Disk utility false "failed" disk errors

Hello, I'm really hoping someone can help me solve this problem.
I have an iMac (see specs below) connected via Thunderbolt to a LaCie 2big RAID drive (with two 3TB internal Seagate drives set up as mirrored RAID slices). Both the iMac and the LaCie drive were purchased brand new in 2012 and worked flawlessly until April 2014. In April, one of the LaCie's two internal drives failed and could not be rescued using Apple's Disk Utility. Since the LaCie unit was still under warranty, LaCie replaced the affected internal drive at no cost. Since then however, Apple's Disk Utility has been giving me a "failed" disk warning on the same internal drive about once a month. The first time, LaCie simply directed me to reformat the drive and the problem went away. But the same problem has appeared roughly every month since then.
I sent the entire unit back to LaCie for diagnosis and they told me that the drive is perfectly fine. In other words, it's a software failure, not a hardware failure. I was told that Disk Utility was giving me false errors, possibly caused by the iMac going into sleep mode and not ejecting the disk properly. They said they've seen it before, but Apple has not yet released a patch for it. Since receiving the drive back from LaCie, I've changed the iMac's energy saver settings to prevent it from going to sleep after any inactivity. However, the same drive failed again this morning.
The only solution LaCie has given me is to wait for Apple to release a patch and in the meantime, reformat my drive whenever the "failed" warning appears to clear the problem. However, I have more than 2TB of data on this drive and the process of backing it up, reformatting the disk and copying all of my data back again typically takes more than 20 hours. I simply cannot afford to keep doing this every month. LaCie seems to have washed their hands of this and pointed their finger at Apple's Disk Utility. My questions is, has anyone else had similar problems? And if so, what is the solution?
Hardware Specs:
27-inch iMac, Mid 2011 (3.1 Ghz Intel Core i5, 12 GB RAM)
LaCie 2big 6TB Thunderbolt RAID disk (set up as two 3TB mirrored RAID slices)
Thanks,
Mike.

Permissions you can ignore on 10.5 and 10.6:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448?viewlocale=en_US
Using 'should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r--' as an example, you will see the that the permissions are not changed, but the | indicates a different location. This is because an update to Leopard changed the location of a number of system components.
As long as you see, "Permissions Repair Complete" when it's finished... you're done.

Similar Messages

Input/Output Error in Disk Utility w/ Failing HD

Hey Apple Community,
I know others probably have asked this question, but I didn't want to spend an hour looking for the correct solution (if one even exists)...thanks for understanding.
Last night my Mid-2009 Macbook Pro failed to boot after a shutdown. I've had a couple things replaced in the past, but upon restarting in Recovery HD mode, it became obvious that the hard drive was failing (I'm assuming, the S.M.A.R.T. designation in Disk Utility said "failing" in red font). I tried to create an image to an external 1 TB Hard Drive after verifying and a repair attempt, in an attempt to back up my original Hard Drive, but I received the following error message: "Input/Output Error...," and quit the image creation attempt.
I don't have a lot on my computer, about 95% of the original HD was unused. What is important though are prior Graduate School documents, and a few work-related projects. Is there any way to get the information off the HD before it shuts down completely? I am technologically proficient enough to do things on my own, but the local Mac specialists (nearest Apple store is 2 hours away) wanted $150-300 for the work. I can replace the HD myself, so the issue is just getting at least part of the information off the original hard drive onto my external one.
Thank you in advance for any advice/solution/etc you may have! -Matt

Rudiger314 wrote:
Partition Map Scheme: Unformatted
Repair/Verify options are unavailable—buttons grayed out. Erase and Partition options appear to work fine until I press Apply/Erase
1. When Disk Utility starts, select the drive in the sidebar (the line with the size and make/ID).
2. Select the Partition tab, then set the number of partitions from the drop down menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.)
3. Click Options, then choose either GUID (for Intel Macs), or +Apple Partition Map+ (for PPC Macs)
4. For each partition, click on it (it will then be outlined in blue), then supply a name (this is the name that will appear on your desktop and/or Finder sidebar) and size (either by typing in the box or dragging the dividers), and be sure the format type is +Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)+ Don't use any of the other options unless you're sure you need to.
5. When you've got everything the way you want it, click Apply and wait until the process has completed.

