Disk Failure: what next?

my late 2012 iMac slowed to unusuable state after Yosemite upgrade then on reboot it failed. After verbose reboot and disk utility verify/repair I'm at the state that it is unrepairable. So, what next?
disk utility tells me to copy everything I can, then reformat and restore what I copied. Is it as simple as this? Won't I still be on the same failed HDD?
I have a cloud based backup of all my documents and settings, but not a disk image. So I'm thinking I can do one of the following:
1). Do as I think disk utility is telling me and transfer the full disk image to and external use drive I have, reformat the internal drive, then copy the image back. This sounds too good to be true?
2.). Get a copy of my documents from the cloud service, reformat and reinstall OS X from disc utility, copy over my documents? I assume I would have to reinstall my apps going this route.
3). I need to get a new physical internal drive installed by an apple place and let them do the transfer ( what does that run? US$)
4) some other option
thanks for any input!

If you wish to prove to yourself the need for a new drive, then you will need to re-partition and reformat it, then install OS X on it. If it still won't work properly then the drive is probably bad. The Yosemite upgrade had nothing to do with it. A new upgrade won't kill the drive, but it can cause problems to appear that have always been present.

Similar Messages

Disk utility unable to repair disk. What next?

Disk utility unable to repair disk. What next?

I encountered the same problem. After verify disk, I got the message to repair the disk. But it was unable to complete the repair. Rather than purchase Disk Warrior, I tried something else.
What I did was reinstall the OSX (this iMac is still on Leopard). I backed up everything, naturally, before doing the reinstall. I chose the "Archive and Install" option, along with "Preserve Users and Network Settings". This method moves existing files to a folder named "Previous System" and imports existing user accounts, network settings, and home folders into the new OSX.
After the successful reinstall, I ran Disk Utility. It checked AND repaired Permissions. It verified that the disk was fine and no longer needed repair.
If this didn't work, my plan "B" was to reinstall the OSX again, this time with the "Erase and Install" option. Fortunately, I didn't have to go to plan "B".

Hard disk failure - what does mean following error: failure ID 9cw77a-5km5t8-xd002k-60s903?

Hi,
Since 6 months I have HP Pavilion dv6 3180ec, running Win7 64-bit.
Recently the notebook restarted itself several times during last couple of days with a hard disk failure message (blue screen); after restart, a Hard disk diagnosis was requested however never properly started... So I run the test from BIOS and got following error message:
Hard disk test failed
Failure ID: 9CW77A-5KM5T8-XD002K-60S903
(interesting is that the SMART test passed successfully)
Does anybody knows, how severe the failure is? Is the change of HDD necessary? I would like to avoid the situation to send it to HP customer service for warranty check and have no notebook for a month, as the guys will not experience the same problem (actually even I am now writing the post on that notebook - and without any restart...)
THX
F.
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Hi,
If not a SMART error, this will either be a failure of the short or long Disk Self Test and really would indicate the drive should be replaced. There is no need to have to send the notebook in, as if you contact HP to arrange for a new HDD to be supplied to you under warranty, the drive will be sent out to you - you normally have to pay a deposit which is refunded when you return the defective HDD.
If you live in the US, contact HP Here.
If you are in another part of the world, start Here.
The procedure for replacing the HDD is shown starting on Page 55 of your Maintenance & Service Guide.
Regards,
DP-K
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TS1550 "Partition failed - couldn't unmount disk"? what next?

While trying to "fix" TimeMachine backup "failing" -- researched "Help" and followed the "disk utility" /partition=1/GUID/apply & got above message -- have no idea what to try next. Time Machine has periodically been popping up with "Failed" for about 2 weeks now. This happened once before (maybe 1 year or 18 months ago), but the aforementioned "fix" worked that time? Where do I go now?

Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
Can't imaging something not being covered there.

My computer is reporting a hard disk failure. what to do?

My hard disk is reporting a failure (Disk Name Toshiba MK6465G4x ATA Device) on my HP Pavilion dv6 Notebook PC (64 bit OS) which uses windows 7 home premium. When I run a hard disk check, it fails (failure M11V51-55V5Q8-XD003G-60E803). ANY SUGGESTIONS?

Unfortunately with that fail code, no it can not be fixed. Some fail codes indicate a recovery can be run or the check disc might fix it, but not with this fail code.
I work for HP.

RAID5 Disk Failure - What do I do now?

