10.5.6 and DiskWarrior

Hi all,
Does anyone know if there is a version of DiskWarrior out that works with OS 10.5.6? I tried someone's version 4.1 and my MacPro won't boot from that disk.
I notice on versiontracker that there is a version 4.1.1. Anyone tried it?
Thanks.
Dennis

I am copying what was sent to me from Alsoft about Diskwarrior. This maybe the solution.
You have a "revision 42" DiskWarrior CD (which contains Mac OS X 10.4.x
Tiger) but this computer requires at least a "DVD revision 810" (which
contains Mac OS X 10.5.x Leopard) to start up from a DiskWarrior disc.
When Apple releases new hardware, a newer version of the operating
system is required to support all of the hardware features that have
been added.
In most cases, older DiskWarrior 4 discs cannot start up newer machines
because they do not have the necessary System files.
The downloadable updater modifies the DiskWarrior application - it does
not update the operating system on the CD. As your original DiskWarrior
disc does not start up this computer, neither will the disc that you
have created using the downloadable updater.
As stated on the Alsoft website, and in the ReadMe file which comes with
the updater: "Please note that the new startup disc you create will
start up the same set of Mac models as your current DiskWarrior disc.
Your new disc will not start up any Mac that your current DiskWarrior
disc can not."
The DiskWarrior 4.1.1 (DVD revision 901 - newer than the 810), which
contains an operating system capable of starting up this MacBook 4,1 is
now available.
Please contact our Sales Department to purchase an updated DVD. They
can be contacted at 1-800-257-6381 (US Toll Free) or at 1-281-353-4090
(International). You can also email them at "[email protected]", if
you prefer. The updated disc is around $20 shipped.
Alternately, you could utilize one of the following configurations to
use your current DiskWarrior 4.1.1 CD.
(1) Alternate Startup Disk: If you have an external drive such as a
FireWire or USB2 drive (Intel-based Macintosh only, formatted with the
GUID Partition Scheme) or a secondary internal drive or partition, you
could install OS X (the version which shipped with your computer or
higher - must be Mac OS X 10.4.x "Tiger") on that drive and then start
from it. Install DiskWarrior into that drive's "Utilities" folder,
(which is inside the "Applications" folder) and run DiskWarrior from there.
(2) Target Disk Mode: Connect two Macs with a FireWire cable where the
one is the "host" and the other is a "target". The host Mac should be
running OS X (10.4.x "Tiger" or higher). In this scenario, the target
Mac is the MacBook 4,1 that cannot be started from the DiskWarrior
disc. Start by shutting down the target Mac. Then turn it on while
holding down the "T" key. The target Mac's drive will appear as a
usable drive on the host Mac. Run DiskWarrior from the host Mac and
rebuild the target Mac's disk.
Joyce

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Disk Utility and DiskWarrior trouble with external hard-drive.

I got an external hard-drive that doesn't show up on finder. On both Disk Utility and DiskWarrior it keeps mounting and unmounting. Disk Utility when trying to repair, spits this out when it unmounts...
2011-07-28 22:43:43 -0700: Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map
2011-07-28 22:43:43 -0700: Error: Some information was unavailable during an internal lookup.
2011-07-28 22:43:43 -0700: : Some information was unavailable during an internal lookup.
2011-07-28 22:43:43 -0700: [DUDiskController mountDisk] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
On DiskWarrior it simply says 'Directory cannot be rebuilt due to disk hardware failure (-36,2747)
Earlier today it would stay mounted and Disk Utility would spit out...
Verify and Repair volume “Back-up Hard Drive”
Checking file systemChecking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Invalid sibling link
Rebuilding catalog B-tree.
Invalid node structure
The volume Back-up Hard Drive could not be repaired.
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
while DiskWarrior would try to fix it, but on
Step 5: Locating directory date...
Speed reduced by disk malfunction: 339,474, er make that 340,239, er make that 341,327
and I finally gave up there.
I try to fix the Invalid sibling link error via Terminal and I get this...
imac-2:~ Migrated$ fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk2s2
** /dev/rdisk2s2 (NO WRITE)
Can't open /dev/rdisk2s2: Resource busy
Is there ANY THING I can do to get it to stay mounted and possibly fix this? This is my back-up hard-drive!!

