Repairing internal hard drive from disk utility

Hey folks,
I need to do a repair of my internal hard drive on my PB. I understand that in order to do this, you need to boot from another disk. I cloned my hard drive using CCC to an external firewire hard drive so I can boot from the external.
So I shut down and rebooted while holding the option key but the external hard drive did not appear as a choice for which to boot. So I booted with the internal and went to the Start Up Disk icon in System Preferences. There, the external appeared so I told it to restart using it.
After restart I went to the Disk Utility to repair the internal but when I did, the "repair" button would not illuminate. I'm pretty sure I'm running off the external because when I use spotlight, it searches the external and not the internal.
Any ideas?
(I'm trying to boot off an external because I cannot find my OS X disc referenced here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6642196#6642196)

If the "repair" button does is not selectable, maybe you indeed restarted using the same INTERNAL drive by mistake? Also, it could be that your INTERNAL hard drive is beyond repair, as which happened to my PowerMac's a few weeks ago and I--which I just mentioned on another forum--had to buy Data Rescue II to salvage my data because the only solution was to reformat the drive. It was beyond repair.
I don't know if this helps, but which did you select? The disk itself? (first in the hierarchy) or the volume (second in the hierarchy... list). Sometimes that matters. But I couldn't tell you since I can't see your screen and don't know your exact issue unless I saw it or was able to test it out.
The other thing could be, are you selecting the EXTERNAL by mistake on the list of drives on the left? You can't repair the disk/volume that you are booted up from, why you would need your software discs / restore discs to do that. But since you are doing it the "workaround" way, which should work, that is my guess.
Message was edited by: Pismo 900
Just a suggestion, why not just erase and reformat the damaged drive, and then once that's over, do a "Restore" from Disk Utility, choosing your external as the SOURCE and the internal that's been reformatted, as the DESTINATION.

Similar Messages

  • Trying to install/format an INTERNAL hard drive using Disk Utility gives me "Error: -69760: Unable to write to the last block of the device".   Is that a hardware problem and what could be done about it?

    *** PLEASE NOTE*** - This is a query about an INTERNAL HDD not an external one. Thanks.
    My Mac is a late 2009 model and the current hard drive recently failed. So I bought a new one, exactly the same, albeit 750gb instead of 500gb. The HDD is a Seagate Momentus 7200. Before the my current drive failed I made a time machine back up to an external USB HDD. I've inserted the HDD into the bottom of my Mac, plugged in the USB and started my machine pressing the 'Option' ([ALT]) key. I go into Disk Utility to try and format the new HDD by creating a new partition but I keep getting the messages,
    "Error: -69760: Unable to write to the last block of the device"
    or
    "POSIX: could not allocate memory"
    This is actaully the third HDD I've tried. The first was another Seagate Momentus 7200 500gb, but this time it was a newer model (model number ended in 423AS instead of 420AS - the new one I am trying ends with 420AS, which is the same as the current HDD). I then tried a Western Digital drive but that one didn't even show up in DU. Forums and tech support are suggesting it's faults with the HDDs but surely not three in a row?
    Could this be an issue with another part of my Mac?
    Is there anything else I can do to format the HDD, have I missed a crucial step?

    Did you ever get a resolution to this issue?
    I am having that exact error with a new 512GB SSD from Crucial, in a 15" MBP mid-2010.
    I really wonder now if the stupid SATA cable could be bad - causing the initial SSD fail.  I am replacing it with the EXACT same drive, and getting that "last block" error when i partition in the GUI or from command-line.
    thanks!

  • Unable to verify or repair my external hard drive with disk utility, reason being ...

    Hello there,
    I have been facing this problem: After I started getting an error 50 error while trying to view in Quicktime player a movie which I had exported from FCPX today, I found that I was not even able to trash the movie [this was a test movie used for export and I had no need for the same].  A little while later when I opened FCPX, I found this message pop up:
    Got a little worried and then tried to verify and repair my hard drives using disk utility, but I could neither verify nor repair the disk.  What should I do now?