I'm pretty green when it comes to RAID, but we just set one up in a brand new MacPro 2 weeks ago. I've got the Apple RAID card with a 2g drive in bay 2, a 1.5g in bay 3, and a 2g drive in bay 4. I used the Raid Utility to create a RAID5 between the three.
I had left some files converting over the weekend, and I just got into work to find a message from RAID Utility that one of the drives attached to the RAID card has failed. It looks like its the drive in Bay 2. Do I just replace it? The last message RAID Utility left under Events states "Degraded RAID set RS2 - No spare available for rebuild."
Looking to the left under Drives, it shows the 2g drive in bay 2 is roaming. I have no clue what that means. The hardware viewer lists the status of the Drive in bay 2 as
Assigned: no
Failed: no
Foreign: no
Missing: no
Reliable: Yes
Roaming: Yes
Spare: no
Any help would be much appreciated.
Aaron

"Degraded RAID set RS2 - No spare available for rebuild."
What do I do now?
Option A) you buy another drive, install it in your Mac, partition it the way you want, and add the spare drive to the RAID set, and have it rebuild your complete redundant set.
The "failed" drive may be really bad, or may have a marginal block that needs to be re-written to come clean, or somewhere in between. You should completely re-initialize it with write Zeroes over the entire surface (takes several hours). If it comes out clean, you may be able to use it as a spare or set it to work doing backups. But a drive that develops ANY Bad Blocks in the field is likely to fail within 6 months of constant use.
If you expect to continue to use RAID, most users suggest that a matched set (or nearly-matched set) of drives is the best way to go. Different sizes means different operating characteristics, and that can cause problems (less so for Mirroring than other RAIDs). For use in a RAID, NO other files should be placed in other partitions on the same drive, as any access to those other files will slow down your RAID to worse than "ordinary" speeds.
Option B) decide that this RAID setup is not for you. Copy your files off to another drive and stop using the RAID card.

Formatting failure, what next?

I'm using DVD Studio Pro 3, and my formatting has failed repeatedly because of "Video Bitrate too high"
So, I've repeatedly lowered my Video bitrate in my settings, keeping a constant Bit rate of (now I've lowered it all the way to 2.0) But the formatting still fails on this project, even after I lower the bit rate. I've also deleted the Destination folder each time, so totally new MPEG files are created when I encode. My project is only 1.2 Gigs.
I've looked in every manual so far, and no answer to this question:
Do I need to create a whole new project and start from scratch each time my formatting fails due to a too high bit rate?
or can I use my same project I've been working from the beginning with? and is there another way to get around this problem?

The video is encoded in compressor, but my audio if aiff. I'll try encoding it in a.pack. That might help. I've never had this problem before, and I've been using aiff audio in my DVD projects for over a year.
I don't have to start a new project?

What is the correct way to restore the catalog after a disk failure?

I am running the latest Itunes on Vista. The disk failed on my old computer and I have a backup of the catalog file. The music files are on external storage (NAS). I've been searching for instructions on how to restore Itunes.
The catalog is about 1 week out of sync with the music files because I added some music in between backups of the catalog file and the disk failure.
In a perfect world, I'd like to restore the catalog with playlists and the album art.
Are there instructions to accomplish this or do I need to rebuild the catalog from the music files and recode my playlists?

Firstly I don’t have a NAS drive so what I say applies to and external HD, but it should be similar.
When you say catalogue file, I guess you mean the iTunes database files – iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Music Library.xml. The xml file is just used to allow other programs access to the library but can be useful because you can rebuild the itl file from it.
If you want your art work, you need a folder in the iTunes folder called Album Artwork.
So ideally you would like to be able to recover your old iTunes folder from backup.
If I understand you correctly, you had all your music on a NAS drive and the library files on your internal drive. Were all the music files/folders located the iTunes Music folder on the NAS drive? I will assume you have, it is much harder to get things working if they were not.
I guess you now have your NAS drive mapped into your new computer so you can see it as a drive letter.
So I hope this will work for you…
With iTunes closed, drag the iTunes folder from it’s current location to your desktop. I think the iTunes folder is in Music in Vista.
Now copy your backup iTunes folder into Music.
Now start iTunes and got to Edit>Preferences>Advanced>General and set the location of your iTunes Music folder to your folder on the NAS drive.
If you can see your music as it was when you did the backup, you can use Add Folder to Library to add the folder containing your music. Don’t worry, this shouldn’t create duplicates but it will add any tracks not currently in your library.
If you don’t have the iTunes folder, the procedure is similar except that instead of dragging the whole iTunes folder out to the desk top, just drag iTunes Library.itl and replace it with the backup. You won’t get your artwork if you just do this.

Laptop doesn't boot due to HD failure. No recovery disk. What do I do?

My HP laptop (HP ENVY 14t-1100 CTO Beats Edition) is not booting up due to hard disk failure. I have done a couple of hard disk diagnostics to detemine that. I can install a new disk but how do I get the default HP s/w including OS for my new disk? It came with Microsoft 7 Home Premium.
If I order the recovery disk from HP, will it include the OS?
The found a sticker under the battery which include the product key for Windows 7 so I should be able to use that to install Windows 7 at least. However, it woudl be better to use the HP disk to make sure that I have all the right drivers etc.
Any help will be much appreciated.

