IBook Possible Hard Drive Corruption - Please help diagnose

I left my iBook to download overnight and when I got up, it was really slow and laggy so I restarted it but it continually kept getting frozen at the last login screen, so I backed up my data via firewire, and erased the hard drive, and then installed OSX again. It worked for a bit, but then it crashed again, and between all these steps I have been repairing the hard drive using disk utility. It says that there is nothing wrong with the hard drive, but then it changes its mind after I've installed OSX again and it says there's a problem. Currently, the hard drive is blank, but it is coming up with a problem when I try and repair disk. The error that shows up is: "The underlying task reported failure on exist." as well as "Catalog file entry not found for extent."
I'm trying to diagnose the problem myself. I suspect that it is some form of hard drive failure. I don't want to take it in the shop because that will cost about $40 just to get it checked out, and I plan on installing a new hard drive myself if I find that that is the necessary step. If anyone has had similar problems, or knows what part needs to be replaced, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks!
PS. If someone has some time and has more experience in diagnostics, please feel free to message me on msn at roycelee@hotmail dot com

This is the best way to Erase and Install. First backup all your important stuff, if you can, as the following will erase everything on your drive; it will be unrecoverable. Put your install disk in your Mac and Restart while holding down the C key. In Tiger, When you get to the install screen, don't click install and go to the title bar at the top of the screen and click on Utilities (in earlier OS's click on the installer menu).
Click on Disk Utility and choose the hard drive you want your OS on. Then click on the Erase tab. In Tiger, click on the Security Options button near the bottom (it's similiar for Panther and Jaguar).
Once in there choose Zero Out Data (write zero's in earlier versions). This will map out any bad blocks on your drive and bring it back to almost new condition (providing there's nothing wrong mechanically with it, bad bearings, defective or damaged surface, etc.).
Once this is done, go back to the install screen and begin the "Erase and Install" installation. This will put a factory fresh system on a clean hard drive.
Cheers!
DALE

Similar Messages

Possible Hard Drive Failure - Please Help

Hello everyone.
I have a 24" Aluminum iMac (Mid 2007 model, I believe) that was purchased around November 2007. The internal hard drive is 500 GB (roughly 300 GB for OS X and 200 GB for Windows XP). My problem is that my iMac doesn't want to boot into OS X. Please note that I can still access my Windows XP partition by holding the option when the computer starts up.
Here's a list of the things I've tried so far:
-Calling the support number: The gentleman took me through some basic trouble shooting steps (including booting in Single User Mode and typing the fsck command) but couldn't resolve the issue, so he gave me a case number and made an appointment at a local Apple store which I could not attend. I have yet to reschedule another appointment.
-Booted the "sick" Mac in Target Disk Mode while connecting it to another "savior" Mac via FireWire: Nothing. The target Mac goes into TDM correctly (FireWire logo bounces around screen), but the savior Mac did not recognize it. (The drive didn't mount?) This was the case with two different savior Macs.
-Booted in Verbose Mode: I held down Command+V while booting the computer. The trouble seems to arise directly after the line "AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement: Intialization complete". The next step results in an error reading "disk0s2: I/O error.", then the computer shuts down after about 45 seconds.
-Inserted "Mac OS X Install Disc 1": I held down option and selected to boot from the CD. I chose English as the main language. When the welcome screen pops up (to re-install Leopard), I instead chose to run the Disk Utility option from the menu bar. I see my hard drive (465.8 GB) which is split into two partitions ("Macintosh HD" which I assume is disk0s2, and "disk0s3" which I assume is my Windows XP partition). I attempt to verify disk permissions on "Macintosh HD" but it almost immediately bumps back with an error saying "First Aid failed. Disk Utility stopped verifying permissions on 'Macintosh HD' because the following error was encountered: The underlying task reported failure on exit." Next, I click on Verify Disk instead of Verify Disk Permissions. The errors in the details list (red colored text?) include "Incorrect number of thread counts", "Invalid node structure", "Volume check failed", and "Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed."
-Tried to make an image of my current disk onto an external HD connected through FireWire: I thought this looked bad, so I figured I could re-install Leopard entirely. However, I have years of data on this hard drive that are irreplaceable (my fault for not backing it up to begin with). I hooked up a brand new 1 TB external drive via FireWire800. In Disk Utility, I can see the 1 TB external alongside my 500 GB internal. I clicked on the "Macintosh HD" disk and clicked "New Image" and directed it to create an image of my internal drive on my external drive. I click Save. After about five seconds, it bounces back with an error reading "Unable to create 'Macintosh HD.dmg'. (Input/output error)".
Questions:
1. What the heck happened? Is the problem the result of a head crash? Is it a problem in the boot sector?
2. Is there any possible way to recover the data on the hard drive?
3. Does a failure like this get covered by Apple Care Protection Plans? (the computer is covered, by the way)
Thank you very very much in advance. Sorry for the huge amount of text. :-x
Message was edited by: UnderTheMud
Message was edited by: UnderTheMud

