Os X Disaster Recovery From Powerbook, Oh help this suxors Options

[dinofond]

I have the elusive blinking folder on boot with my power book running OS X 3.9 with a question mark. I was on the road to Denver working on a track for an artist I am engineering, I had about 7 tracks going and opened up the Sampler in Logic Pro. It froze, after waiting about a half hour I shut the notebook down. When I rebooted I was in OS X hell. I need to recover this song, I am assuming it’s a bad hard drive. I know there is a way to hook a fire wire drive up and boot the machine to do a complete backup. Before I troubleshot the notebook to see if I can fix it I need to do the data recovery. Any help with the recovery and repair would be absolutely helpful.

Thanks,

-Dino

[dinofond]

According to apples tech support database holding down the “T” key with a firewire drive connected during boot will copy a mirror of the HDD to the firewire drive. That is if your drive is going to work at all, mine did not. I did try to boot to the shell, I’m very experienced with the shell but it wouldn't boot to it. I also reset the power settings and tried to repair the disk with an OS X install disk from the same exact power book a friend owns. None were successful, it looks like my data is a goner unfortunately. I did install a new 5400 RPM HDD in the notebook, I will run the install tonight when I get home. I may send the old HDD out for a white room data recovery depending on how much it costs. Thank you everyone for your assistance, it was very helpful.