Disk Utility cannot repair startup volume, and where's my AppleCare cover?

Hi all,
The 250GB SATA drive on my Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5GHz has some 'issues' that Disk Utility cannot repair. It says, "Invalid sibling" and something about "key not found" or "keys out of order". I've run fsck -fy in single-user mode but it drops out saying "(4, 18880) error".
I have AppleCare Protection for it until November, but when I log into Apple's site, it says I have no current agreements. I'm at work at the moment and don't have my serial number, so I can't really call them up (and I don't have their phone number to hand...).
Is the hard drive covered under AppleCare?
I don't want to purchase any more software to fix the disk, i.e. Alsoft's DiskWarrior, unless it can be delivered instantly and will work on these problems?
Any help is much appreciated :o)

Thanks for that.
I was willing last night to re-install the OS to see if it was a software problem, but booting into the Tiger install DVD reported the same problems, however it was a little more informative than fsck. It says there are issues on the first two partitions on the boot drive. (I have OS X, Apps and Games partitions on that drive.)
I tried repairing the partitions in different orders, just in case it would help, but it still failed.
If I were to call AppleCare while at work, without the serial number, would they be able to locate my agreement and sort out a repair? APP was bought with the machine and I assumed it would've been registered at that time, but the website says I have no agreements...? Anyone got their phone number?

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Have a mac book pro that crashed. ran disk utility to repair. comp booted and ran for short time. then crashed. ran repair again. disk utility said it could not repair files and i needed to format hard drive and start again. now nothing works

have a mac book pro that crashed. ran disk utility to repair. comp booted and ran for short time. then crashed. ran repair again. disk utility said it could not repair disk and needed to format and start again.
comp said it could not unmount disk and now when comp trys to boot all i get is a question mark on the screen. help

Erase and Install
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard 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.
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 after formatting completes and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.
5. After restart into Snow Leopard download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

Flashing folder now disk utility cannot repair...backup files and reformat disk?

Hey,
my MacBook pro recently froze on the spinning wheel while I was using the Internet, I had to hold down the power button to shut down
Once I restarted the machine I was left on a grey screen with a flashing folder sign..I read all the articles on this that I could find online and followed the procedures until the only option left was to use disk utility from the install dvd and try to diagnose and repair the problem.
I used disk utility and found it could not repar the disk named. Disk0s2 ..which I have also read is a bad sign to start with...the log said this..
                           Verify and repair volume disk0s2
                            Checking journaled HFS plus volume
                            Invalid b-tree node size
                            The volume. Could not be verified completely
                       Disk utility could not repair this disk..backup files, reformat disk and restore backed up files
I need some advice as to that's what I should do and if there's a way for me to save my files on the mac....and more importantly how to reformat the disk properly..I've tried the YouTube tutorials and couldn't get what I was after.
Thanks to anyone who can help me with this
Thank you again for reading this
Dan

Your going to need to read the Data Recovery tip I created here
Your going to need to buy DataRescue $99 or similar to read the 1's and 0's of your files and restore them to another drive while booted from another Mac or a drive with OS X on it.
Have fun.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3172
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents

Disk Utility: cannot Repair Permissions, even on Leopard installation disk

After reinstall of iLife '08 and Software Update completed, I ran Repair Disk Permissions. Got an immediate red note "error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (sic)." with a flag: "First Aid failed. Disk Utility stopped repairing permissions on 'Mac HD...' because the following error was encountered: The underlying task reported failure on exit."
I went to my Leopard Installation disk and ran "Repair Disk." No problem found. From the Installation disk, ran Repair Disk Permissions. got the same RED INK comments and flag, First Aid failed.
Restarts don't help. Also, so far I have not found an application which is NOT working despite this Disk Utility problem, happy to report ;-))
Additional background. I was reinstalling iLife to fix iPhoto after a clean reinstallation of Leopard and reincorporation of files and apps vis Time Machine. It had been several weeks and iPhoto appeared to be the only app which was not quite right.

