Disk Utility is non-responsive (beach ball). I reinstalled ML, twice. No dice. Any suggestions?

I upgraded to Mountain Lion on two 27" iMacs (Mid-2010) I own. Disk Utility beach balls on me and it is happening on both Macs. I have run Check Disk through the Recovery Partition and everything is checking out ok there and with SMART. I formatted one computer and did a reinstall on the other. Neither one fixed the problem. I am stumped.

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My early 2011 MBP 13" does not recognize my Sandisk 16GB 45MB/s Extreme Pro SDHC card. I went to the Genius Bar and we tried it in all the MacBook Pro's in the Apple Store and NONE could recognize the card. However, iMacs did. Any suggestions?

My early 2011 MBP 13" does not recognize my Sandisk 16GB 45MB/s Extreme Pro SDHC card. I went to the Genius Bar and we tried it in all the MacBook Pro's in the Apple Store and NONE could recognize the card. However, iMacs did. Any suggestions? Genius behind the Bar suggested wait for LION OS X release...

You really don't need to post multiple times, you will get attention eventually.
Find the reply here:
MacBook Pro 13 (MBP 8,1 random restarts)

HT1338 My Mac book Pro is running very slow and the rainbow ball is appearing all the time. Any suggestions for clean up??

My Mac book Pro is running very slow and the rainbow ball is appearing all the time. Any suggestions for clean up?? I have the OS X Lion system.

As well as what a brody asked :
- do you need more RAM? (run Activity Monitor and see how much free RAM - green - is available)
- do you Restart fairly regularly, e.g. at least once a week, to clear out any swap or temporary files?
- do you need to do maintenance, e.g. clearing out caches and unused logs, etc?

I cannot get my iPod touch to restart. No response at all. It is fully charged. Any suggestions?

I cannot get my iPod touch to restart. No response at all. It is fully charged. Any suggestions?

Try holding the Sleep/Wake + Home buttons down for AT LEAST 15 seconds. If that does not work, get it serviced. Sounds like a hardware issue--like battery, Sleep/Wake switch or logic board.
Basic troubleshooting steps
17" 2.2GHz i7 Quad-Core MacBook Pro  8G RAM  750G HD + OCZ Vertex 3 SSD Boot HD 
Got problems with your Apple iDevice-like iPhone, iPad or iPod touch? Try Troubleshooting 101
 In Memory of Steve Jobs 

My ipod nano 6th gen screen is white ive tried the hard disk mode with the power and volume buttons and it still wont work any suggestions?

my ipod nano 6th gen screen is white ive tried the hard disk mode with the power and volume buttons and it still wont work any suggestions?

You can try Restoring it in iTunes but I believe you will end up needing to have it serviced.

Help please! - Hard disk Volume Header problems and 'Beach Ball' hangs

Hi all
I was wondering if anyone can help me out with my hard drive problems. Until recently, everything was going fine with my Powerbook after upgrading to 10.4.2. Then all of a sudden, one day, at the login screen I got a beach ball hang which lasted around 4 minutes. When the dock is launched, I get another beach ball hang for an additional 3 or 4 minutes.
When it finally finishes logging in everything is fine, I can access all my files and do whatever I want to do at full speed, that is, until an app asks me for my administrators password which welcomes back the beach ball and a system hang for another 3-4 minutes or so.
Disk Utility says that I have minor Volume header problems but will not fix it as it abruptly quits before it finishes diagnosing the drive.
I have Disk Warrior 3.0.3 and have tried to use it but when I boot off the CD it does not recognise my hard drive for fixing puroposes but still displays the hard drive in the Hardware tab.
The SMART status of the drive is verified and there doesnt seem to be any problems in that respect.
I have repaired permissions, ran all the processes in Onyx and still no joy.
Finally, I have tried to use TechTool Pro but on a surface disk check it fails halfway through after shifting a few bad sectors around.
Everything seems to be fine if you ignore all these beach ball hangs but I'm worried about a very imminent hard drive fail. I am now in the process of zeroing all the empty spaces on my hard disk to see if the badsector problems can be fixed in this way.
When the beach ball appears I can hear the hard disk making a scraping sound if this helps at all.
Please help me! Its driving me nuts! I am also currently working abroad hence I don't have my Mac OS X Tiger install disks on me otherwise I'd just do an archive and reinstall.
Is this a physical problem? Volume header problem? I'm so confused!
Any help greatly appreciated! Many thanks...

