Disk Utility is reporting a fatal hardware error-S.M.A.R.T. status failing. Is there hope?

OS 10.5.8 on a 1.8 GHz Power PC G5. Installed Western Digital WD1002FAEX as a second internal hard drive. I also installd the jumper needed to slow HD down for this computer. Initialized and formated the HD was able to back up a large iPhoto file and am still able to acceass the file from the new HD. Now Disk Utility is reporting a fatal hardware error-S.M.A.R.T. status failing. Is there hope?

Is that on your first drive or the new one???
Only experience I had with SMART warning was that in less than 48 hrs it was dead for good.

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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!

Is a Disk Utility "fatal hardware Error" Always fatal?

Help!
I'm traveling for the next four weeks and have my lap top with me to do work.
Last night I was working fine on my computer when all of a sudden Photoshop wouldn't open files right. I quite out of Photoshop (slow)
Then tried to quit out of everything else (slow) and finally shut down holding the Power button down. I waited a few minutes and tried to reboot.
It was REALLY slow starting back up. (about 15 to 20 minutes). I held the Power key down to turn it off and left it overnight hoping it would figure itself out by morning.
This am the same start up problem happened. I finally got it opened and manuvered to Disk Utility.
IT GAVE ME THIS MESSAGE
This drive has reported a Fatal Hardware Error to Disk utility.
If the drive has not failed completely, Back up as much as you can and
then replace it with a working drive.
HERE IS WHAT I DID EARLIER IN THE EVENING THAT I THINK MADE IT WACKY.
I hadn't installed SUITCASE X1 yet and was using the program Font Book that comes with the computer. It wasn't satifactory so I went ahead and installed Suitcase X1.
FONT BOOK kept showing a ton of open faces.
I carefully (or so I thought) went through Font Books "All fonts" window and got rid of fonts that I didn't see in the system fonts folder. (I think this is where I really may have screwed up)
FYI I am a graphic designer and use many fonts.
I store all the design fonts in a folder in USERS > SHARED> FONTS
I directed SUITCASE to "Manage system fonts"
Every thing was working fine for a few hours.
I was working in QUARK 6 easily and listening to a Podcast. No problems.
When I went to open PHOTOSHOP, it (Photoshop) started running very slow.
and all the things I mentioned above started to happen.
I have the OS10.4 install disk with me so I tried to boot from it.
(I thought maybe it had a utility on it to help fix things or maybe I could copy any important fonts that I accidently trased
(btw do you hold down OPTION C to boot from a CD or APPLE C?
I tried them all)
I couldn't get it to boot from the CD
Have I really wrecked my computer?
Do we think it's a font problem.
Can I fix it. I'm at the beach in NC and there's no techys around!!!!
I am currently typing this email on the laptop so it's not completely dead.
Just super slow and threatening to die.
What should I do??!!!
Did I mention today is my birthday?
PowerbookG4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

It's either OPTION or C. Unfortunately, the Install CD doesn't give you much access to file operations (no Finder) as Mac OS 9 and earlier did.
If you could start it in Target Disk Mode and mount the drive on another Mac, or boot it from an external drive with a Mac OS X installation on it you could try to recover files that aren't already backed up.

Reported Fatal Hardware Error to Disk Utility

I see the following message in my Power Book G4 Disk Utility:
"This drive has Reported Fatal Hardware Error to Disk Utility. If drive has not failed completely, back up as much data as you can and then replace it with a new drive."
I already made a back up my Home folder to my external HD. The install disk utility reports the same and has grey the repair uptions.
The spinning beachball appears constantly when using Safari and iTunes. What should I do?

If your Mac is no longer under the standard 1-yr warranty period or under the 3-yr extended warranty if you purchased the AppleCare extended warranty for your PB, you need to purchase a new internal hard drive that is compatible with your Mac model. This is something you can install yourself or take your Mac to an Apple authorized repair facility to purchase and have a new internal hard drive installed.
The repair facility should include re-installing whichever OX version and all software that was pre-installed and shipped with this Mac when purchased new. If this wasn't Tiger and you purchased a Tiger retail install package, you can re-install the Tiger upgrade yourself and then replace all data from your backup on the new hard drive.

