MBP Crashed - cant erase disk - disk erase failed - couldn't unmount disk

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I had many updates yesterday - I installed updates - for some reason finder kept shutting off, Everytime I hit send to apple - it would reappear - I tried to reinstall from Time Machine, but it kept failing at .05 percent - I then tried to erase drive and install a fresh copy of lion - then did a migration - it transferred all the files, but then wouldn't let me open anything - I tried to erase hard drive again so I could install yet, another fresh copy of lion.

Now it won't let me erase hard drive --

Disk Erase Failed

Disk Erase failed with the error:

Couldnt unmount disk.


Can another give me suggestions.

I don't want to lose my info on time machine, I hope I can retrieve all info when I figure out how to get laptop back to factory settings
 
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Is it ok to run MBP, normally even with the fault of not allowing drive to erase ?
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Too many to list. Typically use an Intel iMac for most of my stuff and a Mini for web video.
I think you need to be a little more specific about the steps you're taking.

You can't unmount a disk that's in use. Are you using the recovery partition to do the work?

The fact that you say that the restore always fails at 0.05% implies to me that the restore is hitting a bad sector on the target drive.

I would do the following (if I understand what's going on in your system):

1. Boot the recovery disk
2. When it comes up select the utilities->diskutility
3. Erase the drive with the "Zero all data" option selected. This will write binary zeros to all sectors on the drive and FORCE the drive to remap any bad sectors to spare sectors, assuming you have them available. All data on the drive being erased will be deleted, needless to say.
4. Assuming you can do step 3, re-install the OS.
5. Restore your back ups.

You can't use a read only disk for a base operating system disk. The OS needs to be able to write swap files plus about a million other things. A drive seen as read only is effectively a very big CD-ROM - you can read it, but you can't do anything else with it. You CAN however, recover information from it while it's in that mode.

Good Luck.
Hopefully that will work.
 
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Thanks BSD Meister , doing a zero out now , then will install a fresh copy of lion. When I try to use time machine, it will transfer files, but then wouldn't let me open anything under the username (i.e.: documents, desktop, music, movies, etc). it did however transfer the files to my MBP. I don't mind transferring files one at a time. opening up time machine and grab and drag to MBP, however I am worried about, the emails that i have stored on MyMac, how can I find and move these from time machine to MBP.

I don't know why when I try to restore from time machine, it wont work. I am new to Mac, and know it was my mistake that caused my system to crash.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Too many to list. Typically use an Intel iMac for most of my stuff and a Mini for web video.
Mail should be stored under the Users->(your Unix name)->Library->Mail directory.
If you navigate to that path, you'll see a folder named "Mailboxes" and everything under that should be where all your mail is stored.

I'm confused about whether or not the data actually transferred to the MBP. If it got to 0.05% and then stopped then it's probably drive related and the reformatted will (hopefully) clear that up. If it transferred all your files, then the drive isn't the problem. Zeroing the drive shouldn't hurt it as if there are bad sectors it will remap the (if it's a hard drive). If it's an SSD then you've added one more write cycle to their life.

It really sounds to me more like you have some type of account problems. On an OS X system, you can't just change your name and ID and have access to what existed on another account. For example if you created an account called "user1" and started doing backups, then changed it to "user2", I'm not really sure how TimeMachine would handle that (I don't use it...I use custom rsync scripts to do my backups).
 
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I made a start up file off of another Mac. Then I was able to zero out my MBP drive. I currently am transferring files manually. Everything appears to be working correctly.

I am new to apple products, and believe it was user error that caused my dilemma. As you stated about changing the user account name. This is something I did do, and could be the reason I can't use time machine or migration to restore laptop.

Good learning experience. Hope I don't do this again.

Thanks for all of your help BSD Meister
 

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