    Hello Klaus,
    I think I have been able to overcome the problem/s.
    I have been using my Seagate 2 TB drive [2 USB] with a FW adapter and was using FW connectivity for the past several months without any problems. About 2 months ago I added a 2 TB Lacie, FW, to my workflow and this EHD was daisychained to the Seagate. Had been facing no problem with this arrangement until today.
    Now let me try to tell you what I had done:
    I ejected the Seagate drive with the intention of reconnecting it again. But, no, when I tried to reconnect, this message came up:
    After several attempts, I did this, connected the Lacie by FW to the FW port on the Mac and connected the Seagate by 2 USB. Was I glad to see my Seagate HD icons shining in all their glory on my desktop! I utilised the services of disk utility and was informed that these prodigal sons were absolutely fine.
    I also tried to do this: empty the trash. Was I happy to hear the sound of files being cast out?
    Well, well, at least I will be able to get some peaceful sleep now! I have not yet opened FCPX, but I trust it will also be reading the Seagate HD once again.
    Good night and thanks for being helpful.

  • How do I format a internal Hard Drive from a PC/laptop

    How do I format a internal Hard Drive from a PC/laptop...My old internal hard drive had problems so I took it out and I have a 100 gb Seagate ATA drive that I replaced it with. In the mean time I've been using a external drive to boot up my powerbook g4. Not sure of what to do.

    Hi, capitala1. Start your Powerbook up from your Mac OS X installer disc and open Disk Utility from the Installer or Utilities menu (depending on which OS version it is). Select the newly-installed Seagate drive inside your Powerbook as the target, and format it "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". It makes no difference at all that the drive came out of a PC laptop: this is exactly the same procedure you'd use if the drive had just come brand new from its manufacturer.

  • IMac Finder cannot see external hard drive but Disk Utility can

    I have a WD external hard drive and it has been attached to my iMac for a year or two.  About two months ago I upgraded to Lion 10.7.5 and hard drive still worked.  Then suddenly about a week ago the iMac no longer sees the external hard drive in Finder.
    I have connected the hard drive to the iMac with different USB cables and into different ports and it makes no difference so deduce there is no issues with the cables or the ports.  I have connected the hard drive to an old Macbook and it can see the harddrive and read some of the info but I really need the hard drive attached to the iMac as I store all my music and photos on the external hard drive.
    I read another thread and someone asked if you can see the hard drive in Disk Utility.  I tried this and Disk Utility can see the hard drive.
    What does this mean?  Any suggestions as to how to get the iMac to see the hard drive so I can access the data on it?
    I dont really know how Disk Utility works therefore if that is any help to me.
    thanks

    Open the Finder.
    From the Finder menu bar click Finder > Preferences then select the General tab.
    Make sure: External disks is selected.

  • I'm moving an internal hard drive from an old computer to a new computer.  How do I transfer the catalog data to my new computer so the Organizer of Photoshop Elements 6 will find the data on the hard that has been moved to the new computer?

    I'm moving an internal hard drive from an old computer to a new computer.  (My new compute runs Windows 8.1) How do I transfer the catalog data to my new computer so the Organizer of Photoshop Elements 6 will find the data on the hard that has been moved to the new computer?  Is this possible or do I have to use the procedure of copying the catalog along with the photos to a back up hard drive and then restore them on the new computer?

    The 'normal' procedure is to do a PSE organizer backup (not a copy or a backup from external tools) to an external drive, then a restore to the new location.
    The advantage is that you have a backup of both catalog and media files and you don't have all disconnected files, which would happen with external backup tools. Also, if you restore with a more recent elements version, the catalog will be automatically updated to the new format.
    The drawback in your situation is that you'll have either to overwrite all your files or restore to a custom location, creating a duplicate photo library (which supposes you have enough free space).
    It would be possible to simply use the organizer in the old PC to move the catalog to a new 'custom' folder just under your C: root drive. The catalog would be accessible once the drive will be installed in the new PC. Then you would have all files 'disconnected' due to the fact that all your media files are now on a drive with a different letter. Reconnecting a whole library is a hard job with PSE6, less so with PSE11/PSE12.
    If the idea of fiddling with the sqlite database with external sqlite manager tools is ok for you, I can describe the process more in detail. You only copy your catalog folder (as suggested above) to another location. Instead of trying the 'reconnection' way, you install the sqlite utility on the new computer. When the old drive is installed in the new computer, you simply edit a given record in the catalog database, catalog.psedb, and start the organizer with your copied catalog by simply double clicking the 'catalog.psedb' file.
    Even if the last solution is much, much quicker, I would still create a new PSE backup : you have never too much safety .

  • How can I erase My hard drive. Disk utility only gives me the option of erase free space. I have 27in iMac with Lion and 12 gb ram.