Buy Disk Warrior and use it to repair your OS X volume (if it's repairable.) If DW cannot repair the volume then use Disk Utility to reformat the volume using the Zero Data (one pass) Security option.
Do you have a backup of your OS X volume? Since you have tried using TDM to access the drive without success it's reasonable to assume your data may be lost. If you have an external hard drive you can use, then you could attempt to use file recovery software to see if your data are recoverable.
At this point it is premature to assume the drive is bad since your Windows volume is functional. If you have Windows software for reading Mac drives you may try accessing the OS X volume from Windows.
Basics of File Recovery
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten with recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

My internal hard drive isn't being recognized on my macbook pro but when I put the HD in my Mac Pro (desktop), the desktop computer recognizes the HD. When I insert the installer CD on my laptop, it also doesn't recognize my hard drive. Please help!

My internal hard drive isn't being recognized on my macbook pro but when I put the HD in my Mac Pro (desktop), the desktop computer recognizes the HD. When I insert the installer CD on my laptop, it also doesn't recognize my hard drive. Please help! Thank you!
I've also been getting an image with the folder and question mark. I've tried everything on the apple support page but it doesn't seem to work either.

Well, I tried all of your suggestions and they didn't work -- no surprise because I was trying to backup to my external c.d. disk. Duh! The application for the home is in the mail.

My PC computer was wiped (virus) including itunes. How do I transfer the many playlists and music to the new re-installed itunes?? Ipod is synced to old itunes. I have all original music files on external hard drive. Please help?

My PC computer was wiped (virus) including itunes. How do I transfer the many playlists and music on my ipod to the new re-installed itunes?? Ipod is synced to old itunes. I have all original music files on external hard drive. Please help?
New itunes is trying to wipe the ipod. But have many many playlists (many hours making) which I want to save. Any help would be appreciated.

If you want to just extract the playlists from your iPod, plug it in iTunes. When it appears under devices, right->click on it and choose Export Playlists. Save them to a location such as your desktop and them import them into your library once you have copied and imported all of your music back into it.
See this older post from another forum member Zevoneer covering the different methods and software available to assist you with the task of copying content from your iPod back to your PC and into iTunes.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2452022?start=0&tstart=0
B-rock

My hard disk crashed and I cannot find out how to "contact customer service" other than this forum. The website seems to just take me in a circle. I need to de-activate a license but cannot access the software due to a crashed hard drive. Please help.

My hard disk crashed and I cannot find out how to "contact customer service" other than this forum. The website seems to just take me in a circle. I need to de-activate a license but cannot access the software due to a crashed hard drive. Please help.

Hi Anthony ,
Here is the link to connect with Adobe Chat Support.
https://helpx.adobe.com/adobe-connect/kb/connect-chat-support.html
Hope your query gets resolved .
Regards
Sukrit Dhingra

I can't format my hard drive! Please help!

I had a lot of problems with my Mac mini - related to CD burning, CD reading, ejecting discs, hard drive partitioning, Mac OS X Leopard installation... so I can't tell I am surprised with my new problem, which is...
I need to completely *erase my internal hard drive* on my Mac mini. So I opened Disk Utility, selected hard drive and went to Erase tab - I did everything as instructed by the app - but the "Erase..." button is not active! It's *not going to allow me to erase my hard drive*.
Please does anyone know why? I need to reformat the hard drive and I just don't know how.
Thanks, I hope this problem will be solved soon.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
You can't reformat the drive you booted from, so in order to reformat the internal hard drive, you need to boot from the install disc that came with your mini (or a full retail MacOS install disk). That will provide you with an option to perform a full Erase and Install, performing the reformat and reinstallation in one go, or to open Disk Utility (in the Utilities menu) to perform a partitioning and reformat independently of a reinstall of MacOS.

G4 Powerbook Hard Drive Problem - PLEASE HELP!!

I have a powerbook G4 15 inch alu. It is running OSX version 10.4.11
My system profiler tells me I have a 74.5GB hard drive with 69.34GB used, but I had wiped the HD in September 2008 and reinstalled the OS and few other programmes