Disk utility hanging/ not responding.

so i've been having some drive issues recently. one of the manifestations of this is while trying to open Disk Utility to repair permissions, verify disk, etc. it hangs as soon as the superdrive makes it's noise. it's usually fixed by a restart, but invariably happens again. it's usually coupled by some other funkiness when accessing a disk internal or external (ex. reconnecting media in FCP or choosing system settings in FCP)
i have had slight quirks from the super drive. it wont read blank CDs or DVD-DL. DVDs and blank DVDs have been fine, CDs with media on them have been fine too.
as far as disk maintenance, i recently reformatted my startup disk and reinstalled SL and restored from a back up. have run disk warrior, repaired the disk from SL install disk and permission repairs.
any help appreciated

HI,
Go to ~/Library/Preferences then move the com.apple.DiskUtility.plist file to the Trash.
~ (Tilde) represents your Home Folder.
Then restart your Mac.
Carolyn

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Disk Utility hangs ("not responding") when attempting to Repair Disk on Time Capsule sparsebundle. Help.

I am trying to improve the performance of my Time Machine backup and retrievals via my 2nd Gen. Time Capsule from my iMac Core 2 Duo hard drive with SL 10.6.8. The incremental backups generally take 20 - 40 minutes each hour generally with fewer than 100 MB of data being backed up. I have read through numerous threads on these forums about Time Capsule and Time Machine issues as well as the very helpful Pondini site (http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html) and have tried many other suggestions (listed below), but have been unable to attempt a Disk Utility repair disk on the Time Capsule sparsebundle file.
After locating the sparsebundle 'file' in the finder under Shared/TC/Data, I am only sometimes able to drag the sparsebundle into the Disk Utility volumes and disk window. About fifty percent of the time, Disk Utility hangs when attempting to drag in the sparsebundle. If I am able to get it listed and click on "repair disk", then the beach ball begins to spin and nothing happens. This occurs whether or not I first use AirPort Utility to "Disconnect All Users" from the Time Capsule. I have given it over one hour to attempt the repair disk, but nothing happens, i.e., not a single message shows up in the detail window. The beach ball just spins, and Disk Utility shows up in red as "not responding" under the Force Quit menu.
Also note that on my new Macbook Air, Time Machine runs quite quickly via this same Time Capsule from my new Macbook Air using OS X Lion (which seems to indicate that the Time Capsule drive itself is OK).
I would appreciate any tips on getting Disk Utility to run "repair disk" on my sparsebundle, as I seem to have exhausted most other options (see below) for improving Time Capsule performance -- aside of course, from wiping the Time Capsule clean and starting all over.... (which I really don't want to do, and from what I've read, has not helped some people who've tried this anyway).
Many thanks!
Although I would like to focus this thread on the Disk Utility / sparsebundle "Repair Disk" problem, I should mention that I have tried the following other things:
1. Repaired disk permissions on my hard drive
2. Used Disk Utility to run "repair disk" on my hard drive after starting up from a SuperDuper external backup
3. Run DiskWarrior on my hard drive, again, from a separate startup disk
4. Did the "full reset of Time Machine", a la Pondini Troubleshooting #A4
5. Changed my computer and Time Capsule names to simple short names with only alphanumeric characters and no spaces
6. Ensured that my Time Capsule is being accessed only via ethernet
7. Relaunched the finder
8. And finally, attempting to use Disk Utility to repair the sparsebundle - thus the nature of this post

OK, no takers out there, but I answered my own question (sort of).
The answer is that even though Disk Utility shows up as "not responding" under the Force Quit menu and appears to hang, it is actually still working. A bit of patience shows that after about an hour, my Disk Utility was able to show the 1.44 TB Time Machine sparsebundle from Time Capsule in the disk window on the left hand side. Once this appeared, I was able to click on "Repair Disk" (note that prior to doing this, I had to "Disconnect All Users" from my Time Capsule using the Airport Utility program; otherwise you will get a "could not unmount disk" error). Again, the Repair Disk function appeared to hang Disk Utility as it showed up as "not responding" under the Force Quit menu. However, after about 8 hours, Disk Utility did run the entire Repair Disk protocol on the sparsebundle. The results DO NOT show up in the Disk Utility details window - so even if you are patient enough to let it complete, you will not see anything and may think that nothing happened. However, you can find the familiar results of the Repair Disk function by looking on Console - find the "DiskUtility.log" under Files: ˜/Library/Logs.
Unfortunately, I was hoping to find a problem that would have been subsequently repaired which would result in dramatically increased Time Capsule speed, but this was not the case. Disk Utility showed everything to be "OK" and I am stuck with a very slow Time Capsule....
(And of note, my new Macbook Air (OS Lion) Time Machine functions blazingly fast on both backup and retrieval to and from the very same Time Capsule - even though, these are occuring wirelessly via AirPort -- granted the size of this sparsebundle is an order of magnitude smaller at this point, i.e., only 10 GB right now)
Would still be happy to hear of any similar experiences or tips on getting Time Capsule to work more quickly.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Disk Utility is not responding?

