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.

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Disk Utility: after creating the .DMG (compressed image) When "scan image for restore" finishes it displays "unable to scan (internal error)". Since the process was scanning for about 1 hr is this a fake warning?

External 500GB drive is partitioned with 400GB for Mac OS extended (journalling) and 2nd partition formatted today as "ExFAT".
Yesterday I tried to create a disk image of my HD to no avail - this was compressed on a FAT partition. I got a warning after running the <scan image for restore> saying "unable to scan (internal error)"
I rang Apple support who suggested formatting a partition as MAC OS extended (journalling) and choose to save the image as "read/write'. The image process stopped writing at about 200GB and then the file size jumped to 499GB (ie the size of the HD). But the process did nothing for about an hour so I foce quit disk utility (as suggested by apple support)
My current attempt was to format the external drive again; this time with a 400GB Mac OS extended (journal) format; plus a 100GB ExFAT format partition. The new image was created after about 2.5hrs with a compressed size of 149GB. However, after running the "scan image for restore" facility I got the warning message "unable to scan filename " (internal error). The process was scanning the image file according to the progress bar - this took about hour - thus the warning is a puzzle.
If anyone can say more about this error I would really appreciate knowing tips for using disk utility. The screen grab is below.
"unable to scan filename " (internal error)
thanks

Thanks for a quick reply <baltwo>. You’ve answered that it is not a fake message!
fyi: I thought that I would use my external Buffalo for two purposes; namely the smaller ExFAT partition for copying stuff to my win7 netbook. The larger partition was to be used as my imac image of SL. So this was my first attempt at using disk utility - the idea being to hold an image backup at another location. Plus I now have the Lion thumbdrive ready to upgrade from SL and so being cautious wanted to have a SL image backup
Anyway I followed the apple instructions using my mac 10.6.3 install DVD but it would appear from other discussions that <unable to scan (internal error)> is not unique to me.
I’ll get back to apple telephone support for further advice.
I would though be grateful for an “idiots’ guide to making an image backup of my internal HD that runs SL 10.6.8
eg should I have just one partition on the external USB drive? format it as Mac OS extended? create the image as compressed or read/write? Basically I’ll do whatever will work!!
thanks again

Unable to scan (internal error)

Hi Apple Have a question,
I am trying to create a bootable partition on my external firewire Hard Drive for Leopard OS.
First I created .dmg file : "Mas OS X DVD.dmg"
2nd > after creating the dmg file - I ran "Scan image restore" on the DMG file
3rd > after running completing both steps above the system generates this error message:
"Unable to scan "Mac OS X install Dvd.dmg" (internal error).
According to my research, before installing Leopard on to an external hard drive as a bootable partition, the dmg file must be scanned before completing the process.
However, the scan is not working. Can someone shed some light on how I can
get this off the ground.
Again:
The object is to create a bootable partition of leopard on to my external hard drive for
Technical maintenance support of my computers.
Please send me your solution or thoughts
Message was edited by: oross

Sorry, no Apple here, only other users. That said, I have no idea of what you're trying to do. If you want to make a bootable partition, all you have to do is install the software onto the partition. Alternatively, you can put a bootable backup/clone of your current boot volume onto it using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!. BTW, the error indicates that the .dmg file you created is corrupt.

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: No Mac Drive in Internal HDD. Can't format or erase.

Hey guys, I just got my new mac mini and I installed a Samsung pro 840 SSD. The thing is I messed up. I turned my mac on and everything went fine, Disk Utility showed up telling me that the drive was "unreadable". I decided to turn the thing off and start Recovery so I could install Mountain Lion onto the SSD. When igot to Recovery, disk utility told me there was an error with the drives and it had to erase them, while it was working I got the The Spinning Rainbow Beach Ball of Death so I turned my mac off. Huge mistake it seems. Now when I want to install Mountain Lion there is no available disk to install it. I started Internet Recovery and accessed Disk Utility again and the Internal Drive actually appears but with nothing installed in it. The option to erase or format are not available. I did a disk verification and repair and everything was OK. I'm going crazy over this. Please help me guys!!! I'm leaving a picture so its clearer. THANK YOU!!

Being a new Mac Mini the system is attempting to create a Fusion Drive setup out of your SSD. Do you have dual drives in the system, the built-in one in addition to the new one you installed?
This is an issue with the new Mac Mini and iMac systems (see here: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57584237-263/disk-utility-may-combine-custo m-drive-setups-on-some-macs/) as these systems ship with Fusion Drive setups and Disk Utility assumes this is the desired setup when you use it to "fix" the drives.
You can see that when you select "Internal Drive" the type is "Logical Volume Group." Since this group is greater than the 840GB, my guess is this is the combined space from your SSD and the built-in one.
To clear this issue, open the Terminal (from the Utilities menu in the OS X installer), and run the following command:
diskutil cs list
You will see a tree of information, with one grouping showing a UUID for the Logical Volume Group (the UUID will be a string of numbers and letters, separated by several dashes).
With this UUID, run the following command to destroy the logical volume group (you can try copying and pasting the UUID, though I"m not sure if the services in the Recovery HD partition support copy and paste--otherwise just type it in manually):
diskutil cs delete UUID
When finished, follow the instructions in the artifcle I linked to above to install OS X to an external drive (if available) and use Disk Utility there to fix and manage the drives, as opposed to the version in the Recovery HD partition.