It's the cord that's being used that decides if it shows up, or if it shows up and then goes away over and over. Using a cord where it stays on in the programs, when I run Disk Utility of the darked out part of the hard-drive, it spits out...
Verifying and repairing partition map for “MICRONET”
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
Updating Windows boot.ini files as required
The partition map appears to be OK
while the part of the disk just below it that's light spits out
Verifying volume “Back-up Hard Drive”
Checking file system
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Verify and Repair volume “Back-up Hard Drive”
Starting repair tool:
Checking file system
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Disk Utility stopped repairing “Back-up Hard Drive”: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
while DiskWarrior tries to rebuild it and spits out a memory error.

Success with iDefrag and DiskWarrior on my Intel iMac! (indirectly)

Had some very good success using iDefrag and DiskWarrior on my intel iMac, both of which do not run directly on the intel platform yet. As I had observed a gradual (modest) slow-down over the course of the past month since I got my iMac, I couldn't help but try to figure out a way to defrag and optimize the hard drive since I had over 125GB (including quite a few large media files, and a couple system updates, both of which tend to cause fragmentation). So, after doing two independent backups on separate external HD's, I ran iDefrag on my iBook and defrag/optimized the iMac's hard drive using Target Disk Mode. As expected, the hd was VERY fragmented - and the process took overnight to complete. Being as careful as possible to ensure no problems, I then ran verify disk and repair permissions on the iMac's hard drive, and no problem. Did notice a very meaningful increase in responsiveness and speed on the iMac, even more than I would have expected. Since I historically always ran DiskWarrior after doing this exercise on my PPC mac's, I decided to attempt the same here. Since I (and others on this board) have been unsuccessful in running DW3.03 using the iMac in Target Disk Mode, I decided to update backup drive #1 post-iDefrag, and was then able to mount this drive (backup#1) and run DiskWarrior on it from the iBook. No problems were detected which was great news, but the I had it write the new index/directory files. I then sync'd back to my iMac's hard drive (from backup#1 to iMac HD) and observed that a number of files were updated most likely as a result of the updated directory/index files from running DW (I use FolderSynchronizer to sync). So keeping backup#2 of the pre-iDefrag/DiskWarrior for a while, but so far so good, and a very meaningful improvement in performance. So the experiment seems to be a success.
DISLAIMERS: If anyone does "try this at home" please backup and re-backup before attempting. In addition, please note that Coriolis is in the process of developing an intel build for iDefrag and probably recommended in general to wait for this update.
iMac 20" 2GHz Core Duo 2GB RAM, iBook 12" 1.33GHz Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Thanks for this posting and the good advice. I put in some time chasing the 801.57 gb limit before finding this thread that steers in the direction I see now I must persue, a new enclosure (modern day version rather than 5 year old technology -- yes, the old external drive has the Oxford chipset mentioned repeatedly in other threads) to go with my new drive. Would have been better off $$-wise to have purchased a complete unit, but this is so much more fun on a Monday evening.
Great being here with you all!

Harddrive and DiskWarrior

Hi,
This has been at least 4th time I had to fully erase and do a clean install. But once in awhile, and I do not why, I get a flashing ? with a folder when I start my PB. But then it boots up normally. I've used Disk Utility to verify the drive and it reported as passed. I've used the Disk Utility from my Tiger Disk and it also passed. Then I decided to use DiskWarrior and try to rebuild the drive and I get this:
"The directory of the disk "Mac HD" cannot be rebuilt. The orginial directory is too severly damaged. The disk was not modified (2155,2179)."
What is going on??!? So is my disk OK or is it damaged? I am getting two different results from Disk Utility and DiskWarrior. AARRGGHH! I am getting sick and tired of reinstalling over and over and over!
My first HD failed, and I got a new one from Apple via AppleCare. Then I've installed a 160GB Seagate Momentus 5400.3 into my PB. Is it my new drive?? Please help. Thank you!