Hi
Just purchased a new Mac and used Migration to get some applications from my old Mac.
I was hoping I was able to chose what it copied but it just copied everything.
I trashed what will not use ( a load of old applications that I don't use)
Thought it was a good Idea to run Disk Utility to check I had not trashed anything I need
BUT IT IS NOT RESPONDING! after two tries and and hours of waiting it just says
"Gathering disk information"
What's going on? What Have I done? Do I need to panic? What should I do?
Thank you!

Try starting the machine from the install disks and trying disk utility from that.

Disk Utility hangs while partitioning

Hello,
I am trying to partition an external USB 2 drive for use with Time Machine. I connect the drive, see it recognized, then open Disk Utility and go into the Partition tab where I select GUID as the partition scheme and 1 partition. This is on an Intel Macbook running 10.5.2. When I apply and start the process the status changes to "Creating partition map" and after a few minutes the activity monitor reports Disk Utility as not responding. I have tried this 6 times, and let it run as long as 4 hours - nothing changes. I have restarted, disconnected/reconnected, reformatted the drive using Windows XP and tried again, no luck. I have also tried using APM instead of GUID, same problem. The external drive is one I have used with this macbook for a year with no issues. Does anyone have a suggestion for what could be causing this, or how to resolve it?
Thanks!
Rob

Ckeck iDefrag, i bought it last month and solved me lots of problems similars to yours.
Try using iDefrag in quick (online) mode. If it doesn't makes a difference. Use the bootable Coriolis CDMaker provided with the software.
Good luck!

My Disk Utility is not working, also can't eject a mp3 player

I attached the mp3 player to the computer and downloaded some music on it. This went OK. When I went to eject it by right clicking on the player and choosing eject, it would not eject. So I opened Disk Utility to try and eject the disk and now find that Disk Utility won't open.
When I do force-quit Disk Utility the message says Disk Utility is not responding so there is a problem with Disk utility.
This is the first time I've had problems with Disk Utility and with ejecting a disk.
I don't want to pull the mp3 player out as it could do something funny to the disk as that happened before when I accidentally removed the mp3 player without ejecting it first.
However, the mp3 player has been OK for a while now and this happens.
What can I do?
Should I restart the computer and see if that solves the problems?

Are you receiving an error message when you try to eject via the Finder? Normally you should get a message along the lines "The disk * could not be ejected because the application * is using it" or something like that.
You could just shut down and unplug the mp3 player then, but it would be interesting to find out the cause of the problem. Do you know exactly what files are on the player?

Disk Utility hanging on all user accounts

Hi,
I suspect that my son applied new permissions to enclosed items somewhere and that this is the reason that Disk Utility hangs (doesn't respond) when I start it. As a remedy I repaired permissions while started from an external disk and then applied some command lines that I learned for resetting user account permission (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1655174&tstart=0). But still DU is unresponsive and must be force quit. Additionally I cannot open the DVD tray and Firefox tells me "...update available but you do not have the systems permissions required to install it....".
So I think my user permissions reset was not successful. My question is: did the command line language change from Leopard to SnowLeopard because Terminal gave me some feedback that "-H makes sense only with R" or something to that effect.
Do you have any idea about these things? What's the best way to proceed? Thanks.

Has command line language changed in SnowLeo compared to Leopard?
There are a few changes that reflect the differences between the two OS versions but the vast majority of commands are the same. There are hundreds of commands. Including the flags, switches, & options available for them there are thousands of variations. Plus, characters like spaces, slashes, dashes, & quote marks have special meaning depending on where they appear in the command line so even a minor typo can dramatically change a command into something other than what you want.
Because of this, you should not use a command unless it is specifically recommended for an issue you have explained completely or you have at least a fundamental understanding of command line syntax & the options for a command you are going to use. Each command has a manual page ("man page" for short) that you can access in Terminal by typing the word "man" followed by a space followed by the command name. For example, try "man man" to see the manual page explaining that command.
It would help greatly if you could provide the exact command & flags you used, plus any error messages they generated. Also, "standard procedures" doesn't tell us much since different users consider different things standard.
I suspect your problem is not caused by mis-set permissions, although they may have lead to the condition that caused it. But without more info it is hard to say what the problem is or how to fix it. It might be simplest just to reinstall the OS (which for Snow Leopard is not that big a deal), let Software Update bring it up to current versions, & then deal with any remaining user level permission issues separately.