I'm trying to backup a my harddrive with disk utility but I'm getting an error Unable to create Backup.dmg" (input/output error). Is there any other way to save my data? I believe my hard drive is failing or corrupt file. I can't boot up. Grey screen

I'm trying to backup a my hard drive with disk utility but I'm getting an error Unable to create Backup.dmg" (input/output error). Is there any other way to save my data? I believe my hard drive is failing or corrupt file. I can't boot up. Grey screen and spinning wheel. I've tried everything https://discussions.apple.com/message/20580424#20580424
any help will be greatly appreciated.

Check here. Also have you done a TimeMachine back up?
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570

Disk utility is reporting no errors

Hi,
My MBP has been reporting issues over the last few days and recommending that I verify the disk. Whenever I do this, it says that it finds errors and I should reboot with comamnd-r pressed and choose disk utility. Which I do. However when I try to verify the disk or repair the disk in this mode, it never finds any issues? Logging back in and running disk utility will again report issues and recommend repairing
What should I do?
Thanks
Liam

Just noticed other errors reported by Disk Utility ...
Incorrect block count for file lsm_map
(It should be 16129 instead of 17178)
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Volume bitmap needs minor repair for orphaned blocks
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume free block count
(It should be 27769461 instead of 27768412)

Disk Utility: MediaKit reports no such partition

What is up with my disk?
On my brand new mac mini, I played around with resizing partitions in Disk Utility, it worked fine, and I eventually returned it to the original single-partition state.
Then, I ran boot camp, and told it to create a 10 GB partition.
Then, I installed Linux (64-bit Ubuntu) -- from the Linux installer I deleted the windows partition, and a zero-size partition before it, and put Linux swap and ext3 partitions in that space.
Now, from the mac side, if I try to shrink the boot partition again, I get the error "MediaKit reports no such partition".
Help? One potentially related anomaly is that Disk Utility shows my Linux ext3 partition format as "MS-DOS (FAT)" but the "fdisk" command correctly lists it as "Linux files*"
Another disturbing thing is that if I type "sudo pdisk" on the Macintosh command line, and give the 'L' command to list partitions on all disks, pdisk exits with the error "Floating point exception"
Here's the log from Disk Utility:
2007-11-04 00:09:19 -0400: Disk Utility started.
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Preparing to partition disk: “Hitachi HTS541612J9SA00 Media”
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: 3 volumes will be created
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400:
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Partition 1
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Name : “Macintosh HD”
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Size : 90.1 GB
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Do not erase contents
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400:
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Partition 2
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Name : “Linux Swap”
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Size : 488.3 MB
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Do not erase contents
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400:
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Partition 3
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Name : “DISK0S4”
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Size : 10.2 GB
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Filesystem : MS-DOS (FAT32)
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Do not erase contents
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400:
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Modifying partition map.
2007-11-04 00:09:40 -0400: Partition failed for disk Hitachi HTS541612J9SA00 Media MediaKit reports no such partition.
2007-11-04 00:09:41 -0400: Partition complete.
2007-11-04 00:09:41 -0400:
2007-11-04 00:09:41 -0400: Error with partition: MediaKit reports no such partition.

It doesn't sound like you've actually tried reformatting the entire drive, just resizing partitions. There is absolutely no reason why mountability should enter into the picture at all since you can't format a drive if any volumes are mounted.

FATAL HARDWARE ERROR

My daughter has a new G4 that I tried to run a disk repair on after it started crashing continously. All that came up was: If the drive has not failed completely back up as much data as you can and then replace it with a working drive:....geesh!! Already...I know this is under repair still but is this really a hardware or a software problem and would something like this be under warranty still? She thought at first it might be a virus but couldn't seem to download any because we kept freezing up everytime we tried to. Any help?

Well, first of all you don't have a virus, if you do, it would be the first reported virus for OSX (in other words its very unlikely).
Have you tried booting from your iBooks install disk? If not do so (hold the "C" key at boot), and launch disk utility from it and try to do the repair.

