Data recovery after failed 10.10.4 update

[swallis]

So I updated to 10.10.4 and now my MBP won't boot. Get's about 1/3rd of the way through the loading bar and crashes. Can't reinstall Yosemite from recovery mode, can't repair permissions or the disk with disk utility, can't reinstall 10.10.3 booted from a thumb drive, and can't get a "borrowed" version of DiskWarrior 4.4 to work. I can wipe everything and do a clean install of 10.10.3 but I'd like to get my data off first as I haven't backed up my HDD in 9 months (I know, I know...). Since this is purely a software issue I should be able to get all of that data back, correct? Can anyone recommend what tools to use or how to go about doing this?

 

[chscag]

Since this is purely a software issue I should be able to get all of that data back, correct?

Doesn't appear to be a software issue, it sounds more like you have hard drive problems. How about giving us some info about your MacBook Pro, year and model? If your hard drive has failed as I suspect and you don't have a recent backup, there isn't much else you can do. You can't recover what you can't get at. And when Disk Warrior doesn't work, you're probably looking at a lot of data loss.

 

[swallis]

Don't have that info available at the moment, but I was able to boot to the USB stick and mount the internal hard drive. The problem is that all of the folders in my home directory on that drive have the red minus sign indicating that I do not have permission to access them. I can't change the permissions with "Get Info" (greyed out) and when I try to use chmod it tells me that the file system is read only. Any idea how to fix the permissions?

I was also able to get DiskWarrior to run without crashing by opening the application from the booted USB stick instead of booting directly to the diskWarrior DVD. I have that running now so there's a small chance that could fix the problem, in which case I'll update this post.

 

[pm-r]

I guess I'll never understand why users don't bother keeping a bootable cloned backup and save all the hassles, but I don't see things changing either. And CCC can even create a Recovery HD volume that could be useful at this point.

I'd tend to agree that your problems are not just software related as well.

Your folder's will be non-accessable as the USB drive probably don't know that you're a user. You might be able to get around that by selecting your volume, do a Get Info and tell it to Ignore ownership on the volume.

It might help and work for you…

 

[swallis]

I was trying 'su' with the username of my macbook's admin account and having no luck either, but Ignoring ownership on the drive worked, thanks for the suggestion. Definitely going to be more careful about keeping backups in the future.

 

[pm-r]

That sounds better and I hope you can access and retrieve what you need.

Glad to hear that it worked, thanks.

 

[techiesteve]

Another way to access another users accounts data is to create a root user on the bootable external drive. Log out, then back in as root and all the folders will be accessible. It's also useful to have the utility Invisible so you can easily access the other drives hidden user library, as holding down the option key will only show the user library of the drive you booted from.