recovering-mac-files

Dead MacBook, no reboot, disk can't be repaired. Forgot to back up. What to do? This.

Steps to Recover Your Files

OS X Yosemite: Start up in single-user mode. How:

Press Command (⌘)-S as your Mac starts up.

Source: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18782?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

NOTE: This is not for people who never use the command line! You will be at the root of your system. There will be nothing but typing!

Give yourself the power to write:

/sbin/mount -uw /

(The -u flag indicates that the status of an already mounted file system should be changed, and the -w flag tells the system to mount the file system in read-write mode.)

Create a mount point for the USB drive:

mkdir /Volumes/usbdrive

See what names all current drives (and partitions) have:

ls /dev/disk*

Insert USB. See what new name the system has added, meaning the USB drive (for example, /dev/disk2s1):

ls /dev/disk*

Mount the USB drive:

/sbin/mount_hfs /dev/disk2s1 /Volumes/usbdrive

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Side note

Oh, wait: Your USB drive might NOT be "hfs." Find out using this guide:

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/09/19/mac-101-format-choices-for-usb-flash-drives/

(There are lots of commands for "mount" -- this will show them to you:

ls /sbin/ | grep mount_

NOTE: It is okay to mount it to /Volumes/usbdrive again and again. For example, if you are taking out the USB and then reinserting it. See below for how to safely un-mount the USB device.)

End side note

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Now you are ready to copy. The pattern is:

cp -R /name/of/all/directories/on/source/drive/ /Volumes/usbdrive/newDirectory/

Example:

cp -R /Users/MarySmith/Documents/Courses/'Code for Journalists'/ /Volumes/usbdrive/code/

WAIT UNTIL THE PROMPT REAPPEARS (e.g., bash-3.2#). Do not touch any key until then. It might take a while!

Before removing USB drive:

umount /dev/disk2s1

(NOTE: That is not un -- it is u.)

Remember, your USB drive might not be named disk2s1 on your Mac. You found out what it's called before. Go back. Look.

Sources

These were the most helpful to me. (THANK YOU SO MUCH. You people saved me and my files. <3 <3 <3 xxoo)

http://jsalovaara.com/blog/backing-up-files-to-a-usb-drive-using-single-user-mode.html

http://alvinalexander.com/mac-os-x/mac-osx-single-user-mode-usb-drive

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/09/19/mac-101-format-choices-for-usb-flash-drives/

P.S. I spent an hour on the phone with Apple Support. The person there was very nice to me, and we tried a lot of things. But we NEVER tried Command (⌘)-S. The Apple Support person said all I could do was reformat my hard drive and reinstall OS X. Which would mean losing all my un-backed-up data. Unless I wanted to pay a third party to do data recovery fo me, the Apple Support person (un)helpfully added.