hi all, i hope you can help - I'm absolutelty up the creek without a paddle!!
Earlier today i decided to use an external hard drive as a Time Machine drive to make a 'proper' backup of my iMac (I had just been manually copying files over to it every so often, but thought....well...the pubs are all closed today, not much to do, so I think I'll finally get round to making a real backup using the Time Machine utility).
but to do that, i had to format the drive, and so until the Time Machine backup completed, I was in that awful position where i had no backup of my Mac.
Of course, sods law....the backup failed (no idea why, just some stupid non-descriptive message in the backup window with no details as to what might have happened). While waiting for the next scheduled attempt, I decided to delete whatever was on the external disk (i.e. the failed backup), and just by chance then I got a software update pop-up on the Mac...
iTunes, and Safari I think, along with a "Security Update". I went to install the updates, but one failed, and now I am unable to start up the Mac at all.
all I have is the white screen at startup with the apple logo, then I get a kind of 'forbidden' or 'no entry' graphic, and I can't do anything with the computer.
anyone know what I can do? I can't use the restore discs because i'll lose EVERYTHING, and because I deleted the contents of my external drive to use the Time Machine to make a 'proper' backup, I am really screwed now.
My guess is that the files are all still there on the disk, I just can't access them. Would I need to bring the computer to a specialist, or is there some trick I can do to get actually on to the OS? even command line access would be fine, as I have unix experience from my day job, so I could mount a DVD and manually copy over the files on the disc then and do a restore to factory default then.
any ideas? would really appreciate any help you might be able to offer.
thanks in advance,
andy
Earlier today i decided to use an external hard drive as a Time Machine drive to make a 'proper' backup of my iMac (I had just been manually copying files over to it every so often, but thought....well...the pubs are all closed today, not much to do, so I think I'll finally get round to making a real backup using the Time Machine utility).
but to do that, i had to format the drive, and so until the Time Machine backup completed, I was in that awful position where i had no backup of my Mac.
Of course, sods law....the backup failed (no idea why, just some stupid non-descriptive message in the backup window with no details as to what might have happened). While waiting for the next scheduled attempt, I decided to delete whatever was on the external disk (i.e. the failed backup), and just by chance then I got a software update pop-up on the Mac...
iTunes, and Safari I think, along with a "Security Update". I went to install the updates, but one failed, and now I am unable to start up the Mac at all.
all I have is the white screen at startup with the apple logo, then I get a kind of 'forbidden' or 'no entry' graphic, and I can't do anything with the computer.
anyone know what I can do? I can't use the restore discs because i'll lose EVERYTHING, and because I deleted the contents of my external drive to use the Time Machine to make a 'proper' backup, I am really screwed now.
My guess is that the files are all still there on the disk, I just can't access them. Would I need to bring the computer to a specialist, or is there some trick I can do to get actually on to the OS? even command line access would be fine, as I have unix experience from my day job, so I could mount a DVD and manually copy over the files on the disc then and do a restore to factory default then.
any ideas? would really appreciate any help you might be able to offer.
thanks in advance,
andy