MBP OSX Fails to Boot - Grey Screen

Hi, hope I'm posting in the right place

I have a late 2009 MacBook Pro, base spec but upgraded to 8GB RAM from Crucial.

This morning I was uploading some files to Photobucket when it crashed and had to force shut down. When starting up it now chimes and gets to the grey screen with Apple logo and loading wheel but won't get any further.

I have tried to boot into safe mode with no luck. I managed to copy down the final half screen of the boot commands from the safe mode boot

** /dev/rdisk0s2 (NO WRITE)
** Root file system
Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-540.1-34)
disk0s2: I/O error
/dev/rdisk0s2 (hfs) EXITED WITH SIGNAL 8
Running safe fsck on the boot volume…
** /dev/rdisk0s2
** root file system
Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-540.1-34)
disk0s2: I/O error
** Checking journaled HFS Plus volume
disk0s2: I/O error
Invalid B-tree node size
(4, 0)
** The volume could not be verified completely
/dev/rdisk0s2 (hfs) EXITED WITH SIGNAL 8
fsck failed!
Kext loading now disabled
Kext unloading now disabled
Kext auto unloading now disabled
Kernal requests now disabled


Continuing

Click to expand...

I reset the PRAM but it still won't boot.

I have no OSX disc to try Disk Utility.

I haven't tried swapping back the RAM yet but didn't want to go through that until I'd had advice from here. Is it worth doing or is it what I keep reading - the hard disk?

Very annoying if it is as I stupidly haven't backed it up and was less than a week away from doing so to install a new HDD as this one has less than 1GB space left. Don't suppose that has anything to do with it?

Is there anything else worth trying before I buy a new hard drive or give it and my money to Apple? I guess there's no way of getting any files from the hard drive if it is dead?

Thanks for any help.

Whenever you boot to SAFE mode, the system automatically does a disk verify. As you can see your hard drive has I/O errors that should be repaired. Since you don't have a disk, I strongly advise you to obtain a new one. Snow Leopard is only $29.99 from Apple on line.

In the meantime try booting to Single User mode and run FSCK from there. Here's how:

Starting up in single-user mode

1. Shut down your Mac if it is on.
2. Press the power button to start the computer.
3. Immediately press and hold the Command (Apple) key and the "s" key for single-user mode. (Command-S)

Single user mode will look like a terminal command line. Once you're in Single user mode, do the following:

At the command-line prompt type:

/sbin/fsck -fy

That will put you in interactive mode to repair the disk. Once the disk is fully repaired (all errors are cleared) type the following:

reboot

And press enter.

Let us know.

Single user mode didn't get anywhere and it still fails to boot in normal and safe mode.

This is from single user mode

** /dev/rdisk0s2
** Root file system
Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-540.1-34)
disk0s2: I/O error
** Checking journaled HFS Plus volume.
disk0s2: I/O error
Invalid B-tree node size
(4, 0)
** the volume could not be verified completely.
/dev/rdisk0s2 (hfs) EXITED WITH SIGNAL 8

Click to expand...

Will the Snow Leopard disc work with OSX Lion? I've upgraded to Lion and my partner has just bought a new MBP with Lion, so am thinking a Lion disc may be more useful in the future.

Edit, just looked it up on Apple online, didn't know Lion was only available in digital form. Will buy the Snow Leopard disc asap.

If you have Lion, you don't need a disc.

Just press and hold Command+R at startup and it should boot to the recovery partition, where you can run Disk Utility.

Thanks, have got into Disk Utility but it says it can't repair the disk, and to back up as many files as I can before erasing and restoring the disk. Is there anyway to backup the disk in its current state? i.e. from Disk Utility or other?

You might have better luck repairing that disk with a better program but it's going to cost you $$. Disk Warrior can sometimes repair disks that Disk Utility chokes on. The error you received "Invalid B-tree node size" is an error that Disk Utility nor FSCK can repair.

Disk Warrior will likely be able to fix that problem (the non-geek translation of which is "the main directory is messed up"). A corrupt directory is often (but not always) a sign of a failing hard drive, but in this case I STRONGLY suspect that you let the drive fill up too much and THAT is what caused the directory corruption, so the good news is that if you can get this fixed and free up LOTS of space, you should be back to normal again.

Disk Utility can be used to backup your files (you would want to focus on your User Folder first and foremost) to an external drive by making a disk image. If you've been using Time Machine this would be unnecessary.

