You should always keep a fresh install of OS X around. Any external disk, or large Thumbdrive can do this. OS X can suddenly decide not to startup, th...

The OS is pretty old FYI. The 'About this Mac' menu item is greyed out, so I don't know exactly how old, but the button styles seem like it might be L...

I don't have a 'clean' OS lying around on a separate disk... If the DW recovery volume should be able to do it, I will try that again. I'll also check...

I think I'm in a chicken-and-egg situation here. I can't fix the directory on the volume with DiskWarrior, unless I start 'clean' which I take to mean...

Oh, I didn't realize that you thought I should rebuild the directory with DiskWarrior... Here is what I tried with DiskWarrior: After unmounting th...

Still won't mount, except in read-only mode. When you say 'clean' startup, what do you mean, exactly? Any other ideas?

A little more info: I tried using diskwarrior to mount the volume, but it won't mount. Gives error code 4902. As an aside, while it is attempting t...

The volume was mounted, but only in read-only. I have tried unmounting and re-mounting, but now the volume is saying that it's "waiting for mount" ...