Depends how soon later after installing the new drive the thing failed. If immediately after it suggests that you may have an issue with the interface of the drive more than the drive itself.

Disk Utility and DiskWarrior can't fix my hard drive. How?

For some strange reason, my startup external Firewire hard drive decided not to work.
Used my Mac internal startup disk and ran Disk Utility and I got this only error message:
*Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit*
Couldn't even mount it. So, I ran DiskWarrior 4.1 and the external FW HD showed up as an *Unknown Disk* and it stated +Directory cannot be rebuilt due to disk hardware failure (-36, 2268).+
Ran TechTool Pro 4.6.1 and the FW HD passed the Read Write test but failed on the Surface Scan with lots of bad blocks.
So, is this a gone case? Any other method or utility to revive the FW HD?

Hard drive failures are not that uncommon because hard drives still have moving parts. Since TechTool's surface scan came back with a lot of bad blocks and DiskWarrior noted that there was a hardware failure, my guess would be that the disc itself may be damaged or scratched.
There are companies that can recover data from damaged discs, but I would not put too much effort into reusing this particular drive.
Keith

Mountain Lion and Diskwarrior

With my 2010 iMac I upgraded to Mountain Lion. Also followed directions from Alsoft to create a new DiskWarrior DVD -- from 4.2 to 4.4. Am unable to boot from this new DVD. Held the C key for a half hour also used the oprion method letting it try for over an hour and both did not work. Tried the external drive method with Diskwaeeior installed on the startup external drive -- which gives me an error 2153, 4093. I think this means the hard drive is spinning (something on the internal HD is open) -- even though I started off the external HD. I used Carbon Copy Cloner yesterday for the extenal HD.
With DiskWarrior 4.2 while using Lion things worked fine. Everything with DW works as it should except for my not being able to rebuild my internal drive's memory. Are there any suggestions what I could try?

paulfromfremont wrote:
With my 2010 iMac I upgraded to Mountain Lion. Also followed directions from Alsoft to create a new DiskWarrior DVD -- from 4.2 to 4.4. Am unable to boot from this new DVD. Held the C key for a half hour also used the oprion method letting it try for over an hour and both did not work. Tried the external drive method with Diskwaeeior installed on the startup external drive -- which gives me an error 2153, 4093. I think this means the hard drive is spinning (something on the internal HD is open) -- even though I started off the external HD. I used Carbon Copy Cloner yesterday for the extenal HD.
With DiskWarrior 4.2 while using Lion things worked fine. Everything with DW works as it should except for my not being able to rebuild my internal drive's memory. Are there any suggestions what I could try?
What Thomas Reed said.
Same drill here. Upgraded from DW4.2 disk to DW4.4 disk via updater. It is a no-show with option on boot under ML.
Here's what I think is going on. Look at the revision number for your DW4.4 update. You will find that it trails the revision number of a new 4.4 DVD purchase from Alsoft. That latter may boot with ML. The updated 4.4 that we have is likely running boot bits too old to work with ML or our firmware. Alsoft always complains that they are waiting for Apple to release the code ...
I have Lion 10.7.4 clean installed on a separate USB drive. I placed the updated DW 4.4 app in /Applications on that disk. When I want to use DW4.4, it is that USB drive that I option-boot to proceed with successful DW functionality.
Sigh.