Disk utility intermittently reports corrupt disk

As a matter of routine maintenance I like to "Verify Disk" in disk utility from time to time.
The issue I am having is that disc utility intermittently identifies that the Server drive is corrupt and needs to be repaired. Here is a typical sequence:
1) Run verify disk and it reports a corrupt disk.
2) Boot up off a different disk and re-run verify / repair disk on the problematic disk and it reports that the disk is fine.
3) Boot up on the original (problematic) disk and re-run verify disk and it reports the disk as fine.
4) Checking again the next day the original problem resurfaces - disk is corrupt.
The server appears to be running fine, but I am loathe to have an issue like this potentially simmering in the background. I am also averse to upgrades until this issue is resolved. Any pointers on getting this resolved would be much appreciated.
Coincidentally, I have run disk warrior and it reports no issues.

Here is the typical disk utility log when reporting the error:
Verifying volume “Server”
Verifying volume when it is mounted with write access.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Incorrect block count for file kdc.log
(It should be 91 instead of 92)
Incorrect number of thread records
Invalid leaf record count
(It should be 1567637 instead of 1567636)
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Volume bitmap needs minor repair for under-allocation
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume file count
(It should be 684309 instead of 684308)
Invalid volume free block count
(It should be 47746895 instead of 47747031)
Volume header needs minor repair
The volume Server was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Start up your computer with another disk (such as your Mac OS X installation disc), and then use Disk Utility to repair this disk.

Disk utility verify comes back with a errors.

I am running Mac OS X 10.5.8.
When I run the disk utility verify it comes back with a message saying that it cannot repair the errors found on the drive. I also get msgs that the file counts and directory counts are not what they are supposed to be.
What do you recommend I do? Are these errors serious or should I ignore them. I only noticed these errors yesterday after my computer would not boot. I had to actually take out the power cord from the back of the computer and hold the power buttom down for 20 secs and then reattach the power cord. Only then did it boot again.
I am thinking about doing a complete reinstall from scratch however, there may be a chance that some other disk utility out there can fix my problems....any ideas?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Since your system is having trouble booting, you should probably fix those errors.
When Disk Utility can't repair a problem, you have some choices. Many people buy Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro, with Disk Warrior the preferred program, to fix those sort of errors, assuming they aren't caused by failing hardware. Those sound like 'soft' errors that Disk Warrior can repair (see their web site).
If you want to check your hard drive hardware, you can run the Apple hardware test (run the extended test), and SMART Utility is another program that will give you insights into the health of the hard drive.
If you have a good backup, another option is to boot to an OS X DVD (or a bootable backup), use Disk Utility to erase the hard drive and write zero's to it, then restore your backup. If you go this route, make sure you have a good backup because you'll be erasing, permanently, everything on your hard drive.

Disk utility - failure reported - cannot repair

Decided to give my powerbook a thorough check over - mostly by running OnyX.
It raised an issue - which is better described when running 'Disk Utility' - I have attached the output below.
I have tried booting from disk and repairing but this did not work (it did fix one other issue - but this one remains)
What can I do, and what risks does this raise?
Thanks.
Verifying volume “Powerbook HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Incorrect number of Extended Attributes
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
repaired.",1)
Powerbook HD
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair
Perhaps I should have posted this in a generic h/w section - but I couldn't find one!

Start with http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214 and http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672

Disk utility states: This drive has hardware problem that can't be repaired, backup and replace disk.

iMac is within warrenty.

quince88 wrote:
Sorry running 10.6.8, did everthing except Restore Vol, including Tech Tool Deluxe with Drive Hardware test 'Failed' and under Disk Utility S.M.A.R.T. status 'Failing.' I am in Thailand so off to the Apple people on Sat. Thanks for the help.
I think that is a wise choice!
Good luck and btw I hope you have a good backup, if you do use Setup Assistant to restore so you can pick up from where you left off. You should use Pondini's Snow Leopard Setup Assistant tips it will show exactly what needs to be done. If the Apple people are going to install SL for you make sure you give them your backup so they can restore for you.

