Ok, so, here's the problem:

Earlier today, I went to restar my Macbook Pro, and when I restarted it, the blue screen came up , as it does jsut before login, but it never went away. So, I couldn't log in. I called Apple tech Support and they had me do an Archive Install.

I did that and it worked fine, altough I only had a gig of space left on my hard drive afterwards. This lead me to a few issues, so I had to do an erase and install after backing up my data. Now, a couple of interesting things arose from this.

Thie first is that my data totalled 73 gigs. It said I had 1 gig left on my 200 gig ahrd drive. 73 gigs for data + 13 gigs for the OS =/= 199 gigs.

So, I finally moved my data over onto a 1 tb Lacie drive.

So, now I'm sitting here, trying to do an Erase Install on my macbook, and I keep getting an error near the end of the isntal from the second disk where my computer tells me a few different things.

The current problem is that my computer is telling me the disk is damaged, something I know not to be true sicne I checked these disks before hand and they are both virtually scratch free.

The second is that it tells me it can't install to the path "/" because there's an error with it.

Please help. I need my laptop for school (film student), and I need this resolved as quickly as possible.

If you KNOW your install disc is OK, instead of erase and install, try reformatting your hard drive first, using Disk Utility on the install DVD. It's under one of the menus (don't remember which one).

Once you've reformatted, do a clean install, then migrate your data back from the external. That should fix everything.

But just because the disc doesn't have any scratches doesn't mean it's not damaged. If you d/l'ed the install disc from the web, it's possible that you got a corrupted file in there somewhere. As long as you have everything backed up, you can try to reformat and use the install disk you have, as suggested, but if you keep getting the same damaged error you might have to d/l another copy of the OS. If the install disc is legit (the one that came with your computer) then it's probably OK and the above method should fix it.

Well, I got it all installed, but for some reason, my backed up data didn't acutally back up, even though I know it did. Basically, to back up the data, you're supposed to move the /Users/ folder over to an external. Well, I did that, but now, I go back to that /Users/ folder, and none of my stuff is there.

That's just a quick and dirty way to back up your email and personal preferences, but that's not how you're "supposed" to back up.

You should be using a backup program like Time Machine (comes with Leopard) or SuperDuper Or Synchronize Pro or one of those. I can't tell you what went wrong when you copied your user folder over to the external, but if your stuff isn't there, then you're out of luck.

Once you're up and running again, the first thing you should do is make a complete backup of your drive, and keep it current. I'm sure you've heard this before, but, like they say, experience is the best teacher.

Sorry.

When you installed the external drive, did it come with Backup software ?
Maxell, Seagate and Lalacie all do.

It seems that a system extention used during start up may have become corrupt.
Happens all the time. When you ran the system disks, you basicaly wrote over the existing system that was already damaged. AND, it's also possible that you actually created TWO complete systems on your one hard drive. Thus the extra lost disk space.
When you transferred the software to your external, the damaged software went with it.
I'm afraid it's gone.

You should run the disk utility, and check to see if the INTERNAL hard drive needs repair. It may not be the system disks.
You may have to also use the Permissions Verify and repair.
The damaged software that you were using may have changed the configuration of the permissions
Install the system start up disk. When installed in the CD/DVD drive, the computer should immediately ask you if you want to restart. If it doesn't, Down in the dock is the system preferences icon. Click it. it'll open. Click on Start up disk.
( looks like a Hard Drive with a question mark on it ). click on the start up disk. NOT the internal or external drive.
click restart
The computer will reboot.
Igor the screen asking you to install software. Instead go to the top of the screen One of the pull down menu items is Disk Utility.
It'll show you a box with your System Start up Disk. Your Internal Hard Drive, and Your external drive.
Click and highlite the internal drive. Then on the right box, click on verify hard drive. If it fails run repair.
If it Passes Run repair any way.
Now select Verify permissions. It'll take a few minutes as this runs, but it will display all sorts of goodies and it'll tell you if anything is wrong. RUN repair permissions when it's done verifying.
I like to run the repair permissions TWICE

Next, in the left box, select the external drive and then run the permissions verify on the external
More than likely, you can't do a disk repair on the external. That's what the software for the external is for.
Maxtor uses the program Maxtor manager.

I can tell you that if you are using Firefox, version 3 has a problem with Java and Java applets.
Quicktime 7.5 and 7.6 also had problems
Limewire release 4. 18 has problems
You have an Ipod or Iphone ? One version of their updates was screwed up.
Itunes 8 also had problems. One issue was, it deleted your Music library !

It's highly likely that anyone or all of the above did something wrong when you did a software update aand you don't know until it catches up to you on a restart.


Hope this all helps.