Ibook and diskwarrior

hello-
a few months ago i posted about my ibook crashing. it's a second computer and used only for wireless internet, so no data storage or anything. in any case, here's the link to that thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4415839#4415839
the latest is that i have diskwarrior 3 and have to rebuild the disk (called "untitled" right now). the problem is that when it is rebuilding the directory, during step 5 "Locating directory data..." it freezes. the little blue and progress bar is still and the computer makes no sounds. i let it go for a while, but to no end.
any advice?
thanks,
jesse

Jesse:
I took a look at your other thread. One of the things I noticed is the error in Disk Utility "The underlying task reported failure on exit". This is a serious directory error, which Disk Utility cannot repair and Disk Warrior may, or may not be able to repair. See Disk Utility reports "Underlying task reported failure" when repairing a volume. In your case Disk Warrior is having difficulties repairing the disk.
Your only option at this point is to reinstall, although there is a slight possibility that your HDD is too damaged even for that. Follow the procedure Kappy outlined for you in your old post. That is reformat, zero all data and reinstall. Since your Tiger disk is an upgrade disk, you need to have Panther (10.3.x) on your computer. An option is to just to go ahead and buy a Full Retail Version of Tiger right off, instead of going to Panther then upgrading to Tiger. If you opt to buy Panther, make sure it is the Full Retail Version Kappy described in your earlier post.
Please don't hesitate to post back with further questions or comments, or with an update.
Good luck.
cornelius
Message was edited by: cornelius

IMac and Diskwarrior 5

Up to now, Diskwarrior 4 DVD would not boot latest iMac. Just bought a flash drive and partitioned, ready to download OS and install Diskwarrior 4 so bootable external drive….
…when Alsoft releases DW 5 on flash drive!
Anyone out there have an iMac 2014 on, and tried out DW 5 yet?

Ask in the Intel iMac forum area.

IMac i7 and DiskWarrior

Been using DiskWarrior for years with my previous Macs, but Alsoft has not come out with a new version which is able to start up my i7. Alsoft did mention that DW is usable if I install the Mac OS on an external FW drive and use that as an alternate start up disk. I'm in the process of installing the OS on a FW drive as I type this. I'm not quite sure what to do next. Once finished installing, do I need to update the FW OS to my i7's current OS? Also, how exactly do I access the i7 from the FW drive?
Thanks for any help!

Nancy Brown wrote:
I'm in the process of installing the OS on a FW drive as I type this.
i would install DW on the startup disk, then clone it to the external using e.g. SuperDuper.
that way, you have a bootable, up-to-date system (with DW installed) on the external.
Also, how exactly do I access the i7 from the FW drive?
you'd boot from the external, launch DW, and select the iMac's internal HD.
JGG

Unseen HD and DiskWarrior

Hello, my Toshiba 80GB HD will not mount and I get the flashing question mark folder at startup. I can start from an external HD, but REALLY need to get my data of the Toshiba HD.
I tried booting from the DiskWarrior CD, but it couldn't locate the internal HD either. My question......is there any chance of getting my data back with DiskWarrior or any other recovery program? DiskWarrior claims to be able to fix unmountable drives, why not in this case?
Am I stuck paying $1000+ to a professional recovery service? Has anyone had similar issues or know of a solution?
Thanks in advance!
powerbook aluminum 15" 1.5 gHz Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Hi, Not. If the S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics indicate that the drive is failing, go ahead and try to recover your files, but don't bother reformatting the drive afterward; it's toast. You shouldn't trust it with anything again, so just toss and replace it.
If its S.M.A.R.T. status were "Verified", then it would be worth using DW or TTP to rebuild/repair the directory, and if that were successful, you wouldn't need to reformat afterward. But a Failing grade from S.M.A.R.T. indicates that the drive hardware is bad, and you can't fix that — nobody can. So data recovery is where you need to focus your energy.