The dilemma there is I'm about to buy a new hard drive for it, so need to weigh up if there is any point in spending $100 to get my files back, only to spend £100 the next day on a different disk.

So I'll try making a disk image first as I already have the external hard drive.

If this doesn't work and I can't get my files back, do iTunes keep a purchase history of your account so that you can re-download all those albums? I had about 60GB in music, most of which I don't own in physical form.

I have a possible problem in that my old external hard drive seems to be read-only on macs. I can't put anything on it or modify/delete the data, only copy it. On windows it's fine, so I've sorted it out and stored everything I want from the external elsewhere, but will this mean that putting the disk image on it won't be possible?

Will I need to reformat the external HDD on a Mac? If so, how do I do it as it doesn't seem to give me many options?

Your external hard drive is probably formatted as NTFS which is read only from your Mac. So yes, you will need to reformat the drive to something that your Mac can read and write to. That leaves you with two choices: FAT-32 or HFS+

FAT-32 can be used by both your Mac and PC while the HFS+ format is Mac only. Be sure to backup everything on the external first before formatting.

Thanks again for the help. Have reformatted the hard drive and tried to make a disk image but no luck.

Think I'll just cut my losses and buy a new hard drive.

Edit - the message I get when trying to make an image is "Unable to create "Macintosh HD Media.dmg." (Input/output error). Is this the problem with my hard drive or something incompatible with my external?

I've now got my new hard drive having given up trying to get data from the old one. I guess I'm still going to need the Snow Leopard boot disc to format the new HDD, install Snow Leopard, then install Lion again. Is there no easier way to do it without buying the Snow Leopard disc?

It looks like it because you will need Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to download and install Lion. The other way is to buy the $69 Lion flash drive from Apple on line and use it instead, that way, you do not need Snow Leopard.

Will the App store have saved my purchase of Lion, in which case I can just download it again? Don't want to buy it twice.

Yes. You can download Lion again without paying for it. However, if you decide to buy the flash drive you will have to pay for that.

Might as well buy Snow Leopard then and save money.

Thankfully it looks like it won't come to that though. I called up Apple with a view to arguing my way to a copy of Snow Leopard or for them to reinstall it in store, but it turns out it's still under warranty. A helpful guy on the phone tried to run through some things and confirmed there was no way I'd get my data back even if I sent it to Apple. So I erased the OS to reinstall it but it gets stuck on the 'Loading Installation Information" screen so looks like I'll still have to send it off. As it's free though I'm none too bothered and they can fix my iffy CD drive while they're at it.

So plan is to get it reinstalled and fixed by Apple for free, then to copy it all onto my new hard drive so it's basically a plug & play installation. Should work?

Sorry to hear you're having to go through so much to get your machine back in working order. However, it is good news that Apple is going to repair it for you under the warranty.

Yes, it should work. Keep making backups - and it might be a good idea in addition to Time Machine that you think about using cloning software. SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner are easy to use and will have you back up running in no time in case of a future hard drive failure. Both work well with Lion.

I'll definitely be making back ups this time round. Right now I'm writing a list of all the albums on my iPod and I really don't want to be doing this again.

Would you mind clearing something up for me, a really stupid question? When I get it back I'll make a disk image on to my external hard drive so I'll have all the OSX files. How do I format the new hard drive, or can I boot up Utilities etc from the external hard drive to format the new one? Then do I copy the files back over onto the new hard drive or reinstall OSX using Utilities? Never done this before so not got a clue.

The other day I received my Macbook through the post from being repaired. Great service from Apple, really quick turn around and they called me to make sure it was ok to lose all my data. In the end it's had a new hard drive, optical drive and battery as they found that to be prematurely failing too.

So now I'm at the stage of copying the OSX data on Mac's new hard drive to the larger hard drive I'm upgrading to. As above, please could I have a bit of a pointer as to how to do it?

Thanks

Download Carbon Copy Cloner from here. (It's donation ware, so if you like it and use it, you can at your choosing send the author a donation.)

Use CCC to clone everything from your new internal hard drive to the larger external hard drive. (You will need either an external USB SATA carrier or adapter.) CCC will also render the new drive bootable and will copy the Lion Recovery partition in place.

After doing the above, test the drive by trying to boot from it. If it boots OK, swap out the internal hard drive with the larger one and you should be good to go.