stuck at gray loading screen 2009 macbook

mindlessLump

Junior Member
Jul 17, 2012
8
0
0
I've posted this on macrumors, but I'm not sure how technically inclined the forum is, so I thought I'd post here as well.

The other day while I was out of town, the 2009 white unibody macbook my wife uses wouldn't boot. It just stays on the gray apple screen with the "loading circle". There is quite a bit of data that is not backed up on this computer, my main goal is to get the files from this computer by using Disk Utility. I'm sure DiskWarrior will do the trick, but I'm not interested in how to use that program, as I could figure that out on my own.

What I've tried:
I have tried holding shift to boot in safe mode, I have tried resetting the PRAM, I have switched my 2, 2 gig sticks of Crucial ram I have been running for a year for the original 2, 1 gig Samsung sticks, and I have tried booting into single user mode and entered /sbin/fsck_hfs -yprd /dev/partitionName substituting my partition name. The single user mode entry was attempted AFTER I inserted the Snow Leopard install disk that I used a year ago to do a clean install. Once I opened disk utility and verified my hard drive, it came back with "Invalid Node Structure". The repair option from Disk Utility did not work either. It just kept returning "Invalid Node Structure" in red.

Now, I THINK I know my options.

OPTION 1
http://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-fix-invalid-node-structure-error-on-mac/
Thanks for that one Vishal...
However, the 2009 Macbook doesn't have a Fire Wire port. It has a mini-display port that doesn't transmit sound, and 2 usb 2.0 ports. How can I get the files from my macbook using disk utility from the Snow Leopard install disk? I have a 150 GB external drive I can format for the method in the link above. There is less than 150 GB worth of data on the macbook, but the hard drive is 250 GB total. I also have a 500GB usb drive that I can use if necessary.

There is one other option I'm aware of,
OPTION 2
http://techierambles.blogspot.com/2008/12/repair-disk-errors-like-invalid-node.html
I am less hopeful that this option will work, from what Vishal said in the first link, Invalid Node Structure means you're screwed. The question I have about this is, if I unmount the start-up disk to preform this method, do I risk losing data?

I'm well aware that I can fix this problem by reformatting the drive, but the thing I need to know is,

How do I get data off my 2009 Unibody White Macbook that won't boot, by using Disk Utility from the Snow Leopard install disk?

I've scoured my options of getting the thing to boot as is, and I have exhausted them. I need help getting the data off the hard drive.

Thanks in advance. I greatly appreciate any assistance you can give.
 

joshhedge

Senior member
Nov 19, 2011
601
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I have had this issue my Retina Pro about a month ago. Wasn't able to be fixed at the Apple store after my efforts. What I recommend doing is copying the contents of the drive through Disk Utility to an external drive, formatting the HDD and reinstalling. Open the disk image on your Mac and copy the contents such as applications and user files over.

Worth noting that Disk Warrior couldn't fix the errors on my drive, but all of the files were accessible in the copied disk image.
 
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mindlessLump

Junior Member
Jul 17, 2012
8
0
0
I have had this issue my Retina Pro about a month ago. Wasn't able to be fixed at the Apple store after my efforts. What I recommend doing is copying the contents of the drive through Disk Utility to an external drive, formatting the HDD and reinstalling. Open the disk image on your Mac and copy the contents such as applications and user files over.

Worth noting that Disk Warrior couldn't fix the errors on my drive, but all of the files were accessible in the copied disk image.

How do I go about copying the contents through disk utility? Via a disk image?
 

mindlessLump

Junior Member
Jul 17, 2012
8
0
0
When trying to create a bootable image on my usb drive using disk utility on the Snow Leopard install disk, I get an error reading "Unable to create "Macintosh HD.dmg." (Input/output error)" or .cdr depending on whether I select Read/Write or Master CD/DVD. I have formatted the external hard-drive to a GUID partition using Mac OS Extended (Journaled). What am I doing wrong?

I am wondering if I need to set up a bootable usb with DasBoot on it and Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC)... I can't use CCC normally because I can't boot!
 

Childs

Lifer
Jul 9, 2000
11,450
7
81
Can you boot off of your SL disc, and go to Utilities and Terminal? I dont remember off the top of my head what utilities SL's install disc will let ou run besides Disk Utility. If you can boot in single user mode, and see your files, that might be good enough. If you can do either, you might be able to simply copy the files using rsync, ditto, cp, etc. I would try the install disc first. Plug in an external disk, then boot off the install disc. Open Terminal, then copy the files. Don't copy everything, just start with your home directory, or whatever is most important.

Looking at Option 2, its pretty much what I am suggesting, except at Step 6, open Terminal instead. Probably the easiest would be this:

cp -R "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/mindlessLump" "/Volumes/External Volume/"

Obviously change the command so that it matches your environment. You can use Disk Utility, but I dont know if it will fail on read errors. But its just

Open disk Utility, New -> New image from Folder
Select the root of the volume you want to back up. Or select a folder, like your home directory. You might have to do Apple-Shift-G and go straight to /Volumes.
Now simply pick a place to save your dmg. You shouldnt have any options besides image format and encryption. Just use compressed and none.
 
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mindlessLump

Junior Member
Jul 17, 2012
8
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Thanks for the suggestion Childs.

Late last night I managed to come up with a fix.

1. Boot from Snow Leopard install disk
2. Format external usb hard drive using disk utility into two partitions (GUID)
3. Install Snow Leopard on smaller partition (about 10 gigs)
4. Boot from usb hard drive partition that Snow Leopard is installed on
5. Download and install Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) onto usb Snow Leopard
6. Run CCC from usb Snow Leopard
7. Grab files from internal hard drive and clone them onto empty partition of your external hard drive

This method worked.
 
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Childs

Lifer
Jul 9, 2000
11,450
7
81
Yeah, thats basically the same thing. I used to have a thumb drive that I installed OS X on, so if I ran into a similar situation I could always boot off of it and fix whatever is broken. If you had access to another Mac, you could have put it in target mode and done the same thing. These days the recovery mode in 10.7 or later is almost good enough, but its nice to have full networking and access to any app or utility you might need. You should keep that USB install handy just in case.