Diskutility doesn't help in this case ....

Question

i'm doing maintenance on a dualcore G5 with the latest os and patches installed.
starting from the original os disc, i run diskutility to check the boot drive.
it gives me the following error:
checking catalog file.
keys out of order
the volume Macintosh HD1 needs to be repaired
Error: the underlying task reported failure on exit
and this is where diskutility abort.
any suggestions on how to best proceed from here?
thanks!
dualcore G5   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

Answer 1

You need to be using a backup or emergency boot drive now? right? and you have a spare empty drive to recover to? before you even repair a drive you should always first attempt to recover files you would other wise lose or don't have backed up.
Data Rescue II demo will show what it can find.
Sounds like bad sectors so don't expect to be able to write or update/alter any files.
[url="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214"] Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck [/url]
[url="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107250"] Mac OS X: fsck reports benign errors when journaling is turned [/url]
[url="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25770"] Handling "overlapped extent allocation" errors reported by Disk Utility or fsck [/url]
[url="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302411"] Disk Utility reports "Underlying task reported failure" when repairing a volume [/url]
[url="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=32480"] [/url]
Later versions of OS X have improved on Disk Utility errors and repairs, and the latest is 10.4.6 DVD. But I think you are going to need to do 7-way write erase to map out any and all of what seems to be bad sectors, and maybe use it for backups in the future, but replace it.
Intech Speedtools should be able to do detect and map out bad sectors without erasing the full drive, but it does take time and no guarantee, and costs $89 or about what 300/320GB drive will cost.