Disk repair procedure?

Hi, I'm hoping someone can advise on the best course of action with repairing my Mac Pros second drive or at least the best way to save the data.
I have a two hard disks. The first is the original 1TB western digital boot disk. The second is a newer 2TB western digital contains my home account and data. It is just about half full and started behaving strangely. Unfortunately a backup drive to mirror my data to was still on my to do list
Having run the Disk Utility verify option it reports a problem and when I try to repair it says it cannot be unmounted. This is the full error.
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD 2”
Performing live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Incorrect size for file download.mp3
(It should be 540672 instead of 4845808)
Incorrect size for file download.mp3
(It should be 937984 instead of 4502696)
Incorrect size for file download.mp3
(It should be 0 instead of 2952472)
Incorrect size for file download.mp3
(It should be 0 instead of 1884224)
Incorrect size for file download.mp3
(It should be 0 instead of 4322280)
Incorrect size for file download.mp3
(It should be 0 instead of 1724568)
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Volume Bit Map needs minor repair
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume free block count
(It should be 238978771 instead of 238978767)
The volume Macintosh HD 2 needs to be repaired.
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
Verify and Repair volume “Macintosh HD 2”
The disk “Macintosh HD 2” could not be unmounted
As it seems to be getting worse (system prefs seem to being forgotten and it's very slow to access the filesystem in finder) I'm wondering what the best way to proceed is?
Should I buy another WD 2TB drive and somehow clone the faulty drive? Or can I somehow unmount the faulty disk?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
David

Shutdown the computer. Wait a short while then do this:
Repair the Hard Drive
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. 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 quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

Similar Messages

Repair Disk / Repair Permissions -- which first

If I want to run repair permissions or repair disk, which should I do first?
Does it matter?

"Repair disk" makes modifications to the structure of data on the disk itself. If there is an error, this really needs to be done first since the errors could manifest themselves as botched permissions, mangled files, etc. If the disk's integrity is actually compromised, the highest priority is to repair it. One thing to keep in mind is that certain repairs cannot be made on a mounted disk (such as the one you boot from), so for the disk repair procedure to work, you should boot of another disk (your OS installation disk, a bootable external hard disk, etc.). Even then, Apple's disk repair is curiously basic -- there's many errors it simply does not detect or fix and for that you need something like DiskWarrior. Mind you, disk errors like that shouldn't occur, and if they do you may have hardware issues to be concerned about.
"Repair permissions" compares file ownership and permissions in a directory to a list stored in the package bundles in /Library/Receipts. If there's a difference between what it finds in the file list stored in the receipt package, and the files on disk, it attempts to set the permissions and ownership of the file to what appears in the list (which should reflect the state of the file when installed). It doesn't do anything at all to preferences, user preferences, user files, logs, file created after and application is installed, etc.
Contrary to popular belief, repairing permissions doesn't generally do much for you. It should be pretty rare that it finds a difference unless you've really been mucking about, and generally when it does find something it's either because you explicitly changed the permissions or because there's some other problem where an application or disk issue is changing the permissions. The one time where it really makes sense, actually, is after you repair a disk issue.
It's common advice that people tell you to repair permissions as a step to address problems, but mostly because it's an easy thing to do. Similarly, zapping your PRAM is frequently advised when trouble-shooting, though the process of a cold-boot (complete power-off, then power back on a few seconds later) is generally the portion of that procedure that actually produces the desired result.

After getting the dreaded gray/blue screen, I tried to run disk repair on the internal disk. I got an error message saying "Disk Utility can't repair this disk and restore your backed-up files. The volume Macintosh HD could not be verified completely

After getting the dreaded gray/blue screen, I tried to run disk repair on the internal disk. I got an error message saying "Disk Utility can't repair this disk and restore your backed-up files. The volume Macintosh HD could not be verified completely." What do I do now? This is an iMac and I'm running 10.6.8.

Clean Install of Snow Leopard
Be sure to make a backup first because the following procedure will erase
the drive and everything on it. See below for how to clone a drive.
     1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came
         with your computer. Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.
         After the chime press and hold down the "C" key. Release the key when you see
         a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.
     2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue
         button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
         After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
         size.) Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Set the number of
         partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button
         and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended
         (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.
     3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed
         with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
     4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
         Assistant. Be sure you configure your initial admin account with the exact same
         username and password that you used on your old drive. After you finish Setup
         Assistant will complete the installation after which you will be running a fresh
         install of OS X. You can now begin the update process by opening Software
         Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your installation current.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.
You may be able to backup your data if you have an erased external drive you can use. Before you do the above but after you have opened Disk Utility you can try to clone your drive:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag
       it to the Destination entry field.
5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
      the Source entry field.
6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Now this will only work if the drive is accessible and can be cloned by Disk Utility. Otherwise, you would need to access your drive from another Mac that you can connect via Firewire - Target Disk Mode.