Disk Repair can trigger "underlying task" but I've never heard or seen a Permissions Repair do so.
You should never use the DVD to repair permissions. You should be using the same OS version. And of course you can always repair permissions from your boot drive; or from backup/clone or alternate "emergency" drive. Otherwise, the DVD and older version of DU will be wrong.
I know I read that on MacFixit, but I am not sure I bookmarked it.
Don't rely on Apple First Aid, even a clean bill of health doesn't mean there aren't problems which Disk Warrior can deal with.

Disk Utility Cannot Repair

About one month ago my system at startup was acting odd, the menu items in the top right corner were missing and Disk Utility would not repair the volume, DiskWarrior was real slow in trying to repair the volume so I decided to Erase the Drive and install the OS fresh.
Well this morning at startup after the progress bar I was faced with a black screen with with writing. I started from the install Disk and tried Disk Utility, it could not repair the volume. Keys out of order and missing items were what I saw. I tried Disk Warrior, it was able to repair the volume, hardly any errors shown, no long report for those familiar with DW. However when I went to restart I ended up with the startup you see the 1st time you start your Mac, looking for registration etc after the Welcome video.
Once again the menu items in the upper right hand corner spotlight and clock are missing.
Any Ideas what can be causing this. DW is set to check the HD's SMART status and has never found a problem, the computer is used primarily for email and internet access. It is the G4 that is having these issues.
450 MHz PowerMac G4 40 GB HD 1.12GB SDRAM 700 MHz eMac 40 GB HD 768MB SDRAM iMac 266 MHz 96MB SDRAM Mac OS X (10.4.5)

I don't do hardware
Try looking in "do-it-youself" repair.
EDIT: To find drives that would be right you can look at OWC
-mj
[email protected]
Message was edited by: macjack

Disk Utility, Cannot repair permissions

After finally getting Disk Utility to run successfully, without crashing, it says that all the modifications it found cannot, or will not be repaired. ***??
I am almost tempted to re-install tiger so I can get my Macbook run smoothly again. I have been getting alot more beachballs, and sometimes I get horizontal tearing.

I don't have any ready answers for you on that. There are lots of performance related discussions going on here. You'd probably be best served by bringing this issue into one of those threads or starting a new thread.
But some things to check:
Has Spotlight completed its initial indexing since you installed Leopard? Click on the Spotlight icon in the upper right corner and see if it says it is still indexing.
Do you have some process consuming an unusual amount of CPU time? Run Applications / Utilities / Activity Monitor. Select show all processes. Click on the CPU column to sort by CPU usage.
Is something repeatedly failing and chewing up resources due to that? Run Applications / Utilities / Console. Select All Messages. See if you are getting repeating error messages of some sort.
Is Leopard recognizing all of your hardware correctly, and in particular is it seeing all the memory you have installed? Select About This Mac from the Apple Menu. See how much memory it says you have. Click on More Info to enter the System Profiler to see the details on what's known about all your hardware/software setup. Does anything look fishy?
Are you running any third party software that might need a Leopard upgrade?
Basic maintenance when the computer is not acting the way you like is to:
Reset Parameter memory (PRAM) -- the place the computer stashes copies of certain settings for quick access: To do this, shut down the computer. Locate the Apple-Option-P-R keys. Hold down all 4 of those keys and keep them held down. With your 3rd hand, press and release the power button. Keep those 4 keys held down. You will hear the startup chime, and about 10 seconds later you will hear a second startup chime. You can now release those 4 keys. The system will continue to boot normally.
Check your hard drive and system file permissions: Run Applications / Utilities / Disk Utility. Select your hard drive from the list on the left. Select Verify Disk on the right. This will take a long time (20 minutes or so) and the progress bar won't advance at all. Be patient. If the report comes back with errors, then reboot directly from your Leopard install DVD (hold down the "c" key while rebooting). Instead of beginning the install phase again, use the version of Disk Utility available from the menu bar -- except this time do a Repair Disk instead of a verify.
Once your hard drive is known to pass the file structure verification, use Disk Utility on it again only this time Repair Permissions. This will take 20 minutes or so and the progress bar won't advance until the very end.
Having done these steps, check again to see how your system performance is doing.
Just to give you an idea how obscure some of these performance things can be we just had a performance issue that got resolved in another thread. The poster had decided to swap out his internal drive for a larger drive and do a fresh Erase and Install. His performance was awful.
Turns out he had put the new drive into the same bay with another drive and they were both configured to be the "master" drive on that bus. It's a wonder it worked at all.
The bottom line is that when properly installed on proper hardware, Leopard really is running quite snappily after Spotlight finishes indexing. So keep looking for what's wrong with your setup rather than going back to Tiger.
--Bob