HT4790 My Mac OS Lion 10.7 FileVaulted HD does not boot, prohibitory sign, stop sign appears some minutes after boot starts. Disk Utility repair shows four error messages: Unable to bootstrap transaction group 2517: inconsistent crosscheck (the same with

My Mac OS Lion 10.7 FileVaulted HD does not boot, prohibitory sign, stop sign appears some minutes after boot starts. Disk Utility repair shows four error messages:
Unable to bootstrap transaction group 2517: inconsistent crosscheck
No valid commit checkpoint found
The volume xxxxxxxxxxxxxx(here it shows physical volume number) was found corrupt and can not be repaired.
Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map
Error: Storage system verify or repair failed.
(the same with 2518, 2519 and 2520 transaction group)
I suppose it is serious bug in Mac OS Lion managing FileVault and wonder what the help could be?

Most likely culprit is your Lacie drives which are notorious for flaky power supplies which cause just the sort of erratic behaviour that you describe. Have had similar issues myself. Lacie has been good about replacing my power converter-- twice. If you have seven of them, good luck finding the bad one or more. Like I said, the behaviour is erratic. Sometimes it'll work sometimes not. I can't comment on Samsung drives because I've never used them and have never heard anything about them. Same with Softraid. Why not just use Disk Utility. Sounds like you're ready for an external hardware raid. This will be much faster, much more reliable, and may even be cheaper than seven firewire drives. Check out G Tech, and Maxx Digital for starters.
Best of luck
Terry

Need assistance with my Porsche Design LaCie Time Capsule... It is not operating at all.. I have ran the diagnostic via the Disk Utility and under the error reading it runs the repair and then says it not about to repair what do I do... Thanks

Need assistance with my Porsche Design LaCie Time Capsule... It is not operating at all.. I have ran the diagnostic via the Disk Utility and under the error reading it runs the repair and then says it not about to repair what do I do... Thanks

LaCie doesnt make ANYTHING. It contains a Seagate 3.5" 5400RPM HD.
Check the HD on another computer, if nothing, your SATA bridge is fried, or the HD (very unlikely since its a Seagate inside)
Youd have to crack open the HD, remove the SATA bridge cart thats plugged into the HD and put the HD into an enclosure or a HD dock to get the data
those external HD use a 50 cent SATA bridge famous for failing. The curse of all the good HD externals is the junk 3rd party SATA bridges attached to them that crash and burn.
Sata bridge:

Disk utility hangs during disk verify

Initially 'disk verify' registered errors on exit - minor error/issue it said,some kind of header problem, so I ran disk utility off the install disk. Now the machine's native version of disk utility hangs during disk verify, blue & white spirals forever.
This coincidentally straight after my gmail/google address/account was hacked a couple of days ago.

Have you tried booting in SafeBoot mode (shift key held on start
until login screen appears) then launch Disk Utility and then run
its 'repair disk permissions' item, selecting the Macintosh HD;
and then note the repair window. It should fix something.
And when Disk Utility is done, quit it, and restart the Mac normally.
{...It is unlikely something from gmail affected your computer unless
you open up unknown sourced emails or go to odd web sites where
something may be downloaded from there, which you would almost
have to install (as admin, etc) for malware to work. You can get and
try ClamXAV for free to see if it sees any malware virus content.}
If you use Gmail, and do not log in using the https:// (secure http)
you should change the habit and bookmark the secure login site.
And when booted from the Installer disk and running Disk Utility
from there, see about running "repair disk" and not verify. The
repair choice will verify; but verify will not repair. Could be if
you cannot use the Utility to Repair the issues, and the other
SafeBoot mode and the computer's Disk Utility to get it working
you may need to further troubleshoot and/or get third-party tools.
In any event...
Good luck & happy computing!

Unable to use Disk Utility to repair disk.