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!.

Disk repair and startup\dvd drive issues

i'm running 10.6 on a 2ghz macpro - disk repair has found problems on the startup disk. i know i need to boot from another disc to repair the system drive, but i'm having problems doing so.
the dvd drive won't startup from either my original installation discs (tiger) nor my snow leopard dvd. restarting and pressing 'C' does nothing, then the tray opens and the mac starts from my HD.
I have a superduper backup on an internal drive, i can start from this but disk utility won't allow the repair of the main HD, saying it can't unmount it. I'm sure i've done yhis before by creating a temporary admin account and running dick utility from there, but even this isn't working this time.

First, under no circumstances should you try to use a Tiger install disk to repair problems on a Snow Leopard system. You need to use a Snow Leopard disk.
Second, make sure that you are using the disk that you used to install SL on the Mac Pro. It must be a disk that has a system newer or equal to the one that shipped with your machine. If your machine originally shipped with Tiger, but is currently running Snow Leopard, then any retail Snow Leopard disk should be able to boot the machine.
If the machine won't boot from a legit disk that it should be able to boot from, then either the disk itself is damaged or you have a hardware problem. Or, very rarely (I've only ever heard one first-hand report of such a thing), you could have such a severely-corrupted hard drive that it actually prevents you from booting from anything.
Are you able to load DVDs in your machine at all? What happens if you put in the SL disk when the machine is booted from another drive? Are you able to boot into [Apple Hardware Test|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509]? If so, run the extended tests.
I'm not sure why you'd be unable to repair the drive when booted from a backup on a different internal drive. Does that backup drive have the same version of the OS? Are you running Disk Utility from the backup drive or from the drive you're trying to repair?
You could try booting into single-user mode (hold down command-s at startup), then type "fsck -fy" at the command line. When fsck is done, run it again. Continue until either no problems are found or until you're reasonably sure it'll never manage to fix them all.
You could also try getting a copy of [DiskWarrior|http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html] or [TechTool Pro|http://www.micromat.com>, which can fix some things that Disk Utility can't.

Trying to do Disk Repair but get beeping.

I need to do a Disk Repair through the Disk Utility function off my Snow Leopard Installation disc. However, once my Macbook Pro restarts, it won't take me to the OSX installation window. Instead, I remain stuck at the startup grey Apple screen, and get 3 beeps repeatedly. These beeps have only happened when I try to open the Installation disc. It has never happened to me when I turn on my computer normally without the installation disc.
I've also noticed that my laptop will randomly freeze sometimes with a spinning cursor when I barely even have an internet window open, no other applications running. I don't know if this problem is related to the issue above.
This is a 2011 model. Don't know if these specs will help at all (total tech newb here).
Processor: 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

1) 3 long tones, 3 short tones, 3 long tones = Firmware restoration from CD in process.
2) 3 successive tones, a 5-second pause, 3 successive tones = RAM does not pass data integrity check
Which one?

Need disk repair help fast!

My internal CD drive broke so I bought an external one. Problem is that the computer is in need of serious Norton repair and when using the Sony external CD/DVD drive to run the Norton disk the computer does not recognize the hard drive so I can't repair anything. In other words, I put in the Norton cd and it shows up just fine on the desktop but when Norton opens up and I am supposed to choose a disk to repair nothing shows up to choose from. Nothing at all, just a big blank space. The external drive works because I've burned from it although when I try to burn directly from, say iTunes, it goes to the origional disk drive which is broken so I have to use the toast light program to burn. Maybe there is someway I can make my external drive the default one? It is taking forever to load each program and I'm feeling doom with the way the computer has been acting lately and I really can't afford to be without it as I run my business from it. thanks
imac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.9)
imac Mac OS X (10.2.x)
imac Mac OS X (10.2.x)

