How do I repair the internal disk drive on an older iMac?
Running Snow Leopard OSX 10.6.8 on an older iMac. I ran Disk Utility and it found a problem requiring the internal disk to be repaired. The instructions said to boot the system using an installation CD. The only CD I have is for OSX 10.4.4 ( Tiger). I don't have one for Snow Leopard. I can access this CD and instructions on the CD, "About Apple Hardware Test" say to hold down the D key to boot into the diagnostics, or the hold down the "C" key to boot to the OS on the CD. Neither of these options work. It keep booting into Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6.8) and I cannot repair the internal disk drive without running on an OS started form the CD.
I've spent a couple of hours trying to get it to boot to the Tiger installation CD. Wish I had made an install CD for Snow Leopard. Maybe that would work. Is that what I need? I really think it should boot to the Tiger CD.
I've spent lots of time in these user forums and don't see anything that helps. Any suggestions?? Having trouble with doing automatic Time Machine backups to an external disk drive and maybe it is because of the corrupted hard drive. Although the error looks quite minor from the description in Disk Utility. The system runs fine and I don't see any other problems. Just struggling with Time Machine.
This is an older iMac, 4,1 with a 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2 GBytes of SDRAM. 20 inch screen. I have a MBP sitting next to it and use them both, even though I can't update the iMac to Lion or above because of the Core Due processor. It is still a good computer and very useful.
What do I have to do to get it to boot from a CD?
Thanks for your help,
veehb
That is well worth $20. I'll pick one up tomorrow. Is there an easy way to make an installatoin CD that will also be a backup for my installation?
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I have loaded my Time Capsule with my photos, videos, music etc. I want to access these using my Apple TV on my home WIFI for display on my tv's, and Ipads, Has anyone figured out a way to do this? I can do it by access to my Macbook but that's not always convenient.
If the light will not turn on the TC is dead. No matter that the hard disk is running.. it should only run at start up or when it is accessed not constantly.. that means the board in the TC has failed. Apple do not repair them.. They will replace it under warranty or applecare.
If you have gone over the 12month warranty it will still be covered if you have applecare on any computer or an Apple TV. In fact the cost of the apple TV plus apple care is still cheaper than buying a new TC.. so it is a route some people are taking.. certainly depends.. in some places like Europe or Australia now, there is a recognition that statutory warranty must be longer on a product that is premium to the market. 12months is not good enough. Apple will sometimes listen.
They might be fixable but I do not know how. -
I have a MacBook that needs its internal hard drive's Macintosh HD partition repaired, as the boot screen freezes on startup. I am running a separate, working mac OS from an external hard drive in order to run disk utility and repair the MacBook's internal OS. The issue is, it has dismounted the internal Macintosh HD partition, and won't remount. And in addition to that, the Verify Disk option returns with, "The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK." I've run Verify Disk and Repair Disk a few times, all with that same result. And the internal OS still won't boot.
I have attempted to make a disk image of the internal Macintosh HD partition and save it to my external hard drive so I can wipe the internal hard drive clean and restore the image, but I receive errors when trying to create the disk image, and when trying to erase the hard drive (I know, I should try to erase the hard drive when I haven't made an image. When I tried to erase the hard drive, the image wasn't done and I thought it was. I got an error for erase, and I got an error for making the disk image) I have tried making a disk image multiple times and haven't been able to create one.
There is also a boot camp partition on the internal hard drive which is of no importance as to whether it stays or is erased.Reinstall OS X without erasing the drive
Do the following:
1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Snow Leopard 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 Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Reinstall Snow Leopard
If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with reinstalling OS X. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.
Download and install the Combo Updater for the version you prefer from support.apple.com/downloads/. -
When I try to use the internal hard drive as a scratch disk I get this error "unable to set scratch disk- the selected directory is on write protect or non-writable media. Any ideas on how to fix this. It only happens in fcp.
By internal, I assume you're referring to your systems (boot) drive. Is it, by chance, a partitioned dive?
Also…although many people successfully use their systems drives as scratch disks, over time you'll have better results using a dedicated drive for your media.
Good luck.
Russ -
How to move an iTunes library from the internal hard drive to another bootable disk.
I got two Mac OS X installations on my i Mac system. One on the internal hard drive (320 Gb), that has been there since the iMac was bought 3 years ago, upgraded to Lion on 2 August. (call that INT) . I have a USB external drive, and recently bought a firewire Lacie external drive (2Tb), so to boot from there when I can, with hard drive space getting tight this year. I successfully installed another copy of Lion on LACIE.
