Sibling Link Error

Guys this regarding my friend's MBP.

He is getting sibling link error & I am not able to fix it even after several tries

1. First I went to single user mode & tried fsck -fy

2. Booted of with OS X DVD & tried First Aid.

3. Tried this also : A possible fix for invalid sibling links on a hard drive - Mac OS X Hints

I have tried above things several times [more than 10 !!]

Now only option I left with is Disk Warrior. But is there any chance losing data by using DW ? Does it formats HDD in any process ?? The data is very important, that's why.

Unfortunately, sibling link errors are very often fatal as you're finding out. And spending money on Disk Warrior which is around the same cost as a new hard drive might not be the best thing to do.

However, if the data on that drive is critical then it might be worthwhile. DW does not harm or format the drive in any way so it's safe to use.

Thank you for replying

A friend of mine already has DW, so there is no question of buying it again, I will just borrow from him.

If DW does not do any evil stuff, then I might go ahead.

BTW is it possible to take data back up booting up from linux live distro ? Apparently, he has installed Windows 7, [not Boot camp, separate partition I suppose] so to get Data back up, is it advised to use HFS Explorer or Mac Drive ? I read somewhere that Mac Drive can format drives [I may be wrong]

BTW is it possible to take data back up booting up from linux live distro ? Apparently, he has installed Windows 7, [not Boot camp, separate partition I suppose] so to get Data back up, is it advised to use HFS Explorer or Mac Drive ? I read somewhere that Mac Drive can format drives [I may be wrong]

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You can give it a try. Boot from the Linux live CD and copy what you can from the OS X partition to an external hard drive.

If he installed Windows 7 on a separate partition, he probably used Boot Camp to create the partition and prepare it for Windows. If you can boot to the Win 7 partition OK, you can use Mac Drive to copy the data from the OS X partition to an external drive. Mac Drive can format, however, the sibling link error might prevent it from working.

My best advice is get the data off that drive as soon as possible with the least amount of thrashing around. Once that drive crashes, it's gone and so is the data.

Oh ! Then we just take back up asap..

I didn't knew Linux live distros can detect HFS+ partitions...I have Ubuntu Live Distro, will check & report here

Sorry for bumping this up, don't wanted to create one more thread.

My friend doesn't have Disk Warrior & don't want to buy one. So only option left is formatting the drive taking back up. So my question is, is there any chance of data loss if Mac Drive or HFS explorer used ? Windows 7 is working fine. So idea is to install either Mac drive or HFS explorer, take back up & re-install everything.

My friend is a n00b & I want to be sure that there are no chances of formatting the drive using Mac Drive or HFS Explorer.

Thanks in advance

MacDrive is the most reliable but it's not free. HFSExplorer is free but I really don't know how well it works.

A friend of mine already has Macdrive, so....

one more thing. His iPhone is associated with iTunes, so when doing sync next won't he lose all data ?

one more thing. His iPhone is associated with iTunes, so when doing sync next won't he lose all data ?