Hi all
I have been having some problems trying to transfer movies from computer to my iPod. Someone just suggested that I use Disk Utility to verify disk permissions, as well as the disk. I was able to verify disk permissions and repair them. Noticed the some had something to do with iTunes, so that might fix my problem with transferring movies to my iPod. I then tried to verify the disk, but I got the following error "Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit." Also this program shows that the following "Checking volume bitmap.
Volume Bit Map needs minor repair
Checking volume information.
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair"
The <Repair Disk> button is not darkened, but is grey, such that is not an option. Any other way to repair this disk.
Thanks
Michael

The startup drive can only be repaired from another drive.
You have to boot from the install disk.
To do this: Insert the Install Disk 1 into the drive and then select Restart; when you hear the chime hold down C key until the apple logo appears.
This will take you to the installation software, but you do not want to install.
Select your language, then go up to the top menu bar to Utilities in 10.4 and navigate to the Disk Utility application.
Select the start up drive, then go to the First Aid pane where you can click on Repair Disk.
If it finds errors, repeat the process until it reports no errors.
After these repairs, quit the application, and restart normally.
Once restarted normally run Repair Permissions from the Disk Utility application found on your hard drive in Application/Utilities.

Impossible to launch disk utility from installation disk.

Hello.
I try to launch disk utility from install disk and I got a kernel panic screen: load the install disk, restart my computer with the alt key depressed, choose the install disk, press enter. After a few minutes, again a kernel panic screen ...
Someone already had this problem? Help ?
Regards.

Many thanks. I test with the second DVD player and I got the same problem. When the install disk is inserted in the DVD player, it works perfectly but boot always stops with a kernel panic.
The only problem of my Mac is to boot on the install disk. When I launch a Leopard install, I have the same problem : Kernel Panic.
Very strange... Don't know about booting process of Mac. It seems that my Mac is not able to load a kernel image from install disk or something like that.
Here is the last report of the Kernel Panic :
1) Problem details
Mon Apr 13 10:19:12 2009
panic(cpu 5 caller 0x001A7BED): Kernel trap at 0x67886373, type 14=page fault, registers:
CR0: 0x80010033, CR2: 0x00000018, CR3: 0x00e03000, CR4: 0x00000660
EAX: 0x00000000, EBX: 0x00000000, ECX: 0x00000000, EDX: 0x06fdf004
CR2: 0x00000018, EBP: 0x5564fbc8, ESI: 0x06fd8c00, EDI: 0x06fd8c00
EFL: 0x00010246, EIP: 0x67886373, CS: 0x00000008, DS: 0x07a30010
Error code: 0x00000000
Backtrace, Format - Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x5564f9d8 : 0x12b0e1 (0x4555b4 0x5564fa0c 0x133238 0x0)
0x5564fa28 : 0x1a7bed (0x45e568 0x67886373 0xe 0x45dd24)
0x5564fb08 : 0x19e517 (0x5564fb20 0x6ecf100 0x5564fbc8 0x67886373)
0x5564fb18 : 0x67886373 (0xe 0x48 0x10 0x10)
0x5564fbc8 : 0x67875540 (0x0 0x6ecf100 0x6fd8c00 0x1)
0x5564fc08 : 0x5550c139 (0x6fd8c00 0x1 0x0 0x13)
0x5564fc68 : 0x55505940 (0x6fd8c00 0x2507 0x5564fd2c 0x6fd8c00)
0x5564fc98 : 0x40c515 (0x6fd8c00 0x76796b8 0x76796b8 0x0)
0x5564fce8 : 0x437535 (0x6fd8c00 0x76796b8 0x76796b8 0x0)
0x5564fd48 : 0x18c8aa (0x6fd8c00 0x76796b8 0x0 0x0)
0x5564fdb8 : 0x12d165 (0x73f8578 0x73f8390 0x5564fdf8 0x11ee04)
0x5564fdf8 : 0x126247 (0x73f8500 0x6c9c420 0x17893c0 0x0)
0x5564ff08 : 0x196afc (0x5564ff44 0x0 0x0 0x0)
0x5564ffc8 : 0x19eb34 (0x74418c0 0x0 0x1a10b5 0x6d01128)
No mapping exists for frame pointer
Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0xbffff378
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.NVDAResman(5.1.6)@0x67872000->0x67a9efff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(1.5)@0x5571f000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.4)@0x55560000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(1.5)@0x554fd000
com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(1.5)@0x554fd000->0x55518fff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.4)@0x55560000
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: WindowServer
Mac OS version:
9A581
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 9.0.0: Tue Oct 9 21:35:55 PDT 2007; root:xnu-1228~1/RELEASE_I386
System model name: MacPro3,1 (Mac-F42C88C8)
2) System configation :
Model: MacPro3,1, BootROM MP31.006C.B05, 8 processors, Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 2.8 GHz, 4 GB
Graphics: kHW_NVidiaGeForce8800GTItem, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, spdisplayspciedevice, 512 MB
Memory Module: DIMM Riser B/DIMM 1, 1 GB, DDR2 FB-DIMM, 800 MHz
Memory Module: DIMM Riser B/DIMM 2, 1 GB, DDR2 FB-DIMM, 800 MHz
Memory Module: DIMM Riser A/DIMM 1, 1 GB, DDR2 FB-DIMM, 800 MHz
Memory Module: DIMM Riser A/DIMM 2, 1 GB, DDR2 FB-DIMM, 800 MHz
Bluetooth: Version 2.1.3f8, 2 service, 1 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: Ethernet 1, Ethernet, en0
PCI Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, display, Slot-1
Serial ATA Device: ST3320820AS_P, 298,09 GB
Serial ATA Device: Hitachi HDS721010KLA330, 931,51 GB
Serial ATA Device: Hitachi HDS721010KLA330, 931,51 GB
Parallel ATA Device: OPTIARC DVD RW AD-7170A
Parallel ATA Device: OPTIARC DVD RW AD-7170A, 7,5 GB
USB Device: Keyboard Hub, (null) mA
USB Device: Apple Keyboard, (null) mA
USB Device: USB HUB, (null) mA
USB Device: EIZO USB HID Monitor, (null) mA
USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller, (null) mA
FireWire Device: built-in_hub, unknown_value, unknown_speed

