Recovery HD disk repair failed

iMac very slow. Did recovery HD disk repair that failed with error to format and reload OS. Doing full Time Machine restore from external HD. If that fails what are the steps to (1) format drive, (2) restore OSX and I restore all programs and files?
Thanks
SS

Disk Utility in recovery partition...: Apple Support Communities

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Disk repair 'failed'

when i tried to repair my internal HD, disk repair fails. it found out that 'Reserved fields in the catalog record have incorrect data' do I need to format the drive and reinstall 10.4.11, or can this be fixed?

You could do that, but a simple reformat may not fix the low-level
issue that may exist on the hard disk drive; while a zero-overwrite
option Disk Utility provides may help, & also will defragment HDDs.
Of course, there is a chance a third-party disk utility could be able
to attempt and be successful in a repair where the native OS X
Disk Utility may not be fully adapted to these kinds of cures. For
some kinds of issues, Disk Warrior has been proven worthwhile;
so has (in some instances) Drive Genius, and TechTool Pro. The
version of these third-party disk tools has to match and be made
for the OS X version the repair is being done on.
There are times where a third party disk utility may make the
matter worse, so you have to really be ready and it does help
to have previous experience with the tools & how they work.
A crash course is never an expected way to learn, it happens.
If the computer is getting old, you may end up replacing the
hard disk drive, as they do wear out and work hard in a
portable computer. The cost per GB has come way down.
There are times when a hard disk drive is not readable and
the computer won't start from it, yet data may be recovered
from it in a few ways; one of them is FireWire Target Disk
Mode. Another may be to put the failed disk in an external
enclosure and attempt a repair at a later time, and have a
good hard disk drive in your computer.
If you backup your computer's contents and get comfortable
in making clones and using utilities, that is a good path to know.
In any event...
Good luck & happy computing!

Disk repair failed how can I back up my files when I can't boot from the start up disk

When disk repair fails, and I can't boot from the hard drive how can I get to my files to back them up. I have a seagate 1 TB connected to the USB port.

Perubbit,
which model MacBook Pro do you have, and which version of OS X is installed on it?

Is anyone able to help with a Mavericks to Yosemite upgrade error: Disk Repair Failed?

I upgrade my Mavericks OS on my MacBook Pro to Yosemite this morning and it's stuck on "Installing on Hard Disk" but then produces errors in the Cmd+L log such as:
+ Disk Repair failed. Will attempt to wait for kextcache
And then it fails suggesting I restart or change to another startup Disk, but when I do, it says "You can't change the start-up disk to the selected disk. Startup disk could not gather enough information on the selected disk."
Does anyone know of any resolution?
Kindest Regards and pleads
@ijeanes

I figured out my problem. If yall are having the same issue, don't use (Quick) format, use the complete format option.

Disk repair failed after using osx with hibernated windows/bootcamp with macdrive

hi,
i just realized i did something really,really stupid.
I forgot I just closed the lid of my MBP the last time I used windows/bootcamp (instead of shutting it down) and that triggered hibernation.
The next time I powered my MBP on, OSX startet automatically and I opened some of the same files that "were already open" in the hibernated windows (on osx main/boot partition, using macdrive in windows).
That (or resuming the hibernated windows later) probably led to some data corruption that prevents the osx volume from booting and neither the automatical repairing during booting nor disk utility (external hdd or recovery partition) is able to repair it. (not sure if there is any difference).
Booting in verbose mode shows the file names that were double-opened during repair attempts.
After booting osx from an external HDD, Disk utility fails mounting the main osx volume straight away, but succeeds with mounting it after a failed repair attempt.
I only have read acces then, though.
bootcamp partition is still working fine, btw
1. I wonder if it is possible to gain write access somehow and if deleting just those "double-opened" files/the containing folder (which is saved on dropbox btw, so I really wouldnt mind deleting them/it) would solve the whole problem or if i really have to reformat everything and spend 10+ hours to revert everything to the state before the data corruption. ?
2. if I have to reformat + reinstall, using migration assistant and the corrupted volume as source isn't a great idea, i guess? are there any options to exclude some specific folders of the user folders?
3. will the bootcamp partition work after reinstalling osx or do i have to winclone-it somewhere? checkdisk says the volume is OK btw.
many thanks!