It sounds as if you've attempted the appropriate fixes for your drive... Disk Utility, Disk Warrior, TechTool Pro and Onyx. If none of these utilities have repaired the problem then perhaps there is a hardware failure of some sort... perhaps a head crash has done some physical damage.
How old is this hard drive? Is it the original?
It's unfortunate that you don't have your Tiger install discs as a reinstall of the OS might relieve the problem. But I doubt it since, as you say, "the disc makes a scraping sound". That suggests to me the problem may be physical damage or wear of the hard drive.
If I were in your shoes, I would backup any critical files now, before the drive fails completely.
I'd replace the drive, and probably buy an external enclosure (USB or Firewire) for the old drive to allow for data retrieval until it failed.
Unfortunately, replacing the drive will require your software install discs... =( ... can't help you there.
TiBook G4 1G, PMac G4 dual 1G, MacPlus Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Enough RAM, CPU, Disk space and yet the Beach Ball rolls on

iMac 3.8 Ghz Intel Core i7,
8 GB of RAM,
OS 10.8.4
2 TB internal with 1.4 TB available
Two WD external hard drives
No app Not Responding
No huge draw on CPU cycles
Permissions repaired
Disk defragged
AND YET, I open up a Word document (not just a specific one), or I start up an application, or I change a Calendar date...
And I get a Spinning Beach Ball for several seconds (a lifetime)
What gives!?!?
This is embarrassing.
This can't be right!
Thoughts?

No huge draw on CPU cycles
When you checked that, did you change Activity Monitor's "Show" option from its default of "My Processes" to "All Processes?"
If not, then you would not see where the big hitters in the over-eating of processor cycles reside.
If you did have AM thus set, then what you decribe sounds like you may have installed a third-party anti-virus/internet security software package or one of those awful "I'll clean you Mac" programs.
Try with the WD drives disconnected. WD bare drives are great but their enclosures are abysmal. I had one on both a PowerPC G4 tower and my i7 iMac and it dragged down the performance of the computer. I ripped open the cheap WD enclosure and installed the perfectly good bare drive in a enclosure from OWS and it works flawlessly without making my computer feel like its got syrup dripping inside.
I don't see an iMac with a 3.8Ghz i7 processor. What does "About this Mac" in your Apple menu say about your processor?
If there are no AV or cleaning apps installed and you comptuer is still in warranty, I'd think about making an appointment with the Apple Genius bar.

First version MacBook Pro, 10.6.8, freezes with pixelated screen. Repaired HD with Disk Utility, but still happens. Temp gague shows max of 51C. Any ideas?

I have the first version MacBook Pro, running 10.6.8 (most current OS that works). It freezes with a pixelated screen. This may not happen for weeks, or it may happen every time i restart. I repaired the hard drive with Disk Utility, but the problem still happens. The temp gague shows a max of 51C. Any ideas on what could be causing this?

I have the first version MacBook Pro, running 10.6.8 (most current OS that works). It freezes with a pixelated screen. This may not happen for weeks, or it may happen every time i restart. I repaired the hard drive with Disk Utility, but the problem still happens. The temp gague shows a max of 51C. Any ideas on what could be causing this?

IMac Finder cannot see external hard drive but Disk Utility can

I have a WD external hard drive and it has been attached to my iMac for a year or two. About two months ago I upgraded to Lion 10.7.5 and hard drive still worked. Then suddenly about a week ago the iMac no longer sees the external hard drive in Finder.
I have connected the hard drive to the iMac with different USB cables and into different ports and it makes no difference so deduce there is no issues with the cables or the ports. I have connected the hard drive to an old Macbook and it can see the harddrive and read some of the info but I really need the hard drive attached to the iMac as I store all my music and photos on the external hard drive.
I read another thread and someone asked if you can see the hard drive in Disk Utility. I tried this and Disk Utility can see the hard drive.
What does this mean? Any suggestions as to how to get the iMac to see the hard drive so I can access the data on it?
I dont really know how Disk Utility works therefore if that is any help to me.
thanks

Open the Finder.
From the Finder menu bar click Finder > Preferences then select the General tab.
Make sure: External disks is selected.

Keyboard on 9105 squeaky and non responsive

9105 - Left hand side of keyboard is squeaky and non responsive. Makes it very difficult to type. Any suggestions?

if I were you I would go to the carrier support and have the device changed.
The search box on top-right of this page is your true friend, and the public Knowledge Base too:

Disk Utility only shows 1TB HD as 186.7 GB

Hi everybody, I bought a new WD My Book Home Edition 1TB HD and a 100 GB hard drive. The WD Hard Disk has RAID Capabilities so I decided to set it up with RAID, the RAID works fine, but Disk Utility and Finder Display it as having only 186.7 GB Capacity, any suggestions?

Are you setting up the RAID using Disk Utility or something else? If you want to learn more about RAIDS see the following:
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial;
RAID Array and Server: Hardware and Service Comparison>.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons
Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?

Spinning Beach Ball of death during disk utility

Go to disk utility and verify the startup disk, start the disk verification and the spinng beach ball of death coming up. After a minute the result is that the disk is ok. During the verify processing I see only the spinning ball.
Anyone???

drums77 wrote:
Go to disk utility and verify the startup disk, start the disk verification and the spinng beach ball of death coming up. After a minute the result is that the disk is ok. During the verify processing I see only the spinning ball.
Anyone???
Normal. The verify disk operation on the boot volume can take a while and Disk Utility may not be responding to the OS quickly enough so the mystic spinning lollipop pizza comes up for a while. Somewhere there is an actual disclaimer to that effect. It all comes from not being able to dismount the root volume, which complicates the process.