Disk Utility misreading available disk space

Disk Utility and Finder tells me that I only have 8 GB of available space left on my 150GB hard drive. I knew this amount was wrong and I tried OMNI Disc Sweeper that confirmed that I"m only using 52GB of the hard drive. How do I rectify this and have the computer recognize the correct amount of available hard drive space?

You could try and see if the boot installer disc's version of Disk Utility
on the Installer disc of the OS X version you are running, can repair
this disk. It may be a simple matter of how the system reads any
tags on the old data on the drive which was set to be over-written by
the system. A good third party disk utility for your version of OS X
should be able to check and repair most issues if Apple's Disk Utility
may balk at some of the more tedious issues.
Also, if you boot into SafeBoot mode and then run the installed version
of Disk Utility and have it 'repair disk permissions' then when it is done,
quit Disk Utility, and restart the computer normally; that may help and
is non-invasive. And it usually does more good and no harm.
If there actually is a problem on the low-level of the hard disk drive
which may be causing this capacity available volume read error, one
of the cures short of a third party disk utility such as Disk Warrior or
Drive Genius2, using Apple Disk Utility, could be accomplished if
you happened to already be in the habit of making and using full
computer clones of the entire hard drive content on to an external
hard disk drive. Then you could have your full backup, and be able
to totally wipe the hard disk drive, zero-overwrite the old data, and
reformat the hard disk drive (and use repair disk) from the booted
installer disc's Disk Utility; then move back a full clone of your Mac.
Forgoing that option, if what you already have can do the job, then
you can save the other choices and investments for another day.
Good luck & happy computing !

TS2570 I can not get the disk utility to verify disk permissions.

I can't get the Disk Utility to verify Disk Permissions.

On which Disk? Does the highlighted one have OSX on it?

Using Disk Utility's Repair Disk Command with Time Machine

I'm trying to figure out whether or not I can use Disk Utility's Repair Disk command on a Time Machine volume. Time machine is taking a very long time to finalize its backups. I don't know if there are directory issues that need to be addressed or if it's due to the very large size of the directory. I've been using Time Machine on this computer since last January and the Time Machine directory takes up over 7 GB of disk space! It's so large that DiskWarrior will no longer work on that volume. DiskWarrior has a limit of 4 GB. I can't be the only one in this situation. I don't want my Time Machine backup to get hopelessly corrupted and then have to start agin. I'm trying to be proactive about correcting any issues before they become serious.

Jon
So far I haven't a clue as to what is wrong, so until a person stumbles in here with one, maybe you could amuse me with as to how you figured how much space the "catalog" is taking. I surely see nothing funny going on my system, although my Time Machine volume is smaller than yours and I might not be looking in all the right places.

