Mac won't start, backup is failing. HELP!!

[alexxk]

Guys.. Today I was going to finally update from mavericks to El Capitan but my 2009 macbook pro wont boot. I've tried doing the COmmand-S and trying to rebuild the journal but it gets stuck, I've tried to clean the PRAM, tried to repair permission and restore using Time Machine.. My External HD can't be seen from the MAC.. and when I finally was able to boot into recovery mode.. the restore functional did not find any backups there..

In other words.. I can't boot, and I can't access my time machine backup

I installed El Capitan on an external thumb drive to boot from and to try to copy my files from my mac to another external Drive.. but my macbook wont show my files under my root folder. Is that some sort of security stuff to prevent me from seeing and copying stuff from my internal drive?

I dont know what to do anymore.. How can I access my internal drive to try at least to copy my files? My backup wont mount anymore.. tried several ways.. something during all this process broke my external which has the time machine backup and I cant see my file from my internal user account..

 

[mikecwest]

Guys.. Today I was going to finally update from mavericks to El Capitan but my 2009 macbook pro wont boot. I've tried doing the COmmand-S and trying to rebuild the journal but it gets stuck, I've tried to clean the PRAM, tried to repair permission and restore using Time Machine.. My External HD can't be seen from the MAC.. and when I finally was able to boot into recovery mode.. the restore functional did not find any backups there..

In other words.. I can't boot, and I can't access my time machine backup

I installed El Capitan on an external thumb drive to boot from and to try to copy my files from my mac to another external Drive.. but my macbook wont show my files under my root folder. Is that some sort of security stuff to prevent me from seeing and copying stuff from my internal drive?

I dont know what to do anymore.. How can I access my internal drive to try at least to copy my files? My backup wont mount anymore.. tried several ways.. something during all this process broke my external which has the time machine backup and I cant see my file from my internal user account..

If you can boot into another drive, you take take ownership of the files/folders you can not access. Just right click on it and choose GET INFO, look at the bottom of the window. Click the pad lock, password, then set the permissions to allow read & write.

 

[alexxk]

If you can boot into another drive, you take take ownership of the files/folders you can not access. Just right click on it and choose GET INFO, look at the bottom of the window. Click the pad lock, password, then set the permissions to allow read & write.

I tried that buy installing El Capitan on a Flash Drive and when I tried that I got an error that operation could not complete or something like that. Tried doing the same using Ubuntu.. the only way I can copy is by having Windows on a second partition on the same HD, which I don't and I can't partition either since I get an error.

So, I bought a USB 3.0 to Sata cable. I will try to connect that HD to my other macbook using using thsi cable and Windows and try to copy the files that way to another HD.

What a mess!!