Mac operating systems has its own set of system files, configuration files, system preferences, library files etc and all these files are very important in terms of proper functioning of the system. If due to virus attack, sudden system shut down or any such reason, any of these critical system files gets deleted or corrupted, then Mac OS X fails to boot leaving all your data in the hard drive inaccessible.
In such a situation of data loss or inaccessibility, you have to access & restore the data from a valid backup, failing to which the case will seem more serious and you have opt for any efficient Mac recovery utility to recover the data back.
In a Mac OS X based machine, the directory '/system' stores all the system related files, such as library files, preferences etc., necessary for the system to function properly. The user must always avoid making any changes to the content or location of this directory or else the system may not boot further and no data in the disk can be accessed.
There are a number of causes that may lead to the corruption, deletion or misplacing of the '/system' directory. Some of the most common reasons can be as below:
Virus or Malware intrusion: These can corrupt the content of the /system directory, can delete the link to the directory or even can remove the directory altogether.
Sudden/improper shutdown: Sometimes, if the Mac machine gets shuts down unexpectedly following any severe power surge, there happens corruption to the file system and many system files.
Software/hardware malfunction: Many times, any software/hardware contradiction results in the operating system malfunction which may trigger the corruption or damage of the '/System' directory.
Whatever be the reason behind, it is your valuable data in the drive, which is the major reason to worry and in the above situation, you can try to repair/replace the corrupted directory by using the operating system installation disk. However, the best possible way to resolve the issue is to make a fresh installation of the operating system. In such as case, you need to restore your data from the backup, failing to the same may propel you to look out for any good Mac data recovery software.
