Help--Blinking Disk Disaster

J

justjane1

Registered
Hi there.

First, I want to say that I'm pretty much a novice at this, so please go easy on me.

I updated some software and firmware today, and my computer then froze and now is starting with a blinking grey disk with a question mark.

I have some new files that I was working on at that time that were pretty important but not backed up (I know, I know, I feel awful about it).

I tried to restart in safe mode to back them up and then reinstall, but while safe mode worked, the computer wouldn't recognize my external drive and froze halfway through syncing with SugarSync.

I then tried safe mode again, and it wouldn't work--I was back to blinking disc.

I tried to do my research, and I saw that reinstalling Lion without doing a wipe shouldn't have an effect on my files, so I tried to do that.

But when I tried it, there was no disc listed as something that I could reinstall Lion onto.

I have an appointment with the Apple Store tomorrow, but before that, a) is there anything else I can do, and b) am I totally screwed?

Thanks for all of your help--I really appreciate it. I have my backups from Monday, so if worse comes to worst, I've only lost a week of work, but that would still be awful.
 
Restart the computer while holding down the option key, then select recover disk and continue with the startup.
 
justjane1 said:
I tried to do my research, and I saw that reinstalling Lion without doing a wipe shouldn't have an effect on my files, so I tried to do that.

But when I tried it, there was no disc listed as something that I could reinstall Lion onto.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Reinstalling Lion on a failing HD will have an effect on your files as in possibly never seeing them again. Worse thing that can be done is stressing the drive by trying to reload the OS, but people think all computers are like Windows machines and an OS reinstall will fix everything. I rarely ever have to do OS reinstalls, so most of the time if a Mac will not boot, there is likely something wrong or the user is doing something wrong. Apple will replace your drive, but they won't do anything to get your lost files back. I know because I get referrals all the time from the Apple store for data recoveries.
 
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