B-tree node error and Time Machine

My Mid-2009 Macbook Pro running Yosemite gave me a B-tree invalid node size error last week after it got stuck waking up from sleep mode, forcing me to do a hard shutdown.

I have done Time Machine backups; problem being the last one is from a month ago. In between, I have some important files I need to recover. If I restore the April 13th backup, will it overwrite the updated files (presumably)? Will it wipe out new files that didn't exist a month ago?

I did have a copy of Disk Warrior 4.1; it made it through 5 steps and failed with a message like "the file system is newer than expected and rebuilding the directory could result in data loss" or something like that. I ran it twice, same fail error. Would upgrading to the latest Disk Warrior solve the problem? This was running my problem disk in a USB enclosure off from a 2006 Macbook running a much older version of OSX (maybe 10.4 or 10.5).

I don't want to do anything to destroy my data, but I needed a computer to keep operations running, so I bought a new Macbook Pro Retina 13" 256GB. Disk Warrior 4.1 will not run on that machine for some reason (looking for a Prefs file I don't have).

Is there anything I can do cheaply to retrieve in particular 2 files which contain financial transactions? (Lesson learned to back up more frequently than monthly).

Thanks

Go to the Alsoft website and download update 4.4, burn it to a DVD and use that. You will be asked for your registered user name and password so have it handy. And backup weekly at least.

The first thing I'd suggest doing is NOT running your Mid-2009 Macbook Pro or doing anything new with it, other than a possible repair and or recovery.

Do NOT try creating anything new on it in case you overwrite anything you may want to recover!!!

The copy of Disk Warrior was not mine, so I'm not looking to try and upgrade. If I was *sure* a newer copy would solve the problem, I'd probably just drop the $120 and get the latest version. But I'd hate to spend that for nothing, either. I wish Alsoft had a method where they took your credit car details at the time of download, but did not charge you unless there was a successful recovery. Their software could "plant" the results on your restored drive, and the first time your restored computer connected to the Internet your card would be charged - or not, if the result was a failure. I think a lot more people would be willing to shell out for this good product if that was the case. At $120, I'm not willing to gamble. At $50, I would.

As for using my laptop, yeah, it doesn't start (except in Bootcamp / Windows) so I won't be "doing" anything to it. Right now its mounted in a USB enclosure but I obviously cannot mount the HFS portion, so I can't really harm it.

Any other thoughts aside from gambling for $120?

Get a blank external drive; format and install OS X; startup from that drive; use Migration Assistant to migrate "everything" from the internal drive.
Check that everything is there, then format/repartition the internal and do the same reinstall-migrate process.

gsahli said:

Get a blank external drive; format and install OS X; startup from that drive; use Migration Assistant to migrate "everything" from the internal drive.
Check that everything is there, then format/repartition the internal and do the same reinstall-migrate process.

Click to expand...

I would think the migration tool would not work to move items from a drive that cannot be mounted. Am I wrong?

I would suspect the same thing — no files if the directory is really messed up, and even CCC and SD! often will do the same, and tell you to get it fixed.

To do so, you might want to use google and do some searching for repair and also recover apps.
Try:
https://www.google.ca/search?client...&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=3R9WVYekJ-3s8weg64HwAw

and you'll get hits like this:
How to fix ?Invalid B-tree node size? Error with Stellar Volume Repair | Stellar KnowledgeBase Articles

and maybe their free Stellar Volume Repair utility, or some other, might fix things for you and forget about using DiskWarrior. And using their v. 4.x upgrade method I must admit is a PITA, and you must have the original DW disk and your registration number for it to use it. Oh yes, and an optical drive.