Disk Utility hangs during DMG file creation

I use disk utility to create DMG files from folders (with the corresponding command from the File -> New menu). Every now and then (and quite often, really), Disk Utility will not complete this process, but instead hang forever. It seems that something in the kernel gets stuck, because the machine can get increasingly unresponsive after the hang has started (for instance, I wanted to look in the system log right now, but running less on /var/log/system.log would create long hangs on the whole UI). The only way out is a reboot.
The machine is otherwise very stable.
(Ah, and Time Machine started at the same time now, and doesn't seem to be able to run - maybe disk utility and time machine are creating some deadlock situation?)
Anyone who has seen similar behaviour?

I haven't had this issue this since upgrading to Snow Leopard, so I assume it has been fixed.

Disk utility hangs MAC G4?

Why does Disk Utility hang when starting? ~ Doug

Hi, Doug.
A little more detail on how you are launching Disk Utility on the stated "G4" would help. Some more details about the specific G4, and the problems that may have led to you attempting to run Disk Utility on it would also be useful.
Try running steps 1-2 of the Procedure specified in my "Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption" FAQ.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Disk Utility Hangs during format

Yes, I've seen a hundred other posts on this but all have been archived with no solution.
It seems very likely there is a 10.4 problem. When I try to format a 160GB drive connected via USB Disk Utility hangs and never completes. I have tried to partition it as well with no luck.
Is there a fix? Is Apple working on the problem? Is there a workaround? Even a commandline fix would be acceptable.

This is ridiculous. I have tried 4 different physical drives in 4 different physical enclosures (3 different brands) and it still hangs Disk Utility.
I know I'm not the only one with this problem. What the **** is going on? I can't format a disk and therefore I can't use it. This is absolutely unacceptable.
Sometimes my machine hangs in such a way that I can't even reboot it, it requires a physical power down.
I have been forced to format these on a Windows machine with FAT32 (using a 3rd party app to get past the GB limitation MS sets). I don't want FAT32, I want HFS+. But I can find no other way to do this in Tiger as it ALWAYS hangs regardless of drive, enclosure, filesystem type, size, number of partitions, etc, etc.
Is OS X truly this bad that it can't even format a drive properly? Am I really going to have to rely on Windows and FAT32 whenever I want to format?

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!

Disk Utility hangs up

Running a G5 IMac with 10.5.1. Tried to repair permissions and Disk Utility hangs up at about 25% of the way through the process. Ran Disk Warrior. Still hangs up. Started up form Leopard Install and tried to repair permissions. Still hangs up. Otherwise the system seems to be running OK. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.

Disk Warrior is NOT compatible with Leopard at this time.
I would not use my Disk Warrior.
Permissions take from 10 to 30 minutes with 10.5.1
Give it time.
It seems like it just sits there on "Less than 1 minute" but it will eventually finish.
Again, give it time.

Disk Utility hangs attempting to erase SimpleTech 100gb external USB disk

I'm attempting to erase and format a SimpleTech 100gb external USB disk. Disk Utility hangs. The system error log says:
"AppleUSBEHCI[0x1d59000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 91, timing out!
Jul 21 17:30:35 Kari-Hohnbaums-Computer-2 kernel[0]: USBF:"
The console log (and Disk Utility log) shows:
Preparing to erase : “PBEX1”
Creating Partition Map
error writing partition map: Device not configured (6)
Disk Erase failed with the error:
What is the problem? This disk is recognized by Tiger but only as read-only as it ships as an NTFS volume and must be erased and reformatted before it can be used by a MAC.
All help appreciated.

I tried the partition approach and it unfortunately failed as well. The same "hung" symptoms as before. The green light (disk activity) on the disk flashed several times at the initial request, but that was all. I eventually interrupted it after a hourn which generated the same system log message: AppleUSBEHCI[0x1d59000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 91, timing out!
The disk utility log says:
Preparing to partition disk: “SAMSUNG HM100JC Media”
Partition Scheme: Apple Partition Scheme
Mac OS 9 Disk Drivers installed
1 partitions will be created
Partition 1
Name : “PBEX1”
Size : 93.2 GB
Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Creating Partition Map
Partition failed for disk SAMSUNG HM100JC Media Device not configured
Partition complete.
I don't have easy access to a Window's box. I do have access to a Linux system. Perhaps I can configure it there and it will work on my PB.