Hi again, Donna,
Happy to hear you got rid of Norton!
You say your Mac has not panicked since you got rid of Norton, right? If so, you may have already fixed the kernel panic problem. I have not had a single kernel panic since I uninstalled Norton years ago.
If you do experience another kernel panic, the advice about kernel panics that you got from mrtotes is about the best that most Mac users can do for themselves. As explained in those suggestions, kernel panics are often hardware related. Be sure to disconnect all external devices that are not absolutely necessary when checking for and attempting to solve kernel panics.
You should not need to take your Mac to an Apple Service Technician for kernel panics if you can fix it yourself with the advice you have already been given.
<hr width="85%">
Next issue: You mention that your Mac runs slow (the beach ball spins for a long time.)
If you multiple applications running, close all but one and see if the problem goes away. If so, you may just be working your Mac too hard. Run fewer apps at a time.
If you have any external devices, including your external CD/DVD drive, connected, unhook them all and check to see if the beach ball goes away. If so, one or more of your devices may be the source of the problem. You can find which by reconnecting only one at a time and then checking to find whether the beach ball comes back. If no one device causes the beach-ball to reappear, try connecting two at once to see if any of your external devices might be conflicting with each other.
Your Mac may need basic Mac OS X maintenance. You have already done a Safe Boot, (and perhaps a disk repair), so try a permissions repair next.
Unless you have set the slider for your computer to "Never" sleep in System Preferences > Energy Saver > Sleep, you should also force background maintenance tasks as explained in
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107388
The article lists several equally effective ways you can do this, I personally use MacJanitor, which is free and very simple to use.
FileVault slows disk operation and adds processor tasks to your Mac. If you have enabled FileVault, turn it off (turning FileVault off can take a while) to see if your beach-ball problem goes away.
One other thing that can cause slow (beach-ball) operation is that your startup disk may be too full. Check free (Available) space with Finder > File > Get Info. If you do not have at least 10 GB of free space, try Increasing available space on your hard disk.
For more comprehensive suggestions on OS X Maintenance, see Gulliver's
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=122021
Let us know how it goes.
Jim
Mac OS X (10.4.9) G5 DP 1.8

Disk repair utility & printer issue

I will admit right now that until last night, have never touched an iMac but I have a friend that due to health issues, needs a hand. Can I ask a couple of questions of this forum?
1: She has an external Lacie H/D that is making wierd noises after being knocked over. Her backup software says to run the Disk Repair Utility. I haven't the slightest idea where to find this Disk Repair Utility, nor if I can run it on an external drive.
2: Her printer, mac book and iMac were recently moved from one location to another home. I need her printer connected wirelessly to both computers. I was able to get her Macbook connected but I am having issues with iMac. Can I uninstall her printer and reinstall? Not even sure how to do that basic process so advice would be appreciated.

Disk Utility should be able to check the LaCie - whether it will be able to complete any repairs that may be needed will become obvious when it's attempted. Disk Utility is normally in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder.
Regarding the printer, yes you can uninstall it in System Preferences>Printers & Scanners (or similar wording depending on version of OS X). The +/- buttons add/remove printers.
If you still have problems, post back.

External hard drive won't mount, even after disk repair.

My Toshiba external hard drive won't mount on my MacBook Pro 10.8.5. I can see it in my disk repair, and when I repair, "the partition map appears to be ok." But I can't access the icon to be able to open the hard drive contents on my desktop. Help!

Hello maccynicwhoalwayshasmacs,
Thanks for the question. After reviewing your post, it sounds like trouble with an external HD mounting. I would recommend that you read this article, it may be able to help you resolve or isolate the issue.
USB and FireWire Quick Assist
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Have a nice day,
Mario

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

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 what do I do?

Ok my iMac is not even a week old and I'm seeing this...
What do I do?!
I hear your supposed to put the Mac OS X Install disk and hold "C" on a restart
but what happens when I do that I don't want any data to be deleted
and I don't have a back-up drive yet to back things up if something goes wrong. Will a disk repair erase data?
20 inch 2.16 Intel Core 2 Duo Mac OS X (10.4.10) 2 Gb or Ram

Hi
AFAIK, Disk Repair does not erase data so it should be safe to do it. When you restart from the install disk, choose the language & go to the next screen. A menu bar will appear, choose Utilities>Disk Utility. Select your disk (not the indented partition name (think that's right)) & click Repair Disk. Repeat this until no errors. If this doesn't fix it then you may need 1 of these 2 programs
TechTool Pro
DiskWarrior
It it always a good idea to have a backup, there are many posts regarding cloning/backing up your HD.
Steve

Disk Repair For A DYI Fusion

About 4 months ago I purchased a solid state drive and installed it with a regular drive (installed where the optical drive was originally located) in a Macbook Pro OS 10.8.4, 2.8 ghz i7 Core. I followed directions provided by Other World Computing and created a fusion drive using the two disks. Everything has been working great and the fusion is smokin fast.
Prior to the fusion installation I always ran the disk utility or disk warror to look for little glitches on my drive. The issue is when I boot from the recovery disk or a usb startup the two drives are shown seperately rather than one fusion drive.
So the question is can I run disk repair on each of the disks seperately without harming my fusion setup, or is there some other way to have a repair utility to recogonize the fusion set up on the two disks.
I am not having major issues but in the past found that doing a check like this can be helpful.