Hi 3tc, thnx for a tip.
One more question - did procedure solve also "file already in use" problem on win bootcamp?
thnx

Disk repair failed / should I reformat my drive / how to format and restore

I have a MacBook Pro late 2011 model and upgraded to Yosemite. The performance on my MB is ok, but just out of curiousity I ran a disk verify, and was told I needed to reboot, hold down CMD / R and run disk repair. I did so and the repair failed. I was promoted to backup and reformat/restore.
Now, I do backup everything using time machine (not sure though if Parallels image is backed up). I do not however have any install disks for Mac OS.
My questions:
1. Should I even bother reformatting my HD?
2. How do I go about formatting the HD and then re-installing the OS and all of my apps, particularly given that I have no DVD
Any thoughts are appreciated. Thank you

If you have extra external HDD, make clone backup with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!, then,
1) boot from external clone backup drive.
2) reformat internal HDD.
3) restore from clone backup drive with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!.

Invalid key length, disk repair fails

i am getting this disk error after macbookpro locks up, repeatable.
invalid key length
volume check failed
error: filesystem verify or repair failed.
this is the boot volume of the macbookpro running os 10.5.6. been running well for months, used everyday all day, then this am the finder and all other apps lock up, no application crash, just all hanging one after another. hard reset gets system back but it recurs in short order.
i ran diskutil from the software restore dvdrom, three times. same results (error text above) each time. only option barring other solutions is to reinstall the system and restore data from a time machine bu.
never seen this before. any ideas?
thanks.

thanks for hint on diskwarrior. i am running it but it is encountering quite a pile, i've never seen a problem like this. the sys log on the system that's running dw is full of:
App: disk14s2: Read I/O error for block range 324751 to 324751
Jan 27 00:49:29 server [0x0-0xba4ba4].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[9656]: DiskWarrior App: Disk sector 324751 is bad. (JSC)
Jan 27 00:49:29 server [0x0-0xba4ba4].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[9656]: DiskWarrior App: disk14s2: Read I/O error for block range 324752 to 324752
Jan 27 00:49:29 server [0x0-0xba4ba4].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[9656]: DiskWarrior App: Disk sector 324752 is bad. (JSC)
Jan 27 00:49:29 server [0x0-0xba4ba4].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[9656]: DiskWarrior App: disk14s2: Read I/O error for block range 324753 to 324753
Jan 27 00:49:29 server [0x0-0xba4ba4].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[9656]: DiskWarrior App: Disk sector 324753 is bad. (JSC)
Jan 27 00:49:29 server [0x0-0xba4ba4].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[9656]: DiskWarrior App: disk14s2: Read I/O error for block range 324754 to 324754
Jan 27 00:49:29 server [0x0-0xba4ba4].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[9656]: DiskWarrior App: Disk sector 324754 is bad. (JSC)
Jan 27 00:49:29 server [0x0-0xba4ba4].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[9656]: DiskWarrior App: disk14s2: Read I/O error for block range 324755 to 324755
Jan 27 00:49:29 server [0x0-0xba4ba4].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[9656]: DiskWarrior App: Disk sector 324755 is bad. (JSC)
Jan 27 00:49:29 server [0x0-0xba4ba4].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[9656]: DiskWarrior App: disk14s2: Read I/O error for block range 324756 to 324756
Jan 27 00:49:29 server [0x0-0xba4ba4].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[9656]: DiskWarrior App: Disk sector
this does not bode well. i have no idea what has caused this disk to totally dump on me. almost feels like a virus -- it was such a sudden and complete meltdown with no precursor whatsoever. i am running dw on it in target mode but seems like i might have to frag it. crazy.
thanks for further thoughts if anyone has any.
Message was edited by: dtich

Start up problem and Disk Repair failed...

