Applejack made my mac unbootable. How to fix?

[cuzzin]

Hi all,

I have an interesting situation on my hands.
After seeing the new Applejack released on versiontracker for Leopard I decided i'd give it a whirl seeing as It was well overdue for a checkup.

Booted up into singleuser mode, ran applejack in autopilot and it did its thing. Went to reboot, and I couldn't get five seconds into the system loading screen before I got the black box that told me to restart. I restarted a few times to no avail.

I ran applejack once more to see if it could fix it but again, to no avail.

I then decided to reinstall the system. All was well until THAT stuffed up halfway through (saying it couldn't find the "Essentials" folder of some sort)..
I retried installing the system but ofcourse I don't have enough disk space so I'd have to reformat it, which I don't want to do as I have too much information on there that I don't want to lose.



But to make things interesting, I write you this on the second partition of the same hard disk running Windows XP thanks to bootcamp.

So my question is, How do I reach my files on the mac partition?? I've tried installing applications that read mac formatted drives under windows but it says "the disk is corrupt"..

Would it be safe to assume I should try installing mac onto an external harddrive, boot up off that and hope that the mac os system will allow me to see and hopefully copy the files??

Or is there a way I can merge the two partitions back together under the one so it loads up under windows but all of the info is on the windows partition?



I have NO idea what to do!
Please help!!





Thanks in advance

 

[ADent]

When you boot off of the Mac Installer disk - You can go into Disk Utility at an early stage.

Do you have an external drive?

 

[cuzzin]

At this stage no.
But it was already in the books as I was going to use one as a media storage for movies, music, video etc.
(found a Lacie 750gb for $169. Here in AUS, thats pretty damn cheap..)

So if I load up disk utility off the OS X Boot cd, will taht be able to help me?
If so, what am I looking to do/what buttons should I be pressing?

 

[ADent]

If you run Disk Utility you can get it to run a check on your disk.

I think you can get into the Finder and see if you files are there.

If that works I would copy all the files to the external drive. You may need to use Disk Utility to format it HFS+ to get all the files there (Mac filenames are allowed to contain character illegal to FAT32 and Mac does not support the proprietary NTFS - though I think there are some rough tools that allow NTFS write abilities).

Once the files are safely stored on the external drive then erase the internal partition.
-----
Another option is to partion Apple GUID, Format HFS+ the external drive and install the OS on that then use Migration Assistant to get your files there (or manually if MA fails). Then erase the internal and clone or reinstall back.

The external can then be used as emergency backup boot disk. Of course Windows doesn't do well with HFS+ and maybe you want to partition back to FAT32.

 

[cuzzin]

Sounds like a plan.
I'll give it a shot when i return home next week and let you all know how it goes.

Thanks for your contribution, it just may save me 6 years or work!!
(Lesson learnt: Backup REGULARLY)

Cheers.

 

[ADent]

I backup up every hour (with Time Machine). Cheap drives are under $100 and work unobtrusively - I just set my wife up with a laptop style external Maxtor that goes well with her mini. BTW it is possible to rebuild your drive with Time Machine.

I also have a bigger drive and do a traditional backup (Chronosync) on occasion - I do not fully trust Time Machine - but TM is cool.

Some people like to clone their main drive - it is super easy to switch to the clone if something goes wrong.

 

[cuzzin]

I think i'll be turning on that option once I get a proper external drive.

Update: Ran Disk Utility off the Mac OS X Install Disk. Did a verify permissions and verify disk check and both came up fine. Formatted a 40g external drive (all I have at the moment, will do the job) and restarted into windows. For some reason I am now able to look into the Mac partition and copy my files over.

Hooray!

So backing up all info and doing a reformat and reinstall of the system.

Thanks for your help, another satisfied macrumors user