Problems repairing Main Hard Drive using TechTool and DiskWarrior

Hello to all,
I have what appears to at first have been a minor problem, which has blossomed into a major debacle.
My troubled machine is a "QuickSilver" Dual 880KHz processor G4 with 1.5 GB RAM and OS10.4.3. It started showing problems with browsers not linking to the correct locations, and general slowness of any operation. Upon later power-up, the machine would not boot at all. The problem indicated was at the UNIX level where login was failing for many of the modules (best explanation I can give right now).
I then put the machine into target mode, and hooked up a laptop (also on OS10.4.3) to see if the main disk was accessible. It did appear on the screen, and allowed me to see all of the files and directories properly.
Now, at this point I SHOULD have made a copy of the entire disk to the laptop, but did not consider such necessary, as I had been told a backup had been made a week earlier. Likewise, I SHOULD have then considered an archive/install from the OS10.4.0 disks.
But NOOOOOOO.
I instead thought I would simply use the TechTool Deluxe disk (that I received from Apple when the laptop was purchased). I booted the desktop from this disk, and per its recommendation, let it perform a repair. It ran for several hours, indicating it was fixing my problem.
I then tried to reboot the desktop again. This time, all I got was the dark rectangle that says in multiple languages, "You need to restart your computer." After several tries, it did not get any better.
I then placed the machine back into target mode, so I could see what, if anything might have changed. Now, even though the desktop displays the firewire symbol, the laptop will not mount it. When I ran Apple Disk Utility, and try to perform a Verify, I get "Invalid B-tree node size. The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired." OUCH. Whatever I did, made it all much worse!
At this point I also was informed the backup of the drive could not be used (for reasons I won't get into). I could have screamed, as before I could have copied the contents to the laptop. Now, such may no longer be possible!
I then went a purchased DiskWarrier V3.0.2. I updated it to version 3.0.3 (per the instructions on the website). I then went and rebooted the wounded desktop from the V3.0.3 disk, and then tried to run a repair. I got this response;
"The directory of the disk "Macintosh HD" cannot be rebuilt. The disk was not modified. The original directory is too severely damaged. It appears another disk utility has erased critical directory information. (3004, 2176)."
(Micromat, take note of the above!)
At this point, I decided doing what might be intuitively obvious (such as an archive/install from the OS10.4.0 disks) should not be attempted until I GET SOME REAL HELP. Ergo, this posting.
Anybody got any recommendations?
Dual 800Khz G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3) 1.5 GB RAM
Dual 800Khz G4 Mac OS X (10.4.2) 1.5 GB RAM

And what happens if you run a Repair instead of just
Verify? The latest version of Disk Utility, included
with 10.4.3 on your laptop, is your best defense for
these problems before using third party tools!
Believe me, I understand your point.
Please keep in mind I thought a utility provided by the Apple Protection Plan was a smart thing to use. (And it was purchased after Tiger was released.)
I later learned that DiskWarrior is supposed to be superior that anything else. Ergo, I went to the store to purchase a copy.
DiskWarrior checked to see what version of the OS was installed, and told me to perform an update (since it saw something the developers were not familiar with at final release). This kind of check is very responsible, and should be in all such software!
I do not think I made that bad of an ignorant decision.

QT 7.0.4 and DiskWarrior crash?

Running DW 3.0.3 from hard drive (not from DW Disc)
after step 10, and directory has been re-built, DW crashes.
Reverting to QT 7.0.3 fixes this problem.
Does not seem to be related to OS X 10.4.4 as runing DW 3.0.3
from a secondary startup drive with 10.4.4 and QT 7.0.3 runs
to completion without a crash.

QT 7.1 fixes this problem.

DiskWarrior - Will it work, and when should I use it?

I apologize for this dumb question, but have no time to read 50 pages of the DiskWarrior manual.
Actually I have few questions, and hope someone will help. I got my iSight few days ago, and at the same time found in a shop here, in Beijing, DiskWarrior (which is not so easy to get in China). Being exited about getting the new machine, and having in my mind that I want it to work properly this time, I just bought it (and payed quite a lot for it 140 us$!!!) without giving it a good thought previously and mainly because everybody speaks about it as "the must" for every Mac, and now I feel stupid and need to ask:
1. this is a v. 3.0.3, (CD rev. 38) - will it boot from my iSight at all?
2. when actually do I use it, when I realize that there is a problem in my system, or should I use it as a maintenance program?
Thanks a million.
Zo