    How can I erase my hard drive? Disk utility only gives me the option to erase free space.
    Thanks for any assistance.

    Drive Preparation for Lion
    1. 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. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
    2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area.  If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing.  SMART info will not be reported  on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
    3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
    4. Quit DU to return to the main menu.
    5. Select Reinstall Lion then click on the Continue button. You need an active network connection in order to download the Lion software.

  • Problem partitioning external hard drive with Disk Utility

    I'm trying to create a new partition in disk utility in an external hard drive using disk utility and every time I click Apply it says that "Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and can't continue. Quit and relaunch Disk Utility". It is a 3TB hard disk and I already created the first partition of 2 TB, and when I click the + symbol to add a 1 TB partition and click Apply is when the error shows up. I have restart the mac, unplugged the hard disk but the error still shows up. Anyone has any idea??? Thanks for your help in advance
    David

    I solved this issue. I was able to create the partition with the format MS-DOS and then I erased it to the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
    Now it is working OK. Hope this help someone

  • I'm trying to clone a internal hard drive from another mac using a usb connection.

    I'm trying to clone a internal hard drive from another mac using a usb connection to an external drive so that I don't lose the file before reinstalling the software but I keep on getting a message:
    "Restore Failure
    Source volume is read-write and cannot be unmounted, so it can't be block copied."
    Any advice on how to make a copy of this internal drive?
    Thanks!
    ....also the internal hard drive i am trying to copying run on a mac os x 10.5 and i'm reinstalling the software because the computer is not starting and only shows a grey folder with a question marks inside.

    I've had my Maxtor external OneTouch 250GB for about 18 months now and it hasn't skipped a beat. I have hear of people having their Maxtor drive just up and die but you will probably find that goes for all manufacturers.
    By the way, Maxtor is, amongst others, an OEM supplier to Apple.

  • I have a Macbook Pro that was slowing down. The HD was nearly full as I do a video work. I removed over 400gb of photos and video and it made no difference. I ran disk inventory x and that says that there is only 60gb on the hard drive but disk utility sa

    I have a Macbook Pro that was slowing down. The HD was nearly full as I do a video work. I removed over 400gb of photos and video and it made no difference. I ran disk inventory x and that says that there is only 60gb on the hard drive but disk utility says there is still 430gb on the HD. How do I remove what DU says is still there.
    Thanks

    You may notice a difference in available space statistics between Disk Utility, Finder, and Get Info inspectors. This is expected and can be safely ignored. The Finder displays the available space on the disk without accounting for the local snapshots, because local snapshots will surrender their disk space if needed.
    About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs

  • Switched internal hard drives from G4 to Mac Pro - not being recognized

    I just transfered to internal hard drives from my G4 MDD OS Tiger and my Mac Pro isn't recognizing them in the bays. Jumpers were removed for slave option. Are the older drives not compatible with the newer computer? What am I missing?

    I did, and it bent a couple of the pins in the drives. I'm going to try to put them back in my G4 to see if they still work. In the meantime I went to Best Buy and talked to the Geek Squad who set me straight. I bought an SATA drive and now it's up and running with time machine.
    I just wish they were a little more descriptive in the type of hard drive to install.
    Thanks for your help!
    Pat

  • External hard drive error / disk utility not repairing

    I am having problems with a particular external hard drive. Device is a Transcend StoreJet 25M (640GB) currently formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It was previously formatted in FAT32, exFat, and also Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It started giving me problems when I used it to store all my music on it. My iTunes library and music files were all stored on it, and at one point iTunes started acting funny - it would play a song for a few seconds, pause, play for a further few seconds, pause again, and so forth. I decided to stop using it and when I shifted the iTunes library to the Mac internal hard drive and the music file into another external hard drive, iTunes worked fine. So I figured it must be a problem with the external hard drive itself.
    I recently reformatted it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and transfered some data on to it (include a back up of the music folder). I noticed that Spotlight keeps trying to index the drive but never actually managed. Times indicated for indexing runs into days. The hard drive tends to be slow to load files expecially when there are multiple folders and tiers, and is generally unreliable. It occasionally unmounts, or when I try to unmount it I get an error saying it cannot unmount because it is being used (but no indication as to which app is using it even if all apps are closed except for Finder).
    I tried repairing it using disk utility. The attached image shows the results. It seems that it can't be repaired by disk utility. At this point, and after much deliberation, I would have to questions:
    1. Should I just smash the thing on the floor?
    2. Is there another application I could try and repair it with?
    3. Even though I have reformatted it several times, it keeps giving me the same problem. When I do a disk verification of the hard rive itself it all seems fine, however when I do a disk verification or repair of the volume I get the error shown in the image. Is this a problem being caused during formatting?
    Any help would be much appreciated.

