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HELP! "No bootable device" Mac WTF!!


Wasso

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Been using macs for 20 years, and dozens of macs, have only ever experienced 'no boot disc' once, due to hard drive failure. Since than I run two backs, one time-machine, and one is a bootable back up I keep updated every 1-2 months.

 

If you have a time machine back up, you could try that first, but you may want to do fresh OSX install, but that might/will wipe the hard drive. Do you have any vital work on the computer??

 

 

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My mac fell over like this a couple of years back, I think it was a similar thing where it couldn't boot up. I took it to a local computer repair store and they took out the old drive, stuck a shell and USB connector on it and put in a new hard disc for me - I did have a time machine back up but also could recover files from the old disc drive that were not on the time machine.

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Since you can run from the recovery partition (as you can boot into the 4 options above), that implies it is not entirely dead.

 

My suggestion, assuming all else has failed, would be to find a friend with another mac, connect to it via thunderbolt cable, and boot yours into target disk mode. Assuming that works, you maybe able to copy off all your photos via your friends mac. You can then safely risk re-formatting your main partition and re-installing your mac via disk utility and re-install OSX (options 4 and 2 in your list)..

 

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH19021?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

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Oh Ian, a lesson learned I think, get a wireless hard drive and use Time Machine as any electronic device, PC, Mac, tablet etc etc can fail like this....

 

I personally would do nothing if you can, if I was closer I would swap the HD (if possible) or set it up to boot from an external drive, then hopefully we could get all the data off the drive in your machine. Most decent places, even God forbid the dreaded PCWorld should be able to retrieve everything mate so don't fret if there is anything you really don't want to loose.

 

But please please from now on back up to Time Machine in some way even cloud and don't store pictures or files you don't want to loose on the same drive as your OS ;)

 

Edit - above advice very good, maybe Ady can help with another device and thunderbolt cable? He has all the tech know how and is closer to you than any of the rest of us :shrug:

Edited by spursmaddave
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Thanks Dave and Chris, I didn't even know what "time machine" was till now. Why didn't they just call it "BACKUP" instead of calling it after Back to the Future!!

 

Fecking mac twollop!!

 

I'll take it to work, someone is bound to help out, esp one of the techy guys.

 

Thing is I have a spare 1tb drive that I bought and was going to take all important things off. The pics are part way through being transfered from my 500g to the 1tb.

 

Hate computers lol

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Thanks Dave and Chris, I didn't even know what "time machine" was till now. Why didn't they just call it "BACKUP" instead of calling it after Back to the Future!!

 

Fecking mac twollop!!

 

I'll take it to work, someone is bound to help out, esp one of the techy guys.

 

Thing is I have a spare 1tb drive that I bought and was going to take all important things off. The pics are part way through being transfered from my 500g to the 1tb.

 

Hate computers lol

 

What did you think Time Machine was, a portable Mac Tardis :lol:

 

Anyone with a modicum of tech savvy will be able to retrieve anything you want and re-install the OSX.

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Thanks Dave and Chris, I didn't even know what "time machine" was till now. Why didn't they just call it "BACKUP" instead of calling it after Back to the Future!!

 

Fecking mac twollop!!

 

I'll take it to work, someone is bound to help out, esp one of the techy guys.

 

Thing is I have a spare 1tb drive that I bought and was going to take all important things off. The pics are part way through being transfered from my 500g to the 1tb.

 

Hate computers lol

 

What did you think Time Machine was, a portable Mac Tardis :lol:

 

Anyone with a modicum of tech savvy will be able to retrieve anything you want and re-install the OSX.

 

I thought it was the world clock, "time" machine :lol:

 

Thing is time machine popped up the other day and wondered what it was. Thought of its a backup thing then I'll do it, but first remove all the pics as I didn't want to back them up in this fashion. Wish I had now :dry:

 

There's a guy at work in IT who's a super mac geek. I'll have a chat with him.

 

Cheers :)

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