Hey Zorana. I too had your problem. Here is the text of an email I received from Alsoft, maker of DiskWarrior.
The DiskWarrior CD that you currently own contains DiskWarrior 3.0.3
which will work with Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger). However, whether or not a
DiskWarrior CD will start up a computer is based on the model of the
machine, not on the operating system that is installed on the internal drive.
In most cases, older DiskWarrior 3 CDs cannot start up newer machines
because they do not have the necessary System files. To start up the
iMac G5 (with built-in iSight) models that were released in October 2005,
you need a DiskWarrior CD with a more current operating system.
An Update CD (revision 39) with the latest startup System (Mac OS X
10.4.x "Tiger") and DiskWarrior 3.0.3 is available for order by calling
our Sales Department at 800-257-6381 (US Toll Free) or at 281-353-4090
(International). The cost for the Update CD is US$12.95 plus US$7.95
shipping & handling fees.
Finally, if you have purchased DiskWarrior in the last 30 days, we will
send you a CD for the price of shipping.
In the interim, you might utilize one of the following methods to run
DiskWarrior:
(1) Alternate Startup Disk: If you have another drive (such as an
external FireWire drive or an iPod with FireWire) you could install OS X
(the version which came with your computer, or newer) on that drive and
then start from it. Install DiskWarrior on that drive's "Utilities"
folder, (which is inside the "Applications" folder) and run DiskWarrior
from there.
(2) Target Disk Mode: Connect two Macs with a FireWire cable where the
one is the "host" and the other is a "target". The host Mac should be
running OS X (10.2.1 or higher). In this scenario, the target Mac is the
new iMac that cannot be started from the DiskWarrior CD. Start by
shutting down the target Mac. Then turn it on while holding down the "T"
key. The target Mac's drive will appear as a usable drive on the host
Mac. Run DiskWarrior from the host Mac and rebuild the target Mac's disk.
-- Marc
I hope this helps.

Disk Utility: Differences between "Zero Out Data" and "7-Pass Erase"?

I'm wondering if anyone knows if there's a significant difference between the "Zero Out Data" erase option in Disk Utility (specifically Disk Utility 10.5.5), and the "7-Pass Erase" and "35-Pass Erase" options in same software.
Here's why I'm asking: I have a co-worker with an iMac G5 20" 1.8GHz with 160GB internal hard drive. As a result of the power supply overheating a week ago due to dust, some hard drive problems resulted. I'm trying to assess whether these are 'soft' formatting problems that can be recovered from, or 'hard' problems requiring replacement of the hard drive and/or power supply.
Following the failure, I removed the dust and restored the iMac to servicable form. The power supply seems to be OK now. The next thing was to attempt to recover as much data as possible from the 160GB, as the last full backup was a week old. Carbon Copy Cloner, shell copy via 'sudo cp -p -R -v', Finder copy, and DiskWarrior recovery all met with problems. TechTool Pro identified a huge swatch of unreadable sectors during repeated surface scans. Unfortunately, these unreadable sectors were located midway in the OSX boot partition (an 80GB partition), and not in the other 80GB partition devoted to lower priority video data.
When I was satisfied I had backed up the data to the best of my abilities, I next set out to reformat the drive and see if the bad sectors could be eliminated or remapped out of existence. I did a "Zero Out Data" erasure in Disk Utility (with no errors during the erase), but TechTool Pro showed the bad sectors persisted in equal strength at the same location. I next executed a sixteen hour "7-Pass Erase" (again no errors, and confirming that it takes about an hour per 10GB). The next day when I ran TechTool pro, all of the sector errors had disappeared. I'm a bit perplexed as to why the "7-Pass Erase" seems to have recovered the use of the drive. Is it possible that there are simply thousands of bad sectors now remapped that I'm not seeing? [If so, how do I check for this?] TechTool Pro has not reported any S.M.A.R.T. issues to date on the drive. What am I to make of that?
There are some related threads I've checked into, but I'm not sure how to properly assess my situation based on this information:
<http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=232007>
<http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=138559>
<http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=118455>
Since the iMac has three weeks left on it's one year warranty, and I've already moved the user to another machine temporarily, I'm thinking that the smart thing to so is to send it in to Apple to have them look at the power supply and hard drive. That way, when it returns, even if there is still a lingering hardware problem, at least it will be covered under warranty for another 90 days.
Any thoughts?
iMac G5 20" 1.8GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6) 1.25GB RAM, 160GB hard disk, SuperDrive