I recently did an update on firefox and an update on adobe flash. Right after I did those updates, I turned off my computer and couldn't restart!!!
First time I tried to boot, I got to the apple icon with wheels around it. But it just set there like that for several minutes. So I forced it to shot down.
After that, every time I tried to restart I came to a grey screen with a small folder appeared in the center and a flashing question mark...
I then followed instructions in this link: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417
It failed to safe boot and disk repair.
I received the following message while doing the disk repair:
"First Aid failed. Disk Utility stopped repairing disk3 because the following error was encountered. The underlying task reported failure on exit."
"Repairing disk for disk3
checking HFS Plus Volume
Catalog file entry not found for extent
Volume check failed
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)
Repair attempted on 1 volume
0 HFS volumes repaired
1 volume could not be repaired"
Can this G5 still survive without changing a HD? Could you please help on this issue? Many many many many thanks!!!

If it's just data corruption, erasing the drive will fix the issue. If it's a physical problem with the drive, then no; you will have to replace the drive.
The next thing to try is starting up from your Mac OS X installation disc (for the currently installed system release); insert disc and restart while holding down the C key.
When you get to the first Installer screen, go up to the menu bar and select to run Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. In the sidebar, select the internal drive; select the drive and not the volume indented under the drive. Go to the Erase tab. Name the volume +Macintosh HD+ and set the format type to +Mac OS Extended (Journaled)+. Then erase, which will re-partition and reformat the drive. This will obviously erase any existing data on the drive.
If the drive is physically OK, this process should complete in less than one minute. If it does, quit Disk Utility to go back to Installer. Run a standard installation on the blank drive.
If the erase process errors out or stalls, you probably have a faulty hard drive.
If the erase process completes successfully, but the subsequent Mac OS X installation stalls (or takes forever) or fails with error, please post back.

Disk repair fail

I just got my laptop back from the shop (the logic board failed) and put my bigger hard drive back in and came to find out that the computer won't boot from that hard drive (it works fine on the other hd). I have run disk utility and it says my drive is bad and can't be repaired. I should mention I have a partition on my hd (but it isn't necessary to keep it). I know I need to reformat the drive and put everything back on from my last time machine backup. The only problem is, when I tried it said there wasn't enough free space left. There seem to be a few different ways to do this. Any help you guys have would be so much appreciated! I have no idea what to do here...
Thanks in advance

What does Disk Utility actually say is wrong with the drive, ScarlettTrinity?
Some sorts of problems can be repaired by other software like DiskWarrior. Some problems can't be repaired reliably at all, even by reformatting. Without knowing what the actual problem is that Disk Utility says you have it is hard to give you good advice.
If your old drive was nearly full anyway, you may be better off simply replacing it with a larger one. You should aim to keep at least 20% free space on your HD at all times for best performance and reliability, and if you are already below this then it will clearly fill up all too soon anyway.
Cheers
Rod

IMac Won't Boot - Grey Loading Bar - Disk Repair Fail

My 3 month old 27" iMac (late 2013) running Mavericks will not boot up. It was smooth sailing till I'm listening to music and my iMac starts slowing down and freezing. It was so bad I had to hard restart. After I booted up the problem continued. I ran Disk Utility and it told me to boot to Recovery and repair my disk. In Recovery I'm told that my drive can't be repaired and that I need to reset/restore it completely and I should back up all my important data. I restart to move some data over to an external HDD but instead all I get when I restart is the grey apple logo and a grey loading bar. When the bar is filled my computer shuts off. I'm not terribly concerned about my data because I run Time Machine and use a few cloud services but I do want to get this problem solved so I can get back to work. Please tell me there is a better solution than taking my iMac to the Apple Store 3 hours away.
Also let me just say that I have tried resetting SMC and have already looked through the Apple Support page for the grey loading bar. I'm just looking for some advice or some untried tricks.
Thanks

