What used to be a perfect build won't boot anymore, please help!

[gargamel778]

Hi guys,

I have an HP ProBook 4330s with Mountain Lion installed for several months now (recently updated to 10.8.3), thanks to the great help from this community, so far I've found answers without asking!

Some specs:

Probook 4330s
Core i7-2620M (originally i3)
8GB (2x Kingston KVR1333D3S9/4G)
240GB Corsair Neutron SSD
ML 10.8.3 installed as the only OS (1 GPT volume, Journalised)


This used to be a perfect build until several hours ago. The computer behaved sluggishly, the Finder was stuck showing me the spinning beach ball for several minutes so I decided to reboot.

Then - poof. OS X won't boot anymore. The HP BIOS complains the HD has no OS installed.


So far, here's what I did trying to troubleshoot:
When booting using my Installer USB drive (same one I used when I originally) my installation is not shown as a choice, only the installer.

I went on and booted into the installer. Disk utility shows the drive and the volume. I verified and repaired both the drive and the volume. From what I have seen from the terminal, my files seem to be intact.



I don't recall doing any major change recently. This is a very stable system which I hardly turn off, put to sleep or need to restart.

BTW: this machine is being backed up regularly using TM to my Mac Mini running ML Server. However, I don't even know if I can use these backups - I have yet to understand if TM is usable for hacks.


I'd greatly appreciate anyone's assistance in solving this matter. I would like to refrain as much as possible from doing a complete reinstallation.

 

[RehabMan]

Hi guys,

I have an HP ProBook 4330s with Mountain Lion installed for several months now (recently updated to 10.8.3), thanks to the great help from this community, so far I've found answers without asking!

Some specs:

Probook 4330s
Core i7-2620M (originally i3)
8GB (2x Kingston KVR1333D3S9/4G)
240GB Corsair Neutron SSD
ML 10.8.3 installed as the only OS (1 GPT volume, Journalised)


This used to be a perfect build until several hours ago. The computer behaved sluggishly, the Finder was stuck showing me the spinning beach ball for several minutes so I decided to reboot.

Then - poof. OS X won't boot anymore. The HP BIOS complains the HD has no OS installed.

Failing hard disk? Or otherwise corrupt?

So far, here's what I did trying to troubleshoot:
When booting using my Installer USB drive (same one I used when I originally) my installation is not shown as a choice, only the installer.

I went on and booted into the installer. Disk utility shows the drive and the volume. I verified and repaired both the drive and the volume. From what I have seen from the terminal, my files seem to be intact.

If it actually did "repairs" that is a bad sign.

I don't recall doing any major change recently. This is a very stable system which I hardly turn off, put to sleep or need to restart.

BTW: this machine is being backed up regularly using TM to my Mac Mini running ML Server. However, I don't even know if I can use these backups - I have yet to understand if TM is usable for hacks.


I'd greatly appreciate anyone's assistance in solving this matter. I would like to refrain as much as possible from doing a complete reinstallation.

TM can be used for restores, I've done it once but forgot the procedure. When I did it last summer, I'd almost never used a Mac before, so it must have been obvious. Poke around in the environment you get when you boot OS X Installer w/ Unibeast and maybe you'll run into something.

 

[gargamel778]

Failing hard disk? Or otherwise corrupt?


If it actually did "repairs" that is a bad sign.



TM can be used for restores, I've done it once but forgot the procedure. When I did it last summer, I'd almost never used a Mac before, so it must have been obvious. Poke around in the environment you get when you boot OS X Installer w/ Unibeast and maybe you'll run into something.

Thanks for your replay RM.

How do you suggest I check the drive for errors? On the BIOS's HDD test utility it comes out fine. The SMART figures are normal. I'll try to connect this drive to one of my other hacks, just to rule out a controller problem on the laptop.


Regarding TM - may I emphasize that my TM destination is networked? (I.e., on my ML server), I doubt I can have a working network during the OSX installer phase, correct me if I'm wrong?

Or is it possible to copy the sparsebundle backup file from my server to an external HD and use it for restore from the installer?

Thanks

 

[RehabMan]

Thanks for your replay RM.

How do you suggest I check the drive for errors? On the BIOS's HDD test utility it comes out fine. The SMART figures are normal. I'll try to connect this drive to one of my other hacks, just to rule out a controller problem on the laptop.

May not be a "bad drive" as far as hardware. May have been a corrupt file system which can happen with bad software, incorrect and sudden power loss, etc.

Regarding TM - may I emphasize that my TM destination is networked? (I.e., on my ML server), I doubt I can have a working network during the OSX installer phase, correct me if I'm wrong?

That makes it a bit more complicated. Mine is to external USB that works from the OS X Installer fine (I can also get network during installer too, but that depends on your hardware and your willingness to customize what Unibeast gives you).

Or is it possible to copy the sparsebundle backup file from my server to an external HD and use it for restore from the installer?

Probably. If you can figure out what needs to be copied...

 

[gargamel778]

May not be a "bad drive" as far as hardware. May have been a corrupt file system which can happen with bad software, incorrect and sudden power loss, etc.



That makes it a bit more complicated. Mine is to external USB that works from the OS X Installer fine (I can also get network during installer too, but that depends on your hardware and your willingness to customize what Unibeast gives you).



Probably. If you can figure out what needs to be copied...

Thanks again for trying to help.

Following up on this thickening plot "saga" -

I took the SSD and connected it to one of my desktop hacks (a Z68 mobo with an i3-3225 CPU). Chimera showed up after POST and the disk started booting without complaint, only to cough a KP after several seconds. Naturally, I didn't intend to debug this on that machine - only to check whether the drive is recognized and bootable.. It still is, at least sort of... Which I find weird.

I then took an older 250gb Spinning drive and installed it in the Probook. I tried restoring from TM using Unibeast installer over the network (it found the TM on my ML Server without any trouble). The process seemed to start but stalled after several seconds, requiring a restart of the computer. It may have something to do with the recovery partition. I decided to take a different approach.
I installed a fresh copy of ML on the spinning HDD. After completing the installation and running the ProBook installer I started the process of restoration from TM using the Migration Assistant.

[May I say that spinning drives are no fun! I haven't used one as a system drive for some time and forgot how slooow these things are!]

I'll see what I come up with after this migration is finished. If the outcome seems satisfactory - i.e. my documents, applications and settings will be restored - I'll go for the same process again on the SSD.

Otherwise - I will try copying the TM backup sparsebundle file from my server to an external disk and try restoration again using the Unibeast installer. I have a feeling it'll come up with a more "genuine" copy of my old working system.

 

[gargamel778]

A quick update - I have managed to do a complete restore of my system from my Time Machine backup.

Originally, when trying to restore I got the error "An error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination disk. Restart your computer, and then try restoring again."

Digging deep around this issue showed that this error appears also on real Macs, and is related to the Restore partition. My Hack ProBook has an OS X Restore Partition created by some script I ran in the past. The only reason I'd want this restore partition is for the Find My Mac - it requires it to work.

So, to make a long story short -

I reinstalled a fresh copy of ML on my SSD using Unibeast, ran that Restore partition creation script, rebooted into the Unibeast installer and tried TM restore. It succeeded in bringing my system to the last backup - 3 days ago.

Conclusion #1 - One must never underestimate the need for PROPER backups, especially with our rather fragile systems.

Conclusion #2 - Time Machine backups are OK for hacks, but from now on I'm going to clone the SSD to an external HDD on a regular basis using CCC. This whole story was too much of a hassle and a bad trip... Nevertheless I'm very happy to get my system working fine again.


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