Then I went to work to transfer my iTunes library, which the media files were optioned to store on the USB drive. Intending to transfer both the music and video files, and the megadata ( playlists, ratings, playcounts ) I found the media files and the iTunes library file and the .xml document in my iTunes folder from INT. I made a new folder in the USB drive, and copied the contents from the old iTunes folder to that new folder. I re-started in LACIE, and found my empty iTunes folder. I copied over to the new iTunes folder, then opened iTunes. My eyes saw the music library to the same number of items, with the playlists etc showing.
However, I tried to sync an iPod Nano, and a window came up saying 100 songs could not be copied to the iPod because they could not be found. After ejecting the iPod I tried to play a song from iTunes, and the screen filled with exclamation points. A small window came up, asking for a password to open "sparsebundle" and my name. I entered my password for the administrator's log-in and it said try again with the password. Without knowing what password to put in, I clicked Cancel, and got another small window asking to locate the file. Then clicked Cancel again, not knowing where to search. All the media folders were showing after quitting iTunes and opening Finder .
I re-booted into INT, and opened iTunes. The library was still there. I synced my iPod again, ejected it, played 3 songs on the iPod, synced again, ejected it again, and opened the playlist "Recently Played". It showed up okay with no problems. So my iTunes library in INT is alright.
Has anyone got any idea how to make the transfer into LACIE and get it running alright, or what went wrong with what I did ?
In the meantime I will empty my LACIE iTunes library folder's contents to the trash, and securily empty the trash .Solved the issue without using the trash . I tried to consolidate the library in LACIE, then clicked on any exclamation-mark song and tried to locate the file. Repeating those steps 3 or 4 times cleared it up. That was confirmed when I synced the entire library on a iPod Classic, and showed up no problems after syncing the Nano.
What went wrong was perhaps to fail to consolidate the library at first . -
After getting the dreaded gray/blue screen, I tried to run disk repair on the internal disk. I got an error message saying "Disk Utility can't repair this disk and restore your backed-up files. The volume Macintosh HD could not be verified completely." What do I do now? This is an iMac and I'm running 10.6.8.
Clean Install of Snow Leopard
Be sure to make a backup first because the following procedure will erase
the drive and everything on it. See below for how to clone a drive.
1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came
with your computer. Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.
After the chime press and hold down the "C" key. Release the key when you see
a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.
2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue
button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
size.) Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Set the number of
partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button
and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended
(Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.
3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed
with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
Assistant. Be sure you configure your initial admin account with the exact same
username and password that you used on your old drive. After you finish Setup
Assistant will complete the installation after which you will be running a fresh
install of OS X. You can now begin the update process by opening Software
Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your installation current.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.
You may be able to backup your data if you have an erased external drive you can use. Before you do the above but after you have opened Disk Utility you can try to clone your drive:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag
it to the Destination entry field.
5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
the Source entry field.
6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Now this will only work if the drive is accessible and can be cloned by Disk Utility. Otherwise, you would need to access your drive from another Mac that you can connect via Firewire - Target Disk Mode. -
I have a new MAcBook Air and my photos don't fit on the internal hard drive. I want to store my photos on an external hard drive which I will connect to my Air when using Iphoto. How do I set an external hard drive as the default drive in Iphoto?
Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Regards
TD -
I have Lion on an external hard-drive and I want to install it on the internal disk
I have Lion on an external hard-drive and I want to install it on the internal disk. How can I proceed?
I recently completed a clean install of Lion on an internal SSD. After wiping it clean, I used a thumb drive with SL on it to boot and then another thumb drive with Lion on it. It worked just fine. The only thing to be aware of is that if you use the thumb to install Lion from... it will not install a recovery partition and you'll have to use the thumb in the future.
That's what I wanted anyway so it's working out just fine. Good luck.
I should add... I used the SL thumb to actually boot from and used Disk Utlities to wipe the internal SSD. It does work and there are Apple posts that can guide you through the thumb drive process. I used copycat to create both the SL boot and Lion. -
The internal hard drive on my early 2009 24" iMac is nearly full. I have already worked to free as much space on the HD as possible. How do I add an external HD and have the iMac read it as though it was part of the internal HD. I know about external HD for additional storage and I do have an external HD, but, it is so much easier to search the drive when it is internal than having to perform a search on the internal drive and then a search on the external drives. And, it is easier to save files to an internal drive so that I don't have to decide which external drive to use to save files. In other words, I want to add an external HD and have it function as though I had purchased a larger internal HD.
That is simply not possible. Every drive is a separate device. It cannot be used to extend an internal drive as though you had a seamlessly larger drive.
