Command-R Disk Repair Failed

My son's MacBook Pro hung and would not reboot. White screen, then turned off.

Command-R repair got many, many errors - then finally said:

Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many files as possible, reformat the drive and restore your backed-up files.​

Wouldn't you know it, my son has no backups other than the ones on this damaged disk. Before I format the drive and reinstall Mavericks, how do I get his backup zip file (and as many other data files as I can) off of the damaged HDD and onto my USB flash drive? I do not see any way to mount the drive and copy stuff off...???

First... don't waste your time re-formatting that drive and reinstalling Mavericks. A drive with that many errors should be replaced. As far as getting info off the drive, what you can try to do is remove it and place it in an external USB SATA carrier and attach it to your computer. You may be able to extract data from it that way. But there is no guaranty it will work especially if the drive is damaged.

And looks like a lecture from Dad about the three essentials ~ backup, backup and backup!

Solved. See this.

Lecture ignored, again.

Solved. See this.

Click to expand...

Let's hope you're right.....

Lecture ignored, again.

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If that's your attitude, why even post here asking for help?

I believe John Greer was referring to his son ignoring his (John's) lecture about backing up, Charlie.

That's what I thought too.

If that's true, my apologies to John.

harryb2448 said:

I believe John Greer was referring to his son ignoring his (John's) lecture about backing up, Charlie.

Click to expand...

Yes, I was referring to my son's attitude about backup, not mine. Sorry for the delay in responding, I've been heads-down trying to create a combination of scripts that will backup his data onto my Desktop where I can then backup it up onsite and offsite.

It needs to be 20-year-user (non techie) proof and 18-year-old techie proof. I'm making it stealthy so that neither will know it's there. So one doesn't disable it and the other doesn't tinker with it.

One way to impress upon your son the importance of backups might be to let your son recover his system by himself - including the googling to find out how.