OSX Lion invalid sibling link

[TechieWils]

Morning everyone, I've just being handed a MacBook pro with Lion on it. Apparently it was working and now it hangs at boot with the spinning wheel. I booted into the recovery partition and ran disk utility which came back saying the hard drive had an invalid sibling link and that I should backup what I can and reinstall the os.

 

Question, how do I backup what I can? I can't mount the drive in Windows or OSX although I have used testdisk to do a recovery on it which has copied everything with a random numerical name (not really helpful with thousands of files recovered) was wondering if any one knew of a way to repair the drive or recover the data?

 

I did see disk warrior but the user is reluctant to purchase it at the moment. Any help as always is appreciated.

 

Thanks

[featured_spectre]

BartPE on a USB stick, set the mac to boot from USB, voila!

 

(Been a while since I've done this mind, last time I did was on a 2004 Power Mac G4)

[TechieWils]

I'll give it a try thank you.

[seawolf]

Morning everyone, I've just being handed a MacBook pro with Lion on it. Apparently it was working and now it hangs at boot with the spinning wheel. I booted into the recovery partition and ran disk utility which came back saying the hard drive had an invalid sibling link and that I should backup what I can and reinstall the os.

 

Question, how do I backup what I can? I can't mount the drive in Windows or OSX although I have used testdisk to do a recovery on it which has copied everything with a random numerical name (not really helpful with thousands of files recovered) was wondering if any one knew of a way to repair the drive or recover the data?

 

I did see disk warrior but the user is reluctant to purchase it at the moment. Any help as always is appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

DriveWarrior or Data Rescue are the best bets. If the user doesn't have a backup or want to pay for DriveWarrior to possible recover their data, then I wonder how much they really care about it. The drive needs to be replaced anyway so just install a new drive put Lion on it, give the user their old disk and send them on their way. Recovering the data without the proper tools is unlikely and most likely a waste of your time.

[Arthur]

Another option would be to download a Ubuntu Live DVD and see if Linux can access the data on the HDD since since it will read HFS+ file-systems. More details here.

[TechieWils]

It's all sorted now, just an update I tried Bart pe on a stick and the appropriate version of ubuntu for mac and still no dice. Told the user the only option I could find was disk warrior. Told them they either get it and try it or I reformat the drive.

 

They bought disk warrior and it worked. Powerful little program and easy to use. Would definitely recommend it.

 

Cheers everyone for your help.

[seawolf]

You definitely did the right thing. It's both unfair and unethical for a staff member to ask you to possibly spend hours of your time (on the school's dollar) to try to fix a problem that is their own personal fault (no backup) while being unwilling to spend a dime on the one tool that is likely to fix it. Maybe they'll listen to you next time you tell them the solution, but don't hold your breath.

[TechieWils]

Its almost like you've met my staff before, I will not hold my breathe but it was nice that they actually listened to me in the end. I've lost count of the number of times I tell people to backup their laptops/USB sticks and the usual response is I did last summer or why it still works