have already looked through the Apple Support page for the grey loading bar.
Did you try the suggestions mentioned in the KB Article? Tried the suggestions mentioned in the "More like this" section over here?-------------->
My 3 month old 27" iMac
Please tell me there is a better solution than taking my iMac to the Apple Store 3 hours away.
You have 2 options since you are still under warranty.
#1 - CALL AC to see if they will send a repair tech to your home since you have an iMac.
#2 - Check to see if there are any AASPs closer. AS are not the only places that repairs Macs.
AASP
International AASP’s & Other Services
AASP's Outside of the USA
How to find your nearest Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP)
GOOD LUCK!

Command-R Disk Repair Failed

My son's MacBook Pro hung and would not reboot. White screen, then turned off.
Command-R repair got many, many errors - then finally said:
Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many files as possible, reformat the drive and restore your backed-up files.
Wouldn't you know it, my son has no backups other than the ones on this damaged disk. Before I format the drive and reinstall Mavericks, how do I get his backup zip file (and as many other data files as I can) off of the damaged HDD and onto my USB flash drive? I do not see any way to mount the drive and copy stuff off...???
-John

I got a cable. The laptop boots into Target Mode, I think. I see a very large FireWire screen saver floating around the screen.
The iMac does not show the MBP on the desktop, but it is visible in the SHARED section of the Finder sidebar. When I click on it, it attempts to connect but after a while my iMac give me a message saying:
OS X can't repair the disk.
You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can 't save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can.
and Finder says "Connection Failed"
Now what?

Macbook pro will not restart after failed disk repair

This has happened twice in one week.
A routine disk verify was performed and returned errors. I reboot into the recovery drive and run disk utility. To validate the first finding, I run disk verify again. Same failure. Then I run repair disk. Disk repair fails. After this, the system will not boot. Now, even the disk utility 'sees' the main particitian, but it's grayed out. when i go to retore Lion, the main partition is not seen at all.
The kicker is that two different hard drives are involved. The first is a 500 gb Western Digital and the second is a 750 gb seagate. System is a mid-2009 MBP with 8gb ram.
I performed a full system backup this weekend but do not have it with me and will not have access to it until this weekend. Any help out there? Or am I just screwed?

Oh by the way, a mid-2009 MacBook Pro would not have 10.4.6. In fact it might not even have 10.6.4. 10.6.4 didn't get prebundled until June 15, 2010. So where you get 10.4.6 on your signature, that confused people as to what you really have.

Can I backup to Time Capsule after disk repair has failed? How can I save my files?

Downloaded and installed most recent edition of Mountain Lion OSX. All of a sudden, drive is full. Delete photos, unused user accounts. MacBook freezes. Shut it down with power button. Now - drive verified. There are issues. Disk repair has failed - says backup whatever files I can and do a restore.
Can I backup to brand new, never synced Time Capsule? All of the photos of my baby, wedding and the rest of the last five years of my life is in the balance.
Help!

If you want to preserve the data on the boot drive, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data, you can skip this step.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is unable to fully boot. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
1. Boot into Recovery (command-R at startup) or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) Launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in the support article linked below, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.”
How to back up and restore your files
2. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, boot the non-working Mac in target disk mode by holding down the key combination command-T at the startup chime. Connect the two Macs with a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable. The internal drive of the machine running in target mode will mount as an external drive on the other machine. Copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
How to use and troubleshoot FireWire target disk mode
3. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.