Disk Utility cannot repair Macintosh HD

Hey everyone,
My computer has been faulty for a while now, been running on Mountain Lion OS X 10.8.5.
I originally noticed the issue at hand when i tried to download maverick, but Macintosh HD was not a viable download location as it was already being used by Time Machine, I tried fiddling around with it but to no avail.
Eventually, I decided to verify if there was any problem with my HDD, and when I verified in Disk Utility, it said it needed repairing ("Disk Utility can't repair this disk...disk, and restore your backed up file"). It kept on telling me that the "volume Macintosh HD could not be repaired after 3 attempts"). Now I've just tried restarting my computer and I'm getting the notorious grey screen of death where I get the progress bar and a scroll, at the end of the bar, my MacBook Pro just switches off!
Luckily I have all my stuff backed up on a WD external HD, so my whole computer is backed up. Can anyone please resolve this for me? I have been through the step by step guides already available, but want to avoid erasing and re downloading if possible.
Thanks,
Felix.

Install or Reinstall Mavericks or Mountain Lion from Scratch
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
OS X Mavericks- Erase and reinstall OS X
OS X Mountain Lion- Erase and reinstall OS X
OS X Lion- Erase and reinstall Mac OS X
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
because it is three times faster than wireless.

IBook doesn't start up - disk utility cannot repair

I was using my iBook just fine and it froze. I restarted, but the problem kept happening. Finally, on maybe the 3rd or 4th restart it would not go past the grey screen. I booted from the install disk and ran disk utility. It said this: invalid sibling link, invalid B-tree header, invalid map node, missing thread record, invalid volume directory, invalid volume final count, volume bit map needs minor repair, invalid volume free block count, and then finally error: the underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972). What does that all mean, how did it happen, and how can I fix it, since first aid won't repair it? Should I reinstall the OS and copy the contents of my hard drive to an old system folder or is there another way? If anyone out there can help me I would be grateful.
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

you can try Disk Warrior utility to fix the problem.

Disk utility cannot repair HD

Hello,
some days ago my macbook (13 inch, mid 2012, yosemite) did not start. The boot of OS X seemed to freeze, so I rebooted starting disk utility to check if something went wrong in my HD.
At first I started a verification on permissions and as a result I found many files tha couldn't be read
Then a started a verification on the HD and the response was that disk utility couldn't complete the process and that I had to repair the disk.
Well, finally I started the repair but it stopped after a while saying that the disk could not be repaired and suggested to initialize the HD and then recover from backup.
I repeated the process more then once, but the result was always the same.
Now, i use Time Machine (on a NAS) & CCC (on external usb drive) to backup, so I have all backups accessible, but I wondering if the problem is phisical and not logical (or both) but i cannot understand it. Does the inizialization isolate possible damaged sectors ?
Do you suggest to try anyway the "inizialize+recover from backup" process or is it better to go to an assistance point and avoid waste of time ?
Many thanks for any suggestion.

Solved by myself...Initialised HD and fully restored from Time Machine, all problems disappeared

HD crash. Disk utility says invalid node structure, invalid record count. Disk utility cannot repair. Now what?

My hard drive crashed. The disk utility says it can not repair. I tried to boot in safe mode but I stopped after 10 minutes. Is that impatient or how long can it take?
I have the installation disk but doesn't that erase everything?

