Long story short: my Air crashed and won't boot (spinning grey wheel, then shuts back down). It seems I may need to reinstall the OS... so I've decided to just go for Snow Leopard.

Problem: the installation needs 5 GB free, and my HD is full!

I want to delete Unreal Tournament 2004. It's an app package 17GB in size.

Questions:

1. Should I boot up with Cmd-S or Cmd-V? (I think the machine and HD are physically OK.)

2. What's the proper, safe syntax for deleting an entire app package and its contents? (There are spaces in the name FWIW.)

TIA!

Ugh. It gets worse.

Disk Utility (via Remote Disc) sees the drive and volume OK, but refuses to repair: invalid node structure. (SMART status is fine.)

I followed Apple's single-user directions, but cannot get past /sbin/fscky -fy:

...
** Checking Catalog File
disk0s2: I/O Error.
Invalid Node Structure
(4, 888)
** Volume check failed.
/dev/rdisk0s2 (hfs) EXITED WITH SIGNAL 8



This is an Air with no DVD drive (and getting that plus DiskWarrior would cost $200 and might not even help).

MOST of my stuff is backed up (the vital stuff) but a lot of non-vital but still wanted stuff is currently not. So just wiping the drive is not an option.




Are there any command-line commands that might help me here? (A little cd-ing around tells me my stuff is OK... as near as I can tell. cd and ls are about the extent of my know-how :p ) Dare I try fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk0s2 which I found on macosxhints? Dangerous?

Can I delete the (4, 888) file?

Can I find out what that file is (so I know to restore it from backup)?

Can I use the command line to clone my (corrupt?) drive to a USB, ethernet or airport volume? (I have all 3.) Or at least clone certain files? (DVR recordings, downloaded games I never checked out yet, etc.)



I hope I don't have to try to extract the HD physically from my Air.

(This happened when attempting to update to iTunes 9 as it happens. Or rather, when that hung, I Safe Booted, ran YASU, and then tried again. The update to 9 went fine that time, but when I rebooted the machine wouldn't start--in Safe mode or otherwise.)

DW would probably fix it. If you can beg, borrow, or steal a current copy on a bootable external drive, I'd do that. I believe cloning would also copy the bad node structure. DU will clone your drive via the Restore option. I wonder if cloning it to a larger drive would cure it.

I'm in the process of moving 250 GB of archived files from an external HD to Time Capsule (dozens of hours?) and then I can reformat it to boot the Air, back up the less vital stuff, and run DW. Better to spend $100 than $200--at least I won't need the DVD drive.

The process will take all weekend. It's like one of those sliding number puzzles with one block free. I have to keep moving the same huge masses of data around, often wirelessly, to have enough room.

Can you use the USB 2.0 port to speed things up?

I wish I knew more about Unix commands, but I haven't taken that course at college yet, so can't offer any advice. Keeping fingers crossed that you can save your data, though!

I'm really sad that Apple did away with Firewire on their new MacBooks, because that used to be a lifesaver at times like this.

As far as I know, the data is recovered. (Carbon Copy Cloner's log shows only a single file that failed to copy--if I read it right. Nothing important.)

However, I lost the $100 gamble on DiskWarrior. The drive cannot be repaired. DW reports physical damage even though the SMART status is OK. Should I trust that?

So the next (expensive) question is: where can I buy a replacement 80 GB HD for a first-gen Air? (I know they're a more obscure kind than later Airs: they use a ZIF connection of some kind.) What kind of drive should I even be searching for? Info is surprisingly scarce. (I found takeapart instructions though.)

I'd even consider an SSD if the cost wasn't much different, but I doubt that.

Hard Drive.

I didn't realize they're 3600 RPM.

I think this one would work too. A little quicker.

Did DW give the warning "speed inhibited by disk malfunction?" That almost always means hardware problems, only one time that I saw that did repartitioning take care of it, the rest were actually bad.

Not sure about the SSDs. I'll check but I'm sure they're much more.

WoW 3600 , I would have thought 5400 at the lease

Is that for the heat ? or because of the small size of the drive , the new ones comes with the 4200 now

Just a guess but I'd say price, probably $5 cheaper and battery life on the first generation. Probably not heat so much.

Humm I guess your right

Well 5 bucks more , errr maybe not on a 1,500 machine Apple can pass that along but on a cheap arse Dell the 5 bucks becomes a big deal

The battery I agree makes more sense.
Apple seems to rather dumb down and then ""brag"" about how much battery life you get <-- seems that way to me ?