Reverting to 10.5 - problem. Help!

[Coldacre]

I've been using Snow Leopard for the last 3 months and a few of the 3rd party softwares I use aren't compatible. Yesterday I decided to go back to Leopard 10.5. I have been backing up regularly with Time Machine via a 1TB LaCie external. I'm using a white 2.16ghz Intel iMac. Prior to installing 10.5 my hard-drive was 232g with about 70g free space.

The install of 10.5 went fine. But it appeared to erase all of my apps, songs, pictures, movies, documents etc. I opened Migration Assistant and proceeded to migrate all the files from the LaCie to the Mac HD. Migration Assistant said this would take about 2 hours. After half an hour (with 1 hr 30 min to go) the progress bar stalled and the time remaining started to clime. It got to 2 hours+ remaining, so I closed Migration Assistant. I then looked at the Get Info of the Mac HD and it said 232g in use, 0 space available. But I still don't have any of the Apps, songs, documents etc on the hard-drive. I can't for the life of me work out what has filled the hard-drive to make it full.

I've opened Time Machine, all the backup's are there. But I can't restore any of them.... the Restore bar in the bottom right corner won't light up, so I can't click it. I can't open iTunes from my Apps folder, it says "The folder iTunes can not be found or created; the default location for this folder is inside the 'Music' folder"

I can still access everything on the LaCie. I can probably manually drag and drop all of the stuff I want onto the HD if need be. But the hard-drive is completely full. I'll probably end up taking this to the Mac shop to see what they can do, but I thought I'd ask here first. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

 

[Babkockdood]

That sucks. Re-install Leopard so it formats your HD again. After you re-installed Leopard, plug in your external drive and put everything on your Mac manually.

EDIT: In the long run, when you use Migration Assistant, don't ever EVER close it while it's doing it's thing. You could seriously screw something up.

 

[Coldacre]

Re-install Leopard so it formats your HD again. .

I can't. When I put the DVD in it says ""Mac OS X Install DVD" could not be used as a startup volume. Please make sure the Mac OS X installation disk is in the drive"

 

[Babkockdood]

Hmm... looks like you'll have to format it yourself. Go into /Applications/Utilities/ and find the Terminal. Open it up. Type:

diskutil repairDisk "Volumes/Macintosh HD"

(the "Macintosh HD" is what the startup disk is named, if your startup disk is named something else, replace it) and press Enter. If that doesn't work, try:

diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ UntitledHFS "/Volumes/Macintosh HD"

By doing these commands, you have a huge chance of completely screwing up your Mac. But it sounds pretty screwed up already so... Tell me if any error message comes up. If it does work, shut down your Mac and put in the installation CD. If you insert the CD and nothing happens, take it to the shop.

 

[Coldacre]

By doing these commands, you have a huge chance of completely screwing up your Mac.

I don't think i want to risk that. thanks though

 

[Babkockdood]

I don't think i want to risk that. thanks though

I was a little dramatic. You're Mac is screwed without formatting it. Disk Utility won't let you format it

but Terminal (most likely) will. I typed "diskutil" in Terminal and it gave me the command index for "diskutil".

If you don't do it, you'll have to take it to a shop. If you do do it, one of three things will happen:

• It will work and fix your HD
• It will not work and screw your HD, thus having to take it to a shop
• It will give you an error

Doesn't look like you have anything to lose if it doesn't work. All your precious data is on the external drive, safe. But it's your choice.

 

[Coldacre]

thanks for your suggestion

I was about to try it, but I gave something else a go first. I ran OmniDiskSweeper to see what was the biggest file on the HD. "Previous Systems" was the biggest. Once I put it in the trash and deleted, I had ALL of my hard drive space back. 212g out of 232g!

I also changed my admin account as for some reason I was no longer admin. anyway... now that I'm going about dropping and dragging from the LaCie onto the HD, I no longer have 'sufficient access' to open the files on the external that are under my old user account name.

I also don't have the terminal.app anymore......

thanks for chipping in so far Babkockdood. any suggestions about Terminal and gaining access to the files on the LaCie??


EDIT - just found your upload of Terminal in another thread. Cheers, your a champion.

 

[Collin Bl]

Even now i would go in and clean things up by booting off the Leopard Disc then doing a Erase disc and a clean install. Then i would download the latest copy of any 3rd party Apps that you use. Then u can grab files from your Ext HD as you need them, and have a nice clean system with no dross from the drama that you have just gone thru.

 

[Coldacre]

Even now i would go in and clean things up by booting off the Leopard Disc then doing a Erase disc and a clean install. Then i would download the latest copy of any 3rd party Apps that you use. Then u can grab files from your Ext HD as you need them, and have a nice clean system with no dross from the drama that you have just gone thru.

I've been trying all day to boot of the DVD to no avail. held down the C key when starting up many times... it always launches the 'installing 10.5' from the DVD.

I'm happy with the OS install, I've cleared my HD with everything but the OS. it's all good. just need to work out how to get permission to access the LaCie files.

and thanks for chiming in. haven't exactly been overwhelmed with suggestions from the 3 message boards I've posted in.

 

[Collin Bl]

To erase you may have to go back to the disk that came with the iMac then do install off the Leopard one. Another choice which makes for a quicker install is once you have a new OS and it fully updated then use Disk Utility to make a .dmg of it. Then with a bootable copy of the iMac on the Ext HD it is quick to reinstall the .dmg back onto a new HD when u boot off the Ext HD. With the 2.16 you wont have Firewire 800 but it is quick with 400 as well.