    Oh, I forgot to attach image....
    Message was edited by: TheSpoon

  • HT1553 How to backup an image of internal hard drive on external hard drive with disk utility

    I've followed the instructions under the paragraphph 'Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility
    in this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1553. My external hard drive is plugged in. I mount my install DVD of Leopard and restart. Press C to boot on the DVD, select the language and go to Utilities -> Disk utility.
    However I'm blocked in step 9 when I have to choose the destination. I don't have the option to select my hard drive to back up the image. I only have 2 options: root or Applications to save the image. Nevertheless, I can see my external hard on the left.
    - Could it be because the internal hard drive is encrypted? 
    - Could it be  because the external hard drive is encrypted? 
    Note also that the button 'Verify disk' is greyed out.
    Any clue?

    I always advise Mac users to never:
    encrypt a disk
    set a firmware password
    In my experience they cause more loss of data than they are worth.
    On Leopard I always use the latest free Carbon Copy Cloner to backup and clone disks - it is so simple to clone to either a disk or disk image. The free version may not be compatible with later OSs.
    As you appear to be on the wrong forum I will follow this with my standard message.
    Whilst it may not be your fault I am afraid it appears that your post is on a forum which is not the best for your OS. It will save the time of the unpaid volunteers here, and may resolve your issue faster, if you could examine the list below and see if there is a more appropriate forum to which you could direct your question.
    OS X 10.9 Mavericks
    OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
    OS X 10.7 Lion
    OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
    OS X 10.5 Leopard
    OS X 10.4 Tiger
    OS X 10.3 and earlier
    OS 9, OS 8 & System 7
    OS X Technologies
    OS X Server
    iPad
    iPhone
    iPod
    Other

  • How to backup an image of internal hard drive on external hard drive with disk utility

    I've followed the instructions under the paragraphph 'Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility
    in this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1553. My external hard drive is plugged in. I mount my install DVD of Leopard and restart. Press C to boot on the DVD, select the language and go to Utilities -> Disk utility.
    However I'm blocked in step 9 when I have to choose the destination. I don't have the option to select my hard drive to back up the image. I only have 2 options: root or Applications to save the image. Nevertheless, I can see my external hard on the left.
    - Could it be because the internal hard drive is encrypted?
    - Could it be  because the external hard drive is encrypted?
    Note also that the button 'Verify disk' is greyed out.
    Any clue?

    forget about that and just use the free APP Superduper
    HD cloning software options:
    1. SuperDuper HD cloning software APP (free)
    2. Carbon Copy Cloner APP (will copy the recovery partition as well)

  • Unable to erase external hard drive with Disk Utility

    Macbook Pro (mid 2010) running 10.9
    Hello
    Recently, my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB external hard drive has not been showing up on my desktop or in finder.  The light is on when connected, and in the Disk Utility it appears. 
    1.  It was naturally created with a partition on it (all of the 1TB allocated to it) and it appears in the Disk Utility as well; however, it is grayed out. 
    2.  I clicked the actual drive in DU and it was verified as being ok.  I clicked on the partition next to verify and it said "Error disk needs repaired"
    3.  So I clicked repair, "Disk Utility cannot repair the disk..restore as many as your backed-up files...etc."
    4.  No problem (the data on the hard drive is used for my Time Machine back ups and my current internal hard drive is working fine with all the data intact)
    5.  Ok, so I click the erase tab on the entire external hard drive...erase..."Disk cannot be unmounted"
    6.  Ok, I try to erase the invidual partition..."Could not open disk"
    It seems every time I try to erase this drive completely im hitting blocks.  I even tried this method from the OS X Recovery menu (Command+R on startup).  I would greatly appreciate any help to just get this whole thing external hard drive erased and start anew.  How else would I go about this?
    (pictures for reference)
    Thank you all

    If this is your only backup device, you need to start a new backup on another drive immediately. Don't erase (or try to erase) your only backup.
    After you have the other backup, boot into Recovery and try again to erase the volume. You will have to unlock it before you can do anything with it, because it's encrypted.
    If you still can't erase it, the drive has failed.

Maybe you are looking for