality of my machine. Now I can't boot into Windows. Stupid thing!

My housemate forgot to bring her firewire cable back too. Great. Luckily her dad's posting it with her phone charger today. Hopefully. So at least now I should be able to connect my mac to hers via TDM (Target Disk Mode) then copy everything over. We both have Intel macs too so it shouldn't be a problem. Haha. Shouldn't be a problem he says.

I just want this to end!

At present I don't have a working machine at home so I won't be online as much. See you on the other side...

[Win2Win]

I'm a PC and everything is fine :D

[John]

But you're also a scouse thief!

[Win2Win]

But you're also a scouse thief!

...and a scouse thief that's a lot of birds :D

[John]

I'm back! FIXED! Yay! :

WITHOUT WINDOWS, just Mac OS X..... all singing and all dancing! Happy days. :D

Haven't lost anything either, managed to firewire everything to my housemate's laptop as backup, all successfully, SO simple... I don't know why the nation doesn't buy Macs as part of their grocery shopping!

[jonahjones]

I don't know why the nation doesn't buy CaraMacs as part of their grocery shopping!

I do - my favourite chocolate bar!

Glad you are all sorted mate. :)

[John]

Cheers mate. :) Just had a zillion of software updates to do... iTunes 6 for example...

[Win2Win]

Now you are back online order a PC :D

[John]

It's better to start a fire with wood! :D

[bigcumba]

It's better to start a fire with wood! :D

Have you been reading 'Confucius for Dummies' ?

[Win2Win]

It's better to start a fire with wood! :D

.....and then throw the Mac on?

[karen]

I have a mac pro.They rule but sorry,them old macs I have no clue on use.

[Win2Win]

:splapme Oh no! John has a new friend!

[TheOldhamWhisper]

... I don't know why the nation doesn't buy Macs as part of their grocery shopping!

Maybe the fact that post one in this thread was a full month before the 'Yay - it's fixed' post

Macs do have a place in the computing industry - but they should be used for the purpose thay were meant (i.e. running industrial-strength Desktop Publishing software). Using an operating system which is largely unsupported on a machine that most IT people know little or nothing about is just asking for the virus writers to start exploiting the holes in the system!

[John]

Maybe the fact that post one in this thread was a full month before the 'Yay - it's fixed' post

It took so long because I was waiting on certain things... e.g. my housemate supplying a firewire cable which she forgot about!

Using an operating system which is largely unsupported on a machine that most IT people know little or nothing about is just asking for the virus writers to start exploiting the holes in the system!

True - but you'd have thought they'd already have started exploiting the holes by now, would you not? There are a few viruses doing the rounds for macs, but not nearly as many as there 'should' be in 'expected' terms given how fast macs have recently took off...

[John]

I have a mac pro.They rule but sorry,them old macs I have no clue on use.

Hello Karen. :D Macbook Pro eh, I want one! And iMacs are not old! At least mine isn't that old - it's an Intel Dual-Core one, made early '07... I think.

Thinking of getting a Pro, as the convenience of portability is amazing to have.