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Help Please! I deleted hardrive via firewire cable

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Help Please! I deleted hardrive via firewire cable

Hi I am a bit flustered and I would appreciate any help.

I was linking my ibook up to my main desktop power mac by use of a firewire cable, when I without thinking put the portable hardrive icon in the rubbish bin to eject it when I was finished transfering data. I emptied the trash on my power mac and then when I later got onto my laptop, I realized what I must have done. Now when I go to start up my ibook it doesn't get passed the apple screen that reads
" /etc/master.passwd: No such file or directory
/etc/master.passwd: No such file or directory
sh-2.05a# "

Please does anybody understand this or know what I could do, if anything to get my hardrive back?

Which machine am I best to try to retrieve my lost HD from?

This is really important, I have been doing my major research animation on my laptop (due in 5 weeks) and have only some of it backed up. I also have personal info and photographs etc... I would hate to lose.

Has anyone encountered this problem before? :eek:

Try posting your question here. A lot of hardware- and technical buffs over there that should be able to help you out.
You could also try emailing or calling Apple directly to ask for support.

In the meantime I'd suggest leaving your computer alone. You're likely to make matters worse if you start fiddling with it without knowing what you're doing. With PC's there's ways of recovering deleted data as long as nothing has changed since you last deleted it (for example no new data has been written over the deleted data). I'm sure there's something similar for Mac.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy [i]-Tom Waits
[/i]

Sounds like it's time for a clean reinstall of your ibook. I've played with some old macs, but I think it's going to be difficult to retrieve your files off the power mac especially if you've been using it. At least your laptop will be fresh and clean when you are finished. Hope you have the discs.

This forum saved my butt when working on my old Performa:

http://www.macfixitforums.com/

Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.

laptop won't start up but still shows as target on Powermac

Thanks Dave! I have put the same post up at the CG forums site too.

Phacker I will look at the mac fixit site, I didn't know of it. Thanks for your sugestions aswell.

As it is now Monday here in Australia I have been in contact with a Mac dealer/repairer and have had some help over the phone. I have tried 3 different times to start the computer holding down certain keys but so far nothing has worked. Each time the computer has failed to start up fully and comes back reading the message displayed in my first post. The tech guy tells me that I actually did the correct procedure of dumping the HD while the firewire cable was still attatched. He also said that I shut down the laptop right by holding down the start up button. So we are stumped!! He suggested I get the firewire cable and see if it shows the laptop HD on my power mac. I just did this and to my dismay it appears.

So apart from backing up what I can from this folder, is there anything I can do to get my laptop to start up properly without installing all of the bootup disks again?

I can drag files out of the laptop HD temporary folder that shows on my power mac screen but can I drag anything into the laptop folder to fix it's start up problem?

I'm not sure if this would work with a Mac computer, but you may be able to install your portable HD into your working machine as a slave drive and let the good OS load up. If the Mac OS operates similar to the Windos OS, the system should recognize the added drive and all of the files stored on it. From that point, assuming the files on that drive are uncorrupted and accessible, you should be able to transfer all the files you need to back-up to the good drive.

________
vapormatic vaporizer

Thanks Brad, I seem to be able to see the hard drive folder from my laptop on my Power mac screen. So I am going to try to copy all of the files that I can but unfortunately I can't access everything.

I have just come across this Macintosh hard drive report file that has me concerned. This suspect file was found inside the laptop HD folder. I didn't knowingly install or run this program, and I am now thinking that this may have caused the problem with my laptop and not the transfering of the data, which appears just coincidental.

File reads:

DiskWarrior has successfully built a new optimized directory for the disk named "Macintosh HD." The new directory is ready to replace the original directory.

All file and folder data was easily located.

Comparison of the original and replacement directories indicates that there will be changes to the number, the contents and/or the attributes of the files and folders. It is recommended that you preview the replacement directory and examine the items listed below.

• Errors, if any, in the directory structure such as tree depth, header node, map nodes, node size, node counts, node links, indexes and more have been repaired.

• 254 link files had a creation date that was repaired.

• 2 files had a directory entry with an incorrect text encoding value that was repaired.

• 49 folders had a directory entry with an incorrect custom icon flag that was repaired.

• The Root creation date was repaired.

• Incorrect values in the Volume Information were repaired.

• 254 files had a Creation Date that changed.

Disk Information:

Format: Mac OS Extended
Where: (ATA Bus 2 Dev 0, v3.2.8)
Driver: ".ATADisk"
Block Size: 4 K
Files: 132,887
Folders: 33,591
Free Space: 6.99 GB
Disk Sectors: 39,069,366

Time: 16/4/03 8:17:29 AM
DiskWarrior Version: 2.1

I have never heard of disk warrior. Has anyone come across it before?

Don't take any notice of the date and time the clock is out on my computer.

I would welcome any comments. Thanks.

Disk Warrior is a repair and recovery tool. It may help you save the day.

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.