HI, Bret.
The only differences between "Zero Out Data", "7-Pass Erase", and "35-Pass Erase" are the number of times a binary zero is written to every bit on the disk. "Zero Out Data" writes a binary zero once, whereas the 7- and 35-Pass options write a zero seven and 35 times, respectively.
Technically, one pass with Zero Out Data should be sufficient to map bad sectors out of service, a process also known as sparing. If a bad sector is encountered, it is both marked as "in use" in the directory's allocation table and added to the directory's "bad blocks file."
My understanding is that the Surface Scan of Tech Tool Pro should identify bad sectors every time it is run unless the bad sectors have been locked out by the drive controller of the ATA drive itself. This is because Surface Scan checks the entire surface of the disk.
What may have happened is that running "Zero Out Data" spared the bad blocks from a directory standpoint, but did not result in the drive's controller locking out those sectors for reasons detailed in the "Surface Scan" section of the Tech Tool Pro manual. However, the 7-Pass Erase may have resulted in the drive's controller locking out the bad sectors and why Surface Scan did not pick them up after such.
Given the problems you described, I concur with your plan to have Apple check the affected computer. You might also want to consider purchasing an AppleCare Protection Plan for that Mac: I recommend and buy these for all my Macs.
For some additional information on bad sectors, see the "Bad Sectors" section of my "Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption" FAQ.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

A Tale of a Filevault Disaster and Recovery...