Disk repair or verify failed

This happens more often than not. I can't figure out what the issue is. At first I thought it was Safari, because that would quit on me. But when I reboot my trackpad won't work (arrow goes up and down, but not sideways) until I reboot AGAIN..and then sometimes, only sometimes, the Disk Utility window pops up to give me the options of restoring, repairing, etc. I don't have a back up and the last time I restored Lion it took up all my space on my HD. (I thought it would just replace what I had already). When I click on verify or repair, I get this:
Verifying partition map for “TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF Media”
Checking prerequisites
Checking the partition list
Checking for an EFI system partition
Checking the EFI system partition’s size
Checking the EFI system partition’s file system
Checking all HFS data partition loader spaces
Checking Core Storage Physical Volume partitions
Checking storage system
Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting
Error: Storage system verify or repair failed.
Verifying and repairing partition map for “TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF Media”
Checking prerequisites
Checking the partition list
Checking for an EFI system partition
Checking the EFI system partition’s size
Checking the EFI system partition’s file system
Checking all HFS data partition loader spaces
Reviewing boot support loaders
Checking Core Storage Physical Volume partitions
Checking storage system
Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map
Error: Storage system verify or repair failed.
Quite frustrating in that the computer is only 2 years old...I had a PC that lasted me 12 years. Not loving Apple so much anymore.

In case you can't read your own writing, I assume you noticed the problem is with a TOSHIBA hard drive which is not made by Apple. Yours needs some repair or replacing.
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions - Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported then click on the Repair Permissions button. When the process is completed, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
If the above doesn't help then you can purchase and try using Disk Warrior to try repairing the drive.
If the drive is permanently corrupted then you can try reformatting the drive:
Install or Reinstall Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion from Scratch
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Erase the hard drive:
1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the
      left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on
      the Security button and set the Zero Data option to one-pass. Click on
      the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks and click on the Install button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
            because it is three times faster than wireless.
if none of the above work then replace the drive.

My Macintosh HD partition is damaged and the disk utility failed to repair it

I cannot boot anymore after I tried to repair the disk with Disk Utility after my Mac became very slow.
This is the second time it happened to me in a week with the same symptoms. When I try to boot, I see a gray screen and the computer just stops
When I use the recovery partition, the disk utility fails to repair the disk, stopping after failing to fix the catalog file.
I started to use TM to backup my data after erasing the disk and reinstalling Mountain Lion but I wonder if my hard drive is damaged because the same problem happened twice. (Thanks TM for keeping my data safe this time)
Any advice or ways to fix that once and for all ?
PS : The worst is that i can still boot with Bootcamp to Windows, not very useful though

rpignard wrote:
Any advice or ways to fix that once and for all ?
Since your Recovery HD and Windows partition work fine, the problem is located in your Macintosh HD partition and I very highly suspect it's bad/failing sectors that's to blame for your troubles.
This can sometimes occur if the computer was moved while the hard drive was in operation, else sectors fail all by themselves, or if the drive is having mechanical issues, which you problem will continue no matter what you do.
This time when you use Recovery > Disk Utility to erase the Macintosh HD partition, use the middle secure erase option, not the far left or right options (the right will work also just take a really long time)
What your doing is with the middle secure erase option is called a "Zero" write, which Disk Utility will write 0's over all the bits in that partition. When it's done it will read it back for confirmation and when it does so, any bits that are failing will be mapped off by the drive. Hopefully this will resolve the issue without needing a drive replacement.
Once that is completed, reinstall OS X from Recovery, any programs from original sources, files only from backup and your problems hopefully should disappear.
What happens is if your data gets corrupted on the boot drive by failing sectors, it gets transfered to TimeMachine (or to bootable clones) and when you restore your right back to square one. So it's important to rule out that possibility with original installs of OS X and third party programs.
If your problems continue, then it's possibly a problem with third party at boot kernel extension files, (and the catalog problem was yet another one) so to solve this you need to make sure all your third party software is updated and works with your current OS X version.
A trick is, if you get gray screen at boot time, is to hold the Shift Key while booting the computer, this will disable a lot of things and allow you to fix the third party software issue.
What I suggest you do is have multiple backup systems, including hold option key bootable clones, this way if your TM drive gets corrupted you can go back in time to a saved state on the clone, restore that and then your files from the TM drive.
Most commonly used backup methods

Recovery HD disk repair failed

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