Disk Utility, Verify Disk & Repair Disk unavailable

Hi there!
I want to check my Hard Disk with Disk Utility, but none of the two buttons (Verify Disk & Repair Disk) are available, I started up from my Mac OS X installation disc, and once, it told me that the disk had errors and needed to backup my files, so I went back and backed up with Time Machine, then out of curiosity went again and I started up from my Mac OS X installation disc, and this time it told me that the disk was fine and there wasn't any errors, but when I open Disk Utility with my Mac, none of the buttons are available, is this normal?
What should I do?
Context: Before all this, I installed a program called Tuxera to create a NTFS partition but my Mac started to act weird, so I deactivate and uninstalled this program, that's when I went to verify the disk.
Any Help would be gratefully appreciated

I hope I'm wrong but it sounds very much like Tuxera did something to your startup disk. I would also be somewhat concerned about the integrity of any Time Machine Backups you made after you ran Tuxera.
The safest thing to do would be to start up from your Snow Leopard disk and see if you can *restore your system and data from your Time Machine backups to an +external HD+* formatted using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and GUID Partitioning. Formatting will erase all the data on that disk. *If you try to restore to the internal and it doesn't work you will probably lose most of your data.*
Startup your Mac using the external and check very carefully to see that you have all your data and that everything works as it should. If it does you can safely reformat your internal drive from Disk Utility on the Leopard disk using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and GUID Partitioning. After that you can clone the external drive to your Mac's internal drive or install from the Time Machine backups.
If the Time Machine backup doesn't work you will need to run a disk data recovery utility to see if you can salvage your data from your internal drive.
I don't use PC's so someone may be along with much better advice. However, unless and until someone more knowledgeable about PC file formats comes along to help *don't reformat your internal drive until you know your Time Machine backups are OK.*

Macbook Pro won't start/HD not showing in Disk Utility

Hello, this problem is probably detailed elsewhere but i'm not finding anything that seems to fit. Thanks in advance for the help. My 2010 era Macbook Pro w/Maverick isn't starting up beyond the gray screen. I tried resetting PRAM and starting up with the install disc to run disk utility, but none of the actions to verify, repair, etc were available. Restarted and now the drive doesn't show up at all. Any suggestions?
I'm hoping to at least get it started so I can run Time Machine again -- been traveling and haven't updated in several weeks.
Thanks, -Tess

Tess,
since you have Mavericks installed, you can try this: boot your MacBook Pro into Recovery mode by holding down a Command key and the R key as it starts up. Once the OS X Utilities menu appears, select Disk Utility. On the left-hand side of the Disk Utility window, is your internal disk’s boot partition (typically called “Macintosh HD”) shown? If so, select it. On the right-hand side, press the Verify Disk button if it’s not greyed out; if it is greyed out, or if it reports that errors were found, press the Repair Disk button. Once the verification/repair is completed, exit Disk Utility and select Restart from the Apple menu to restart in normal mode.
When you’d run Disk Utility from your grey installation DVD, did it show your internal drive on the left-hand side of the Disk Utility window?

Disk Utility: Invalid Directory Item Count

I have noticed a minor problem with my Mac Pro when restarting. Sometimes it will fail to restart correctly and simply displays the grey screen (but not the apple icon). Usually powering down the Mac Pro will get it to start up correctly. Not ideal, but manageable.
I ran Disk Utility earlier to check what may be causing this issue and was given the following after Verifying Disk:
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking file systemPerforming live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Invalid directory item count
(It should be 33 instead of 32)
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart your computer, holding down the Command key and the R key until you see the Apple logo. When the Mac OS X Utilities window appears, choose Disk Utility.
If I restart and launch Recovery HD will I lose any data or mess things up? The machine works perfectly fine once booted and I was none the wiser to this error until I ran disk utility. The timing is unfortunate as I have just ordered a replacement drive for Time Machine due to an unrelated external hard drive error, so I don't have a recent backup which is a bit unnerving.
I want to run Recovery HD but I'm worried its going to cause a problem on an otherwise fully operational machine. I don't want to create an issue unless there is one (especially when I dont have a secure backup for a few more days). I also have Disk Warrior which has been fantastic in the past, but I cannot use it on the Mackintosh HD as it wont allow rebuilding of the startup disc.
So my question is: Should I run recovery HD now or just wait until I have a secure backup just in case it screws up? Is it possible Recovery HD may "create" a problem for me on my machine which runs and operates perfectly (minus the restart problem).

I went into Recovery HD and ran Disk Utility. It verified and repaired the permissions without any data loss or problems. As a bonus the boot problem seems to have been recitifed.

Disk Utility is non-responsive (beach ball). I reinstalled ML, twice. No dice. Any suggestions?

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