Disk Utility: Unable to create "ImageName.dmg" error -39

Ladies,
Gentlemen,
I used Disk Utility to backup the internal hard drive of my iMac G5 iSight.
The last backup of the hard drive was unsuccessful, ending with next message: Unable to create "ImageName.dmg"; error -39.
The iMac is running OS X 10.4.11.
I proceed as follows:
Boot from the OS X 10.4.2 installation DVD and firing up Disk Utility.
Menu option: File, New, Disk Image from disk0s3 (Mac HD)
The target disk is Porche_LaCie FireWire drive.
After +/- 2 hours I end up with the above message.
The hard drive has following characteristics:
Name : Mac HD
Type : Volume
Disk Identifier : disk0s3
Mount Point : /
File System : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Connection Bus : ATA
Partition Type : Apple_HFS
Device Tree : sata/k2-sata@0/@0:3
Writable : Yes
Universal Unique Identifier : 9AFCA71A-DD8B-376E-9776-EE7EDDBB328C
Capacity : 148,9 GB (159.907.627.008 Bytes)
Free Space : 96,9 GB (103.996.362.752 Bytes)
Used : 52,1 GB (55.911.264.256 Bytes)
Number of Files : 419.419
Number of Folders : 104.321
Owners Enabled : Yes
Can Turn Owners Off : Yes
Can Repair Permissions : Yes
Can Be Verified : Yes
Can Be Repaired : Yes
Can Be Formatted : Yes
Bootable : Yes
Supports Journaling : Yes
Journaled : Yes
S.M.A.R.T. Status : Verified
Disk Number : 0
Partition Number : 3
The target drive characteristics:
Name : Porche_LaCie
Type : Volume
Disk Identifier : disk1s1
Mount Point : /Volumes/Porche_LaCie
File System : Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
Connection Bus : FireWire
Partition Type : Apple_HFS
Device Tree : fw/node@d04b7417066788/sbp-2@c000/@0:1
Writable : Yes
Universal Unique Identifier : BCCEBED2-08F5-3C21-8750-75716AF060B9
Capacity : 232,9 GB (250.056.705.024 Bytes)
Free Space : 160,8 GB (172.646.076.416 Bytes)
Used : 72,1 GB (77.410.627.584 Bytes)
Number of Files : 15
Number of Folders : 4
Owners Enabled : No
Can Turn Owners Off : Yes
Can Be Formatted : Yes
Bootable : Yes
Supports Journaling : Yes
Journaled : Yes
S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 1
The target drive already contains 3 earlier images. The biggest image has a size of 28,14 GB. And as you can see this drive ha enough place for other images.
So what is going wrong?
I Googled for this error -39 without any success and I have not found any thing about this particular error in Apple's discussions or support pages.
I would feel a lot safer with a decent image of my Hard Drive. I already lost one and do not want to repeat this again...
Can any one help?

If you want to create a backup of your system volume, then do not use disc images. They are not bootable. Here's a far better solution:
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.
You can also do the same using other backup utilities that can create bootable backups:
Backup Software Recommendations
My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.

Disk Utility Drive report anomaly

I've been trying to solve a series of crashes and odd problems on my machine. I always run Disk Utility first and I've never seen this particular item in the report before. In the stream of items reported by Disk Utility (the drive is okay, it says), I get this line:
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
I've never seen the percent sign followed by a single close parentheses.
Is this meaningful?
Dual 2.7 GHz PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Probably not. If you re-run Repair Disk do you get the same result? Are there any defects reported? Did you also repair permissions?
What odd problems are you having, specifically?

Disk Utility is unable to scan (internal error)

Hi all.
Did some searching around the forums for an answer, but couldn't find anything useful.
With the help of my partner, we created an image of my hard drive running Snow Leopard onto an external drive. We replaced my hard drive with a solid state drive, and then I couldn't boot it up from a Snow Leopard OS X Install DVD. So, we installed Lion OSX (or something to let us boot from, I don't know what to call it) on a flash drive that we used to boot up the computer. Hooray! Works!
Ok, so now we're in Lion's Disk Utility trying to restore our image that's on the external drive. We need to scan the image, okay, but after an hour and a half we get an error:
"unable to scan image. (internal error)"
Tried scanning about three times, but no luck. We're stuck. Right now we're verifying the image, but it looks like it'll take another few hours.
Any help or insight appreciated.

Update: Verified image without error. Hooray! (Guess that took a lot less time than a few hours, more like 20 minutes?)
After scanning the image for a better part of an hour, with the message "Block Checksum Partition #1" underneath, the blue bar completely fills, it turns to blue & white diagonal stripes, and I still get the same error message:
"unable to scan image. (internal error)"
Booooooo.

Disk Utility is reporting a fatal hardware error-S.M.A.R.T. status failing. Is there hope?

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