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mponny

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 17, 2020
3
0
after i installed some wacom drivers my macbook (pro 2014) refuses to start. it goes to full progress bar but then gets stuck every time. safe mode and verbose mode do not work. i have accepted that i need to reinstall the os from recovery mode. every time i had to do this in the past (before using catalina) i was able to enter single user mode and make a backup of all the files. this time i can't! following these instructions: http://macsage.com/mounting-usb-drive-in-single-user-mode/ i try to create a sharepoint in the /Volumes directory and get the message that the system is read-only. i have already disabled SIP in recovery mode. started the prompt with the command sudo mount -uw / but it still refuses to change from read-only. isn't it incredibly dumb to make it impossible for users to backup their files once something goes wrong with the system? or to run fsck for that matter?! are all my files lost now? or is there another way to make a backup?
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,279
13,377
Can you boot to internet recovery?
Command-OPTION-R at boot.

If you can get there, you might be able to install a clean copy of the OS ONTO AN EXTERNAL DRIVE.

If you can do that, you can then BOOT FROM THE EXTERNAL DRIVE.

If you can do that, you may then be able to see and access your internal drive (while booted externally), and "get to" the files you need.

But you have to be able to boot to internet recovery (remember, this IS NOT "the recovery partition") first.

Can you do that?

One other thing:
Do you understand now why having an external backup is a good idea?
An even BETTER idea is an external, cloned, BOOTABLE backup created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper....
 
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