I have never bought a new computer from Apple so I don't know the details of what is covered by the warranty. You can try taking it to the Apple Store and they may have a copy of DW they can run. Or maybe not and they will just wipe the drive and reinstall the OS for you and if you haven't made a backup before they do that then tough luck. I'd check first!
If you buy Diskwarrior on DVD it will boot the computer. I think Apple Stores carry it, but you can also buy it directly from the vendor. I also don't use Lion OS so I don't know the details. You may be able to get their download version and boot from your recovery partition, then run it without a DVD.

Lion on ssd crashed! Disk utility 'cannot repair the disk' HELP!!!

Fortunately I got a time machine backup. And its restoring the drive while in Lion recovery mode. Here's what happened...
I dont have a router a my place at the moment and so my two phones (iphone 4 and htc android) connect to my internet using my MBP's wifi via internet sharig. For some reason they were not able to get an IP from the mbp. After doing some wifi swtich toggles and forgettig & rejoining the network, i decided to reboot all my devices. I shut down my modem, phones and restarted my mbp. On reboot, after the chime, it showed an unsusal 'progress bar' under the apple logo. The bar progressed to about 10% and then the mbp just powered off. This happened several times even after PRAM and SMC reset.
So now i booted with cmd+r pressed and in recovery mode ran a 'verify disk'. It said the verification stopped and that i should repair the disk. When i tried to do that it said the disk cannot be repaird and that i should back up as many files as possible and attempt to format the disk and restore it with time machine. It is precisely what im doing at the moment.
This ssd is a ocz octane sata 2 ssd about a month old. What could have gone wrong???
Neerav
Ps. Two things i was facing as possible symptoms of a logic board failure were...
1. Mbp wont sleep even when internet sharing is off
2. Mbp wont lit the onboard display upon opening it in clamshell mode untill i removed the 3.5mm audio cable of my speakers from the audio out port!
Please advice...

I have resolved a major disk failure in formating my ssd and then reinstalling the OS and then using time machine to get my config back. in 1 hour the problem was solved.
If formating the ssd is not enough, delete the partition and recreate everything.
The CD given with the mac have the correct tools to do it.
At worst you can scratch the partition with a windows computer and then recreate everything with the mac after. (i was obliged to use this method to recover an other hd failure on a non ssd disk.
If your computer have some trouble to start up, maintain the left button of the mouse activated during the boot. (it can happen if a cd is blocked on the computer during a bootcamp installation.)

Disk Utility - Cannot repair disk (USB)

Hey guys,
I was copying some movies to my USB stick when it seemed to get all buggy on me, and ejected itself. However, it seems to have been corrupted during the process.
Now I have tried to format the USB. I am able to watch content from it and also copy it back over to my desktop but I cant delete anything from it nor can I repair it in Disk Utility after I veryify the disk.
Here are some images:

Sorry I should have also included the following:

Mac Disk util did repair my volume header error but why....

I was wondering what might have caused the Volume header error that I just had to repair? Macheine was never downed... good power.. I am perplexed.