Disk utility reports failing hard drive with error code STF/8/3:2 ATA BUS 0

My imac G5 (running Tiger) suddenly decided not to boot past the grey apple screen with the spinning wheel. I ran the disk utility and received error code STF/8/3:2 ATA BUS 0 MASTER on the mass storage test. I tried to run repair and only received a message "fatal hard drive error etc... back up, recover asap... I could not access the disk so I connected my new MacBook Pro by firewire in target disk mode. My HD shows up however, "nothing" shows up under when my "user" file. All I care about saving is my iphoto library. Everything else is trivial. Can someone Please help me? Is there any way I will be able to save this file?
Message was edited by: Elizabeth Burson

Welcome to Discussions - you can try DiskWarrior and see if it can retrieve some of your data. You can also take it in to Apple with an external fire wire drive you have purchased elsewhere (cheaper) and see if they can transfer the data. You can then install the external into your computer.

Disk Utility erase fails after computer wakes up

I'm having an annoying problem with Disk Utility on OS X Lion 10.7.5 failing to erase a harddrive thats plugged into a HDD Docking Station via USB after computer wakes up from screen-off. I have an OCZ Agility 4 SATAIII 512.11 Gb SSD. I'm trying to do a complete erase with 7-Pass Erase so I can use this SSD for my Sony VAIO Laptop so I can ready it for fresh install for Ubuntu.
Now the problem with Disk Utility is that when I've selected 7-Pass Erase, I go away and leave the computer to do it's thing while it erases it, however when I come back and wake the computer screen to come back on, Disk Utility then tells me the erase failed. –– In my System Preferences for Power Saving settings I have the computer set to NEVER sleep, but only put the screen off after a while when not in use (ie; after 30 minutes). My other Sys Prefs settings are also set to ask for login after waking, I've not yet tested without this setting turned off to see if it's cause of problem, but I'll probably give it a shot anyway and see what happens. But I don't see how that would cause the problem since anything working in the background should still remain active while the screen is off just like Time Machine does for example when it does backups since it's USB powered.
Anyway… I think is either some kind of bug/error in Disk Utility or OS X itself. I've tried other Hard Drives and SSD's and they've all worked just about the same, and I don't think it's the HDD Docking Station either because it mounts everything perfectly and runs fine for continus use, I just hope there's a workable solution to fix this annoying problem when waking the screen from sleep. I have tested that it is screen-off that's causing it to fail by pressing the following keys Ctrl + ⇧ + ⏏ to put the screen to sleep, then waking again then entering my password to get back in. I have 1 other thing I've yet to try out, I've currently got it plugged in via USB port on my keyboard, I'll have to try it out on my iMac's main USB's ports to see if that may be part of the problem too.

Please boot into Internet Recovery (Command+Opt+R) and ensure you see the spinning globe. If you do, you can use diskutil cs commands to initialize your disk and re-install/restore from a TM backup.

Disk Utility Broken (fails to image or verify properly)

Hey, my disk Utility seems to be broken.
When I try to clone a drive it goes along fine, then ultimately creates something that doesn't pass it's own verification afterwards, and fails when I try to open the image.
I repair both the cloned (main/internal) drive, and the destination drive. I use Disk Warrior on it so it's nice and clean, but still it fails.
So I created an image with SuperDuper by making a copy on a free reformated drive then bouncing it back onto the original drive as a clone/image. That works, and disk utility sees it as good, but aparently a little too good, cause it says it over and over and craps out.
Here's the error I get:
Disk Utility internal error
Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility.
(Quit)
Then in the background the DU program says:
Volume passed verification
1 HFS volume checked
Volume passed verification
1 HFS volume checked
Volume passed verification
1 HFS volume checked
and repeats this on into infinity.
Then when I check (Quit) it says it's still in progress and quitting could leave the disk non operations depending on the task.
Since this is a read only task (verify) I'm not worried about that, but it doesn't mean that the DU isn't screwed.
I've tried using DU off the istall disk and that doesn't seem to work either. So did they just ship me a bad system install disk? Should I be looking for another copy of DU?