Recently, one of my customers had a major disaster with their MacBook running 10.5.8:
It all started when they decided they needed to free up some disk space on the internal drive, and thus they began to trash a large number of files to accomplish this.
Apparently in doing so, they must have trashed some key files because they managed to permanently lock themselves out of their Filevault-encrypted Home folder; the filevault password no longer worked when they attempted to log back in after a restart, and after numerous unsuccessful login attempts, they received the message "your filevault-protected home folder did not open and needs to be repaired. Click OK to repair the folder.." Clicking OK did nothing, and at that point they requested my services.
Turns out also, they had no recent backup; the last backup was over 2 years old- they had misplaced the power cable for their Time Machine backup drive- a WD MyBook- and had never replaced it... (oye vay)
When I got the machine, I used the installer cd to create a root user and look at the internal drive's status- 53G of 233G used. Over the course of several days, I took the following actions:
1. Restarted and logged in as root, I attempted to open the user's sparsebundle with no success.
2. Restarted to the installer CD and ran Disk Utility's Repair Disk which returned no errors. Attempted to Repair Permissions but got no result appearing to hang..
3. Figuring "Ok, I can't open the sparsebundle yet, so I'll at least start improving the overall health of the file system"- I started up the MB in Target Disk Mode connected to my G5 Quad running 10.5.7. From my G5, I used DU and Diskwarrior against the MB's single volume internal drive. DU returned no errors but Diskwarrior returned problems in red on a directory rebuild, so I repeated with Diskwarrior until all was green (3x).
4. After this, tried again to open the user's sparsebundle with same negative result of the password not working.
5. At this point, running out of solutions but anticipating eventual success (against all odds) I copied the sparsebundle to a spare drive as a backup.
6. Did a Google search and eventually found an archived Apple discussions thread which seemed to indicate a possible solution:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5881960
To make a long story a bit shorter, what eventually totally saved my bacon was this info in a post by GuyEWhite in the archived thread:
<<< So Guy, if you're out there- A MILLION Thanks!! >>>
7. Type: sudo hdiutil attach /Users/username/username.sparseimage -nomount
8. A bunch of funky things will happen, but it eventually should list a number of volumes, one with an HFS attached to it, note if it says disk1s1 or disk2s2 or whatever.
9. Type: sudo fsck_hfs -f /dev/rdisk2s2 (rdisk2s2 being where the HFS was from step 8, adding an "r" at the front)
If fsck_hfs bails because of too many errors, just repeat until it says the FS is fine. That irks the bejeezus out of me as well, but has always worked for me so far.
7. Still in TDM, and working on the backup copy, I used the above commands to first "see" the sparsebundle volume, and then to run fsck against it. Sure enough, my results were similar to the above: major errors returned the first 3 or 4 times I ran it, then eventually it said the FS was OK, and then VOILA! My first success- the sparsebundle volume actually mounted in Disk Utility and Diskwarrior, both of which were running in the background.
8. The Filevault password now worked, and I ran Diskwarrior's "Rebuild Directory" multiple times against the mounted sparsebundle volume. Numerous errors were evident and Diskwarrior created a "Rescued Items" folder.
Obviously, whatever the client had done did a major FUBAR to her home folder. Eventually the number of errors in red was reduced to a point where it would not reduce further. About 1G of data appeared to be in the Filevaulted Home folder. This didn't square with the supposed size of the sparsebundle, but I left that issue hanging for the moment.
9. I repeated the command line procedure against the MB's internal drive- successfully mounting and decrypting the Filevaulted Home folder. Similar results were obtained where it took multiple passes of fsck to mount the disk, then a number of passes of Diskwarrior to repair the directory as much as possible.
10. Knowing that I had rescued at least some of the client's files, and that I had a "repaired" backup of the sparsebundle- I decided at this point to wipe the MB's interal drive and do a complete re-install of the system and all software updates- knowing I would be eventually transferring her user files back over.
11. Back to the discrepancy of visible files in the mounted sparsebundle:
I decided to get out the howitzers and use Data Rescue.
A "deleted files" scan found another 28G of actual user files!
12. The task of organizing and transferring the user files back over to the MacBook was pretty labor-intensive but ultimately pretty successful for the most part; there were however a significant number of corrupted files which could not be salvaged. These mostly included user prefs, some Pages documents, and some images. Most all of her music and movies were still intact.
At first I tried repairing some of the corrupt image files by using Graphic Converter to re-save images that Photoshop otherwise couldn't open. This proved to be incredibly tedious and instead, I simply imported all the images en masse into iPhoto. iPhoto very nicely refused import of all the corrupted images (something like a couple hundred out of multiple thousands).
The end result was quite satisfactory: I got the client a new power cable for their MyBook and a did a complete Time Machine backup to it. They were quite happy since I had recovered just about all their documents, music, movies, and photos...
But without finding that post and method by GuyEWhite, the outcome probably would have been far different, so again- thanks Guy!
<Edited by Host>

This is the single most useful entry for FileVault problems I ever encountered! Thanks a lot!
Just a few notes to add:
(1) Use this to access your FileVault image:
sudo hdiutil attach -nomount -readwrite -noautofsck -noverify /Users/(username)/(username).sparsebundle
Reminder: "(username)" is your short username. This will prevent Snow Leopard from traing to repair while accessing the FileVault bundle.
If your computer crashed your sparsebundle will be at "/Users/.(username)/(username).sparsebundle", not at "/Users/(username)/(username).sparsebundle", the difference is the "." in the folder name!
(2) After repairing with fsck_hfs you should detach the sparse bundle again:
hdiutil detach /dev/diskX
where "X" can be anything from 0 to whatever, matching the output after the "hdiutil attach" command.
Beswt,
Apple*

10.5.6 and DiskWarrior

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