Have you updated DiskWarrior to 4.4? According to the Alsoft site, it as compatible with Fusion Drives:
http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/support.html#Fusion
MtD

Disk Repair Failure

I have an imac G4 15" Flat Panel 800 MGhz and I have been told that my hard drive went bad so i am about to install a new one. I probably should anyway, the upgrade will be nice. I hope. Anyway, I am trying to learn all I can from this experience so I have another question.
I was getting a grey screen with a folder icon with a flashing question mark on it so I did a disk repair and got this error message "Disk Utility stopped repairing "Untitled 1" because the following error was encountered: The underlying task reported failure on exit.
I then restarted the computer with my OSX Install Disk inserted and held down the shift key and the screen had the following on it:
panic (cpu 0 caller 0X002DFC88): Unable to find driver for this platform: PowerMac4,2".
No debugger configured - dumping debug information
MSR =00001030
Latest stack backtrace for CPU0
Backtrace:
0X00095698 0X00095D98 0X0002683C 0X002DFC88 0X002BF014
0X002BEDDC 0X002BF844 0X002BFEB0 0X000A9814
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (SU =0X00525A00)
PC =0X00000000; MSR =0X0000D030;
DAR =0X00000000; DISIR =0X00000000;
LR =0X00000000; R1 =0X00000000; XCP =0X00000000 (unknown)
Kernal Version:
Darwin Kernal Version 8.3.0: Mon Oct. 3 20:04:04 PDT 2005;
root: XNU- 792.6.22. obj~2/Release_PPC
Panic: We are hanging here...
After this happened I connected a imac G3 to my imac G4 with a Fire Wire Cable hoping to target my files and recover them. Then this message came up:
Inserted a disk containing no volumes that OSX can read.
So what does this mean?
If my Hard Drive is ruined can I recover my files?
I know there are some geniuses out there so I will await your reply.
Thank you
Ovation
imac g4 flat panel Mac OS X (10.4.7)
imac g4 flat panel Mac OS X (10.4.7)
imac g4 flat panel Mac OS X (10.4.7)

First, check your SMART status of the drive with Disk Utility. If SMART is not verified, you should get another drive before you start loosing data.
When I got similar disk and 'underlying task' errors, I re-formatted the drive and that removed the errors.
I backed up my data to an external firewire drive of the same capacity by booting my PB off my Tiger install CD (the 10.3 should work too) with the firewire drive attached.
Select Disk Utility from one of the menus after you booted off the CD. In Disk Utility, select the Restore tab. Drag your internal PB drive into the source field, and drag your FW drive as the dest field. You will want to erase the destination. Just be careful to get the source and dest disks straight! Click restore and your PB HD will be copied over to your external. You might want to boot from your external to make sure it comes up and looks like it would from the internal drive.
Once this is complete, use Disk Utility to erase your internal drive. Verify your disk to make sure all the problems are gone.
Then run Restore again, this time using your external drive as the source, and the internal as the destination. When restore is complete, your PB will be bootable with all your stuff. Plus, you just made a full backup on your external drive!

Error in Disk Repair - PLS HELP

Dear All,
I have posted a message a week ago, about Error in Verifying Permission and Onyx Error -1. Then ~Bee (thanks for the suggestion, really appreciate it) replied and suggested me to try Disk Repair. I tried it this morning and the result was not very promising.
Below are the message:
Verify and Repair disk "Rich's HD"
Checking HPS Plus volumn.
Checking Extends Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
Volume check failed
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit.
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error.
<--end of message-->
I also tried to verify Permission and it ran until 85% and it stopped without any activity until I 'stopped' the verification.
I really hope my HD is not up to something bad. What I have done were only installed CS3 (only installed Photoshop and Illustrator) and it was running fine until recently.
If anyone has any idea or suggestion, please let me know.
Thanks a lot!
Worried,
chityc.

The reason you need to boot from the DVD and run Disk Utility is that an active, mounted disk cannot be repaired.
If you want to save some time (bypassing the need for the DVD) on this and don't mind using single user mode (type a command similar to DOS on a PC) then do the following:
- Restart the Mac and hold down the Command (Apple) and 'S' keys simultaneously. This will put you into what is known as 'Single User Mode' (white text on a black background like DOS).
- At the prompt, type the command fsck -fy and press the 'Return' key.
- This will run through the same check/fix as Disk Utility.
- Repeat if errors are found (you can either retype or press the 'Arrow Up' key of the keyboard to revisit the command.
- If the error is resolved, type the command reboot and then press the 'Return' key. The Mac will reboot into its usual GUI interface.
Note 1: When in Disk Utility, look to the bottom part of the application window for the drive's 'S.M.A.R.T.' status. If it is 'Verified', your hardware is okay.
Note 2: I prefer to install a free app called AppleJack that gives you more functionality (disk check/repair, caches flush, preference checks etc..) in single user mode without needing to know the actual UNIX commands.
- If the error does not resolve (here or with Disk Utility from the DVD), your problem will require either a more powerful tool like DiskWarrior (commercial software) or backing up your present drive, reformatting it and re-installing.

Disk repair procedure?

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