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.

Disk Utility says: "Unable to read FAT (Input/output error)"

I have a Western Digital Passport external hard drive factory formatted as FAT32. It worked as advertised for over half a year before it suddenly stopped working and refuses to mount on the desktop (it is visible in /dev). No odd sounds and the disk or other problems, a different USB cable makes no difference.
The disk shows up as an empty disk in Windows 7 even though it is supposed to contain a small iTunes library. I have tried to repair the disk in Disk Utility in OS X 10.6.4. This is the latest attempt to repair the disk, copied from the log:
2010-08-10 15:58:44 +0200: ** /dev/disk2s1 (NO WRITE)
2010-08-10 15:58:44 +0200: ** Phase 1 - Preparing FAT
2010-08-10 15:58:44 +0200: ** Phase 2 - Checking Directories
2010-08-10 15:58:44 +0200: Unable to read FAT (Input/output error)
Does anyone have any recommendation on repair/recovery applications? I own a copy of DIskWarrior already but DW is a HFS-olny repair app…

Hi Niklas,
have a look at TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Regards
Stefan

DISK UTILITY PROBLEMS : unable to verify or repair disk and/or permissions

hi all...first time poster.
i have been reading past posts for 3 hours and i am still unable to resolve these issues i am having.
it all started with a failed attempt to install an update (QB2006_R4Updater.dmg) that i downloaded for a new version of Quickbooks Pro 2006 that i just purchased. the install continuously got hung up on "Searching Macintosh HD" looking for the application.
i called quickbooks tech support and after about an hour of troubleshooting and 4-5 failed attempts to boot in safe mode...the rep told me it seemed to be a system problem.
regarding safe mode:
when i try to boot up in safe mode...immediately after hearing the start up tone i press and hold shift until the gray apple appears then release it. the system continues to boot for about 30-45 seconds and then shuts down.
regarding disk utility:
i have tried to verify and repair the disk permissions to no avail...i also booted from the osX 10.4.6 installer disk (i am currently running osX 10.4.7) and tried to verify and repair the disk but on every occassion it gets hung up a little less than half way through - no error message - it will just keep going until i need to reboot the system. i cant even force quite disk utility.
i have also tried removing the itunes.pkg file as well as moving itunes to the desktop followed by running disk utility...but the same results.
some other info about this system...
as well as running all of tigers bundled software...i have installed cs2, microsoft office x, suitcase fusion, windows media player and quickbooks pro 2006.
not really sure what i need to or should do...just want to get the system so i can continue to keep up with software updates and use the utilities to keep everything working properly.
thank you in advance for any help you might be able to give me.
17" iMac PowerPC G4 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

From what you've described there are several possibilities, none very encouraging:
1. You have a motherboard problem
2. You have bad RAM
3. Your hard drive is failing or damaged
Given what you've described I would recommend trying this:
Boot into single-user mode by restarting the computer and after the chime press and hold down COMMAND-S keys until the computer starts up to a black screen with white type. When startup has completed you should see a prompt. At the prompt enter the following commands pressing return after each:
prompt> /sbin/fsck -fy
If you do not get a return message "Filesystem OK" then repeat the above command until the "Filesystem OK" message appears. If you repeat the command more than seven times without success, then the drive cannot be repaired. To restart OS X enter:
prompt> reboot
Download the utility TinkerTool System and use it to clear out all user and system caches, font caches, and log files.
If none of this works, then you will have to reformat the hard drive as follows:
1. Boot from your Tiger DVD. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button, then select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
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 will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
Quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed to install OS X. You can upgrade to the most recent version by downloading and installing the Combo Updater for the desired version level.

Disk Utility does not show my internal hard drive.