Disk Utility hangs when erasing external disk

In Time Machine I wasn't able to figure out how to attach an external drive via USB. I guessed that it probably wouldn't work on a MS-DOS filesystem, so I started Disk Utility, which I never have used before. I have formatted disks before on Linux and on Windows, so it's nice to see a great app for this.
In the Time Machine brief help text, there is not mentioned what kind of filesystem that is required or if it work with any filesystem. So I searched, and it seems as if HFS+ journaled case-insensitive is the filesystem that one should choose. Can anyone confirm this?
When I click erase then the Disk Utility program hangs and I see the spinning beachball. The Activity Monitor program shows that disk activity stops after a few seconds. There is no more activity, so after 5 minutes I stop the program.
I have tried several times, and I see the same behavior. I even tried restarting the computer. But no luck.
Now my external disk no longer shows that it's a MS-DOS filesystem, but shows that it's HFS+ journaled case-insensitive. Probably not ok so far. I try creating a single patition, with format: HFS+ journaled case-insensitive, without OS 9 drivers installed. When I click apply then spinning beachball again and diskactivity stops after a few seconds, and I stop the program after some minutes where it has been inactive.
My guess is that the disk-erasing task failed and has left the disk in a broken state. During this task Disk Utility began to hang for a reason that I don't know.
My second guess to why the create-partition task failed, is that the disk is in a broken state, and thus the partition cannot be created, and Disk Utility hangs.
How do I format the external disk from the command line?

In Disk Utility, select the drive mechanism (not the volume on it) and click the Partition button. Use the Options button to choose the GUID partition scheme, then make one HFS+ (Journaled) volume.
There is no point in using the command line for this task, because if Disk Utility cannot deal properly with the disk, Mac OS X will not either. Disk Utility is using diskutil to do the partitioning and formatting.

Disk Utility hangs while initializing internal hard disk in Core Duo iMac

I have a 20" Core Duo iMac. Recently the internal hard drive crashed ("invalid B-tree node size" or something reported when Disk Utility tries and fails to repair it). I have all my data on an external hard disk used as a Time Machine volume, so recovery is not my issue. Initially I picked the write zeroes once security option and chose to erase the internal hard disk. Realizing this would take too long, I clicked on skip, and Disk Utility appeared to hang. I quit and restarted Disk Utility, and chose the "don't erase" security option, but when I go to erase the drive it appears to hang while at the "partitioning" stage and doesn't seem to get any further. There is motion in the progress bar, but no additional progress after about an hour. Disk Utility shows the disk but no volumes underneath it (whereas immediately after the crash, it showed an unmountable volume labeled "disk0s2").
Why would Disk Utility be taking so long and not making any progress? How can I reformat this disk if Disk Utility is not able to? Incidentally, I am running the Disk Utility that comes with OS X 10.4.8, since that is the OS X version on my portable hard drive that I booted from. I also tried using Drive Genius to initialize the hard disk, but it also appeared to hang with no progress.

It is possible the drive has failed, but to be sure start by turning off the computer. Wait five minutes. Then do this:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. 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 or Leopard.)
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. Set the number of partitions from the drop down menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Be sure to boot from the OS X installer DVD, not a backup clone.

Disk Utility does not recognize internal HD

Hello community!
I am a computer lab assistant (all iMacs) for my work and am troubleshooting a problem as follows:
Specs:
Mac A:
OS X 10.8
2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 processor
4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 memory (2 slots x 2 GB in use, 2 slots empty)
27-inch Mid-2011 iMac
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512MB
The problem is that Disk Utility does not always recognize the internal HD on mac A. In fact, only once it showed up recently and that was after a couple of restarts. Programs run very slowly and are not very responsive.
Troubleshooting steps taken thus far:
1. restarted mac A in internet recovery mode and ran Apple Hardware Test about 8 times (quick test 4 times and extended test 4 times). Every time it hangs indefinitely on the memory check.
2. Installed and ran memtest in single user mode (mac A) with arguments "all 2" to run the test twice. All tests passed.
3. Started up mac A in Target Disk Mode and booted mac B via firewire. Everything runs fine (fast), but disk utility installed on mac A's HD does not recognize any HD (neither firewire nor internal).
4. Started up mac B in target disk mode and booted mac A via firewire. Everything runs fine (fast). Disk Utility on mac B's HD recognizes both firewire HD (of mac B) and internal HD (of mac A). Disk Utility verify and repair completed on mac A's internal HD. Everything OK.
I'm unsure how to proceed. I assume the RAM on mac A is fine because it runs mac B's HD via firewire very fast (it handled opening all the apps on the doc simultaneously relatively well). I assume mac A's HD is fine because via firewire it shows up in disk utility and runs very fast on mac B. I just don't understand why Mac A's HD won't work well on mac A. Could it be a loose SATA connection between the HD and the logic board? Would that cause these symptoms?
Thanks for any input.

I ran Data Rescue 3 by Prosoft and it returned the following graph:
In case you can't see the stats, that green spike is up to 30,000 msec in readtime for the HD. The smaller spikes before and after it are at about 2,000 - 3,000 msec. The threshold (red line) is a recommendation: persistant read times above the red line (about 1,000 msec) could indicate a problem with the HD according to the program. I guess it's time to see about replacing the HD.
Thanks.

Disk utility hanging/ not responding.

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