What you can do is to create a striped RAID array using the internal drive and an external drive. However, doing this will erase the internal drive and you will lose everything on the internal drive. Furthermore, installing Lion or Mountain Lion becomes a bit of a problem because you cannot create a Recovery HD on a RAID and this tends to make the installer choke. However, you can clone an existing Lion or Mountain Lion system to the RAID and designate the RAID as a startup volume.
I would not recommend the RAID solution, personally, but there are many who do. I prefer the basic solution of spending the money on a larger internal hard drive instead of an external hard drive.
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? -
How do i repair a corrupt hard drive and i lost my install disk
My Macbook started acting up....when rebooting there was a flashing file folder with a ? inside. Finally got to reboot, ran Disk Verfiy and my hard drive is corrupt. We just moved and I have no install disc. How do I repair my hard drive?
With no install drive and a potentially flaky boot drive there is no guarantee of success. Here's some schemes you can try.
1. Boot in safe mode. I believe it does a fsck (file system check) of the boot drive.
2. Related to 1.
Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck
3. Ggt yourself an external drive and hope you can clone the boot drive to it using Carbon Copy Cloner (or Super Duper). Then boot from the external and try to repair the original boot drive.
Of course I shouldn't have to say that you should always have a backup (backups) of your drives anyhow.
4. Contact apple to try to replace your installer dvds. -
How can I restore my stystem to factory settings if I replaced the internal hard drive
My computers been runing slow and its time for a factory reset. I only use the computer really as a media center hooked up to my tv since I built my desktop a year or so ago. I already copyied everything I wanted to keep off the laptop. A year or so ago I had to replace the internal hard drive because there was a problem with it. i don't have a restore disk and the partictian didn't get copied to this hard drive. how can i restore to factory settings? the computer is a toshibia qosmio x 505 q885.
Qosmio X505-Q885
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Qosmio X500 Series User’s Guide
-Jerry -
I have a Power PC G5 computer that I will soon be replacing with a current i5 or i7 Mini. How do I transfer the Time Machine files from the internal hard drive on the G5 to an external drive that I will later use with the Mini?
Hi, likely the easiest is to just poll the drive & get something like this...
Get MacScan...
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/networking_security/macscan.html
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U3NVSPATA/
But if you have a good external drive already, just clone it.
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/ -
I have a windows 7 dvd in the drive and the mac is set to launch from the dvd drive. How do I change the startup disk?
Hold the option key at startup and when you get to the boot panel select your Mac OS drive.
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How can I repair my internal earpiece? The speaker works not the earpiece. All other sound features work. I can use an external earpiece and I get sound.
OK, I went to Private Browsing to change Never remember history to choose Use custom settings for history and then clicked on Permanent Private Browsing Mode and clicked on the bottom OK. I then went to my Firefox messages and clicked on that internal-linked multimessage and then clicked on a link. It went there for only 1 second and reverted to the top of the message, not moving on further clicking.
I then went to tools > options > privacy only to find that the default Never remember history was back in the panel. It wasn't stable at Use custom settings for history. I tried this several times. It always reverts either right away or after that 1-second success. One time it lasted an amazing 3 seconds before reverting to the top of the multimessage e-mail. So THAT failed too.
OK, so then I went to Internet Explorer and called up that message. Clicked on an internal link and watched it fail for 1 second and then clicked again and it held the message for a long time. It's something in Firefox not Int. Explorer. Please see the image to let you know what I am doing.
Comments?
Carl -
how do you repair the EFI systems partitions when you mac tells you that the live file system is not supported?
I don't have good news. You will need to repartition and reformat the hard drive in order to determine if the drive is still OK or if it needs to be replaced. If your computer is a 2011 model or later do the following:
Install Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion Using Internet Recovery
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Internet Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-OPTION- R keys until a globe appears on the screen. Wait patiently - 15-20 minutes - until the Recovery main menu appears.
Partition and Format the hard drive:
Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
After DU loads select your newly installed 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.
Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion. Mavericks: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks and click on the Install button. Be sure to select the correct drive to use if you have more than one.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.
This should restore the version of OS X originally pre-installed on the computer.
If your computer is pre-2011 model, then locate the original installer discs that came with the computer. Then do this:
Clean Install of Snow Leopard
Be sure to make a backup first because the following procedure will erase
the drive and everything on it.
1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came
with your computer. Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.
After the chime press and hold down the "C" key. Release the key when you see
a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.
2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue
button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
size.) Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Set the number of
partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button
and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended
(Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.
3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed
with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
Assistant. Be sure you configure your initial admin account with the exact same
username and password that you used on your old drive. After you finish Setup
Assistant will complete the installation after which you will be running a fresh
install of OS X. You can now begin the update process by opening Software
Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your installation current.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1. You can now download a version of OS X from which to upgrade from your Purchases page in the App Store.
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