"Link to "ei.cfg Removal Utility". The "ei.cfg Removal Utility" is a simple tool that will remove the ei.cfg from any Windows ISO disc image, thereby converting the image into a "universal disc" that will prompt the user to select an edition during setup instead of being forced to use different discs for different versions of Windows 7."
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My 4TB G-Drive failed after (Firewire) installation of Maverick. A 1TB G-drive using USB works. What next?

I have an IMac running OS X 10.9.1.
I purchased a new 4TB G-Drive. After installation with Time Machine the drive correctly made backups for about 2 weeks. I installed Maverick.
Then I began to see the message “Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder”
I called G-Technology. Using the erase function of Disc Utility we received the message “Disk erase failed. Disk Erase failed with the error: Couldn’t unmount disk”. It was determined that the disk was bad and I returned it to the vendor.
A second and then a third disk experienced similar failures after only two backups. G-Technology then said the problem was a computer problem
I called Apple support and allowed them access to my computer. After their intervention the disk worked for two backups and then failed.
I purchased a 1 TB G-Drive yesterday.
I thought I would give it a test and so I made it the backup drive for time machine. It made a primary backup and has been continuing to back up without the feared error message.
I went to the internet and have discovered that my problem has been experienced by others. It only occurs after an upgrade to Maverick.
It also only occurs with a Firewire connection.
The new drive has a USB connector. It works fine.
What next?

Which iMac (please be very specific) and also why have you not updated to 10.9.2?

Hard disk failure but now I have no boot cd

Hi,
I had a hard disk failure, I have swapped out the hard disk but now have no boot DVD and of course I have lost the recovery partition.
I have tried to make a boot memory stick from my mac mini but when trying to re install it just says there is an error while checking eligibility.
help, I don't know what to do next
Thank you

Boot the MBP OPTION+COMMAND+R and you should see a display with a revolving globe. This will connect you to the Apple servers and allow you to install the original OSX that came with your MBP. You will need a solid Internet connection.
Ciao.

E9250t with Intel Matrix RAID1 (2x 1TB seagate) gives repeated disk failures

I have a new (November 2009) e9250t Win7 64 bit desktop which shipped with one 1TB Seagate drive. That machine couldn't be factory configured with RAID1 2 x 1TB, but I confirmed with HP Tech Support that it should work ok, so I purchased an identical Seagate 1TB drvie (ST31000528AS, aka 7200-12), installed it, and used Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM) to create a RAID1 set. All went fine.
However, within a few days the 2nd drive was marked as failed by IMSM. I simply did a right-click on the drive in IMSM and selected "Mark as normal". It then proceeded to rebuild the RAID1 mirror, and all seemed fine for quite a few days.
However, over the next month I had at least four more failures - in one case both drives "failed" and the machine crashed back to the prompt "Reboot and Select Proper Boot device, or Insert Boot Media in Selected Boot Drive and press a key". Each time I recovered by unfailing the drives and the RAID set was rebuilt. Finally, on January 2nd, I got another single-disk "failure" and finally replaced that drive with a brand new 1TB Seagate. While the RAID set was being rebuilt, the other drive also "failed" (back to the reboot prompt), and at that point I couldn't recover a bootable system. The original drive at this point failed bios diagnostics with a "BIOHD-2" error.
I read aboutthe firmware issues discussed on this forum on older Seagate drives earlier in 2009. The factory installed 1TB Seagate had firmware HP34, which appears to be much later than the firmware upgrade proposed on that earlier thread. I don't recall the firmware on the drives I purchased, but I believe they were something like CC45 or similar. IMSM is version 8.9.0.1023, which is the latest from what I can tell.
At this point I had a dead machine. HP Tech Support was pretty useless, but they did agree to replace the 1TB Seagate drive since it now failed even the bios diagnostics. Curiously, their replacement drive was a 7200-11. Maybe old stock or maybe that is more reliable?
I decided instead to try another brand of drives altogether, so I purchased two 1TB Wetern Digital Caviar Black drives (WD1001FALS). I installed one drive, reinstalled via the recovery DVDs, reinstalled all the apps, reinstalled my backups (yes, I'm paranoid - RAID1 and backups), and then I installed the second drive, created the RAID1 set using IMSM and finally I had a working system again.
However, within 4 days, one of the new WD drives was marked "failed" again. Arggghhh!!!!
At that point I broke the RAID1 set, and confirmed that both individual drives were bootable and worked fine without RAID. I decided to abandon IMSM and RAID altogether. I've been running with a single 1TB WD non-RAID drive since then, without problems.
Obviously I've wasted a lot of time and had a very unreliable RAID experience. This feature was meant to increase reliability and save me time in case of an (unlikely) disk failure.
So my conclusion is that Intel Matrix Storage Manager RAID1 with 1TB drives isn't reliable. Perhaps it's a hardware problem, but it's certainly not a disk drive problem (multiple drives and multiple brands), nor a SATA cable problem (drives on both ports and cables were "failed" by IMSM), and I'm confident the AC power supply is solid (I log AC voltage, frequency and THD, plus the PC runs off a small UPS), and the system has been 100% reliable with a single non-RAID disk.
Has anyone else had such a woeful experience as me with IMSM and RAID1?