Your issue lost connection with the Disk Management Tool is normally a Panther problem, but some Tiger users have experianced it also. Follow the advice in this link.
If you follow the tips in there it should straighten out Disk Utility.
Cheers!
DALE

Disk Utility "restore" fails with "no such file or directory"

Some time back, perhaps a LONG time ago, I successfully used Disk Utility's "restore" function to "clone" my Mac OS X partition onto an external disk, before I upgraded the OS on my internal drive.
This weekend I tried to do it again, and failed on every attempt.
My first attempt was on my MacBook. At very end (the progress "bar" was all blue) it died saying that there was an error (2), "no such file or directory". I think the external drive probably isn't GUID, which would make it non-bootable, but I'd still think "restore" itself should work.
Okay, let's try my Power Mac G5, which is where it worked several releases ago. Same thing.
Okay, one more try... Booted into safe mode (in case background activity accounts for the missing file/directory), did the restore again, failed again.
I realize that SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner or other tools may be "better", but since this worked once it seems like it still should.
Any ideas?
Doug

Did you:
A. Repair the hard drive and permissions prior to cloning?
B. Erase the destination drive before cloning?
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
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 Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.) 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 click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now shutdown the computer for a couple of minutes and then restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger) and/or TechTool Pro (4.5.2 for Tiger) 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.
How to Clone Using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (journaled, if available) and click on the Erase button. This step can be skipped if the destination has already been freshly erased.
4. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
5. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the startup or source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
8. Select the destination drive on the Desktop and press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the bottom in the Ownership and Permissions section be sure the box labeled "Ignore Permissions on this Volume" is unchecked. Verify the settings for Ownership and Permissions as follows: Owner=system with read/write; Group=admin with read/write; Other with read-only. If they are not correct then reset them.
For added precaution you can boot into safe mode before doing the clone.

Disk Utility Reporting Fatal Hardware Error

Hello all,
I woke up this morning to the flashing folder with a question mark in it on my MacBook. I know that that means the system can't find the OS so I assumed that my hard drive had magically failed overnight. So I turned my computer off and then rebooted and everything loaded properly. I went into Disk Utility and my main hard drive that has OS X on it is highlighted in red and when I click on it, Disk Utility only displays "This drive has reported a fatal hardware error to Disk Utility. If the drive has not failed completely, back up as much data as you can and then replace it with a working drive."
I have noticed EXTREMELY sluggish performance by my computer in these past two days which has required me to force quit programs and force shut down the system more times than I've had to in the whole time I've had this computer. Could this be a side effect of the failing drive?
I'm backing everything up right now, but I'm wondering how accurate Disk Utility is. The drive that I have in here is a non-Apple-installed 250 GB Western Digital that's been in here for nearly a year. Is it possible that the drive is failing beyond repair already? If so, is there any way to see the full extent of the damage and attempt to repair it before I go out and buy a new hard drive to replace it with?
Thanks for all the help and the fast responses!

Mateo wrote:
Hello all,
I woke up this morning to the flashing folder with a question mark in it on my MacBook. I know that that means the system can't find the OS so I assumed that my hard drive had magically failed overnight. So I turned my computer off and then rebooted and everything loaded properly. I went into Disk Utility and my main hard drive that has OS X on it is highlighted in red and when I click on it, Disk Utility only displays "This drive has reported a fatal hardware error to Disk Utility. If the drive has not failed completely, back up as much data as you can and then replace it with a working drive."
I have noticed EXTREMELY sluggish performance by my computer in these past two days which has required me to force quit programs and force shut down the system more times than I've had to in the whole time I've had this computer. Could this be a side effect of the failing drive?
yes, it could.
I'm backing everything up right now, but I'm wondering how accurate Disk Utility is. The drive that I have in here is a non-Apple-installed 250 GB Western Digital that's been in here for nearly a year. Is it possible that the drive is failing beyond repair already?
yes, it's quite possible.
If so, is there any way to see the full extent of the damage and attempt to repair it before I go out and buy a new hard drive to replace it with?
check the SMART status in disk utility as suggested. if it says anything but "verified" it means that the drive is expected to fail completely and you shouldn't try to repair it. If it says "verified" It's possible that reformatting will fix it so you can try that. this will wipe all the data on it so clone it off first as gbullman suggested. BTW, most drives come with manufacturers warranty longer than a year and you should be able to replace the drive. that's what I would recommend.
Thanks for all the help and the fast responses!

Disk utility false "failed" disk errors

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