Recently, my Macbook Pro crashed.
THE PROBLEM
1. I turn it on, it starts normally at first, the Apple Logo Shows for several seconds
2. It changes to a no-smoking sign without the cigarette
3. If I try to boot safe mode, a folder appears with a question mark
4. If I try the internet recovery, I get to the part where I can restore OSX, use disk utility, etc.
5. When I try to restore OSX, it doesn't show my hard drive as avilable to install upon - no drives are shown
6. When I try to use disk utility, it only shows my Mac Base System, totaling 2GB, I cannot do anything.
THE QUESTIONS
1. What do I do? Thoughts? How do I recover my hard drive data before sending this computer to Apple to fix?
2. How can I use an external enclosure to recover my data using my desktop? What cords do I need? What is a good drive? Is it hard?
3. My SD card slot shows, could I install OSX on that and try to load my OSX to gain access to my harddrive that's missing?
4. Why would my main hard drive not show? I'm supposed to have a 250GB hard drive.
5. Is there anything I can do on Terminal to try to make my full hard drive appear? Or gain access?
6. What will Apple do with my RAM that I installed? I upgraded to 8GB? Will they just return as is?
Thank you.
Model: MBP from Mid-2010 13" running OSX Mountain Lion 250GB HD

Youre working the wrong end trying to revive a dying drive, a replacement is only $65
Did you have a backup of your vital data?
Terminal isnt going to do anything to help your HD.
questions:
1. get a new HD, install OS........recovery internal HD data using another computer and throwing the internal HD into a USB enclosure to extract data......however depending on the HD, data extraction may prove futile.
2. external USB enclosure, comes with USB cable....takes 3 mins to put internal HD into enclosure.
3. no,...... installing OS on a dying drive is beating a dead horse,...
4. because its dead/ dying.
5. no
6. Yes, they wont mess with your RAM.
Contact Apple for fix, of if you have the skills you can install a new HD yourself

Disk utility restore problem: cannot drag internal hdd to destination field

I'm currently trying to restore a time machine backup after my boot ssd recently failed, but am having trouble restoring the backup to my secondary internal drive in the optical bay. My set up isthe following:
Failed ssd in primary hdd bay of MacBook Pro (mid 2010)
1tb secondary hdd in optical drive bay with time machine backup of failed ssd.
2tb external drive
The following is what I have done so far...
1. Booted into the secondary internal drive and restored the time machine backup onto the external USB drive.
2. Booted from the restored backup on the USB drive (this now looks like my old computer again but is very slow as its USB 2.0)
3. Partitioned the secondary internal drive in the optical bay.
4. Now I want to copy the restored volume on my USB drive to the secondary internal drive in the optical bay.
When I open disk utility's restore function I can put my original volum in the source field, however, it will not let me put either partition of my internal drive in the destination field. It has no problem putting other partitions from the USB drive in the destination field - just will not allow anything from the internal drive. Why is this?
I'm thinking it could possibly be because it is in the optical drive bay and apple has prevented copying full volumes into this bay, but then again surely this would be needed when burning DVDs at some stage. Any ideas? Many thanks in advance for any help.

I managed to complete the restore and you may have been right - I booted from the internal hdd then restored the time machine backup stored on the usb drive to a different partition on the internal hd. Seemed to work fine now running of the hd in the optical drive bay but has still crashed a couple of times which is pretty odd. Perhaps the failed ssd in the main drive bay is still causing a bit of a nuisance (it registers for the first 3 minutes after booting up then disappears). Also didnt notice the responsiveness too much when upgrading from hd to ssd, but going the other way back to hd - can definitely now tell the difference. Painfully slow at times! I need to get that ssd replaced I think. Anyway thanks for your advice!

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 Failure/Unable to open Hard drive with a double click

After trying to use Disk Warrior for maintanance last week my entire hard drive crashed.
I've spent the last week rebuilding only to encounter a new problem..i can not open the hard drive with a double click.
I attempted to run Disk utility to diagnose the problem and was told that the "program had lost connection and was unable to verify/repair disk permissions...and was told to shut down disk utility, which i ran from the install disk...
Any suggestions aside from erasing and rebuilding the hard drive?
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Victoria

Hi Ana,
Try this link Disc Utility lost connection ......
Hope that this will help you to solve the problem.
When this was help full ore solved your problem Why award ponits?
Dimaxum

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.

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

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

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

Disk Utility, restore image via HTTP, and error 22 (invalid argument)

I'm trying to restore a properly-created and prepared (i.e. volume checksum applied) Apple Software Restore disk image to a volume on a target computer. The source image is hosted on a Web server and accessible via HTTP.
The image restoration process appears to succeed for the most part, but at the end, I get an error 22 (invalid argument). This may be after the image restoration has finished, and when the resulting volume is being mounted. (I wonder if the problem is automount-related?)
The same image, so far, restores to the same volume successfully when restored locally, mounting the drive in target disk mode on the host Mac.
I am curious if anyone else has seen this same behavior and found a solution. Or is everyone else having the same kinds of problems with HTTP-based restores?
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.9) 15-inch, Core 2 Duo 2.16 GHz, 2 GB RAM

Visit http://www.bombich.com/. See if you find any related info on that site. If not email Mike Bombich about the problem. If anyone knows the answer I would think he should.

Disk Utility is unable to scan (internal error)

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