If it happens once in a while, then it's most likely something "glitched" in the memory. Even good memory can have a bad nanosecond occasionally.
If it starts happening fairly often then it's usually either bad memory or bad blocks on the hard drive.
There are third party memory tests and hard drive tests you can purchase or download that will check these things out. What I usually recommend as a starting point for memory tests, though, is the Apple Hardware Test (AHT) that came with your computer.
For your Mac Pro, I believe it is on the first install disk, Here's how you would run it:
1. Insert install disk 1 into the computer and then shut down the computer.
2. Once the computer is shut down, start it up and immediately press and hold down the D key. Don't let go until you see the AHT logo.
3. Eventually you'll get to a screen with a Test button. Before clicking it put a check mark beside Run Extended Test. This could take quite awhile, especially if you have lots of RAM (the memory test takes the longest). And expect the screen to go all sorts of colors and stuff when it tests the video RAM.
4. If there are error messages then write them down and call Applecare because it's guaranteed they'll say it needs a repair of some sort.
If there are no error messages it's not a guarantee there's no hardware problem. If it's an intermittent memory issue, the AHT may not catch it. In that case I recommend running it overnight in "looping mode". This will run the tests over and over and over until you stop it (using Ctrl-C I think) or until it comes up with an error message. To turn on looping mode follow the instructions above but before you click the Test button press Command-L.
Once again, if there are error messages call Applecare.
For the hard drive, one thing you can do if you suspect bad blocks (and this is a pain) is to back up all your data and then zero out your hard drive and then reinstall OS X. This will erase everything on the hard drive which is why you want to back up your data first.
Essentially what that does is writes zeros across the whole hard drive. If it finds a bad block then it marks it as bad and the computer won't store data in that block anymore. A few bad blocks isn't going to take up much space. Blocks are usually measured in KB so it takes a lot to equal even a GB.
For the hard drive, it's usually best to find software that can scan and test the blocks without erasing anything, though.

HD problem - disk utility says "1 HFS volume checked" "Vol needs repair"

This all started with very slow response when applications were opened on iMac purchased 10/07 - went to Disk Utilty and tried to Repair Disk - but not allowed to click on that option(still grey). So, went to Disc 1 of Installer set of disks , inserted in drive and attempted to reinstall Mac OS X that came with Oct '07 (Tiger-right before Leopard became standard) purchase. When I get to the Select A Destination part of the Install MacOS X directions, there are no choices(ie- HD not recognized). Went to disk utility option available with the Installer disk and did a Repair Disk option. Following messages in RED
Invalid Volume Header
Invalid Mode Sgtructure
The volume Mac HD needs to be repaired ( ie- Volume check failed)
then Disk Utility boxpops up andsays Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Finally
1 HFS volume checked VOLUME NEEDS REPAIR in red
Huuuum.
Next step? I am using my wife's PC to send this HELP message and it's painful. Rescue me as the song says! Is it time to box up for Apple store visit, or ......

Houston, welcome to Apple Discussions.
It appears you have some directory damage on your hard drive. Disk Utility cannot fix some of these type problems. DiskWarrior can probably fix your problem. DiskWarrior by Alsoft
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html
 Cheers, Tom

My HD needs to be reformatted according to Disk Utility, but even when I use an external device for startup, Disk Utility cannot reformat the HD

I have a Macbook with a 500 GB Hard Drive. A routine check on Disk Utility told me the disk needed to be reformatted. I restarted from an external USB drive, but when I try to use Disk Utility to repair the HD or to reformat it, Disk Utility is unable to do anything with the HD (cannot repair, cannot erase,cannot reformat the HD). Is there a utility App that can help me with this, or is the HD unrecoverable?

Hi
Thanks very much for your reply. We have been starting up from a backup (USB) drive and use the disk utility that is on the backup drive so the internal (problem) HD is not being used for anything (except for wanting to repair it). Still Disk Utility cannot reformat or repair the drive. I have also run Onyx but it tells me everything is OK on the drive.
But I have made a little progress. Using my old install disk for Snow Leopard (10.6.3) I have managed to do a fresh install of the system on the internal HD. Unfortunately, I also asked the install disk to transfer/migrate the settings and documents from the backup drive back onto my internal HD. The install appeared to work, but then it got hung up on copying the documents from my backup drive to the HD. After letting it sit for 2 days without going anywhere, I stopped the install process. I am going to try again, just using my Snow Leopard CD to install Snow Leopard, and nothing else. If that works, I will then get on to the problem of copying the rest of the settings and documents from my backup.
But since the Mac works OK off the USB backup, and will also run off the install CD, I am guessing the problem is with the HD and the only solution might be to replace it if I can't repair it. But the macbook is several years old, and I am not sure it is worth buying a new HD for it.

Disk Utility cannot repair startup volume, and where's my AppleCare cover?

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