Further searching shows this has been reported by many people as a problem with IMSM 8.9.0.1023.
http://communities.intel.com/thread/5036
(Subject is: Random drive fails with new Matrix Storage Manager 8.9)
This thread has almost 1000 posts, and is now locked. It reports that the lastest IMSM version 9.5 might fix the problem. People also report that downgrading to 8.8 or 8.7 fixes the problem too.
There is also this thread:
http://communities.intel.com/thread/4432
Conclusion: IMSM 8.9.0.1023 is buggy. Do not use it. It's very disappointing that HP is promoting this feature when it was widely known since July that it doesn't work reliably.

IMac 27'' mid 2011 hard disk failure with FileVault 2

Hi,
Recently I had had some troubles with my iMac and everything is pointing out to the hard disk.
2 weeks ago I rebooted the iMac and i lost all my data because of a hard disk failure. The disk just got corrupted according to what i could see. From there, i had a lot of troubles trying to reinstall the last version of OS X (10.8). I indeed formated the disk and i even securely erased it. When I tried to reinstall it from external HD or from a USB key i usually (not always) got error in the final steps of installation. However, if i use the Recovery partition to install from Internet i ain't got no errors.
With OS X already installed, i also tried to encrypt the disk using FileVault 2 and i got an error again. This time, when 2 hours left to finish the encryption. Specifically this error: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4218952?start=0&tstart=0 (Trying to encrypt but it always fails). It seems to be a common error which a lot of people is suffering, but i still don't know if my case is a hardware problem or, on the other hand, a software error.
I carried the iMac to the tech support in my city and they discarded a hardware problem. They gave format to the disk and installed OS X with no problem, so they told me to check if the iMac keep spitting some error or just it has any anomalous behavior. Actually it seems to run fine, no errors yet excepting FileVault 2, which is generating the same error.
I have always used FileVault without any kind problem (in all my macs, including this one), so could it be a Mountain Lion issue?

Back up all data immediately as your boot drive may be failing.
If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
syslog -k Sender kernel -k Message CSeq "I/O error" | tail | open -f -a TextEdit
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command.
Normally the window will be empty. If you get output like this:
kernel[0] <Debug>: disk0s2: I/O error
the boot drive is failing, or there's some other hardware fault in the storage subsystem.

Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation it gives me an input/output error and stops. Any tips?

Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation and after having selected both my destination and source drives, the operation begins but soon fails due to input/output error. If I try to create an image of the drive it gives me the same error message. Any help would be much appreciated.

Disk Utility only creates a image of the drive, so it's no help getting exactly what you want, which is your files. If the file structure is messed up or the drive is failing then it's no help.
If you have a external boot drive and you can't access the internal non-booting drive though the typical Finder and windows to transfer your files via drag and drop methods, then you need to install Data Rescue on the external boot drive and it will do as best as it can to recover your files. (works on non-encrypted/non-Filevaulted drives only)
.Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
Are you sure you have hard drive failure, or that OS X isn't merely not booting?
Because if the drive is working physically, then there is a host of fixes
..Step by Step to fix your Mac
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/

G72 Hard Disk Failure and Replacement

I have had a HP g72 laptop for just over two years. Within the first year, right before the warranty expired, I had a charging issue that was resolved under warranty. Last year, I began to get warnings on startup that I had an imminent hard disk failure. I backed up most of the important things on my computer and kept using. Finally, it seems that my hard drive has failed for good. I have tried to restart my computer about 10 times and everytime I get the same message: insert boot disk and press any key. I am contemplating replacing the hard drive instead of the whole computer, but I am not sure what I need to do. Also, if this is such a problem, why hasn't HP done anything to fix it. It has been so frustrating with my HP laptops that I am considering going to another company. HELP!

Hard drives fail. That is why backup is so critical. HP does not even make hard drives so I am not sure what they could do to fix the general issue that hard drives are about the most fragile piece of technology that most people encounter.
You can get a replacement hard drive for under $75. This one would be good:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145455
Here is the Manual:
Manual
Hard drive replacement instructions start on page 4-8.
Did you make recovery disks? If not we can direct you to a place to download a Windows 7 image to use with your Key Code to replace your software.

Disk Failure: what next?

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