She posted it wasn't the primary partition (that holds the OS) that went down, but the secondary storage partition.salvajeuno wrote:bb's recommendation is by far the safest procedure. I don't use Apple but I did some searching on Apple's help forum and found this:bipolar bear wrote:Do you have external drives to recover the data to? Whatever software you use, don't try to recover it to the laptop directly. Ideally, image the drive to one external HDD so you at least have a safe copy of what is currently on the laptop.
Then recover from the laptop onto a second external HDD.
ProSoft software is not free. If you want to use free software, then use 2 external HDD's and try it. Worst case scenario it fails but you still have your original image on an external HDD to try something else with.
Good luck.
But in general, I would say it's best to do the work as a secondary HD on another system. Should be OK to load the program onto the OS partition and scan the secondary (storage partition) though.