total noob here,
I have a late 2008 Macbook Pro that is finally (almost) dead.
I've managed to use terminal in recovery mode to copy the contents of my User folder to an external drive using the cp command.
However, after many hours copying away, the mac is totally frozen.
No mouse response, no trackpad, no keyboard, the computer doesn't sleep when i close the screen, it's stuck.
My uneducated guess is that it reached the damaged part of the HD and can't copy any more data.
During the copy process it did hang for a few seconds from time to time but not for long periods.
It would also go to sleep every once in a while, but whould wake up easily and imediately continue copying. It also slept all night and, again, woke up easily this morning and carried on where it had left off.
It's been totaly frozen for the last several hours.
I already had 90% of my data backed up but need to salvage the last few folders on the mac before laying it to rest.
What should I do?
Can I long press the power button to turn it off without making things worse?
Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
Best Answer
If it's completely frozen, unless you have remote access via SSH and can start a new session, there's only one thing you can do: restart it. You'll have to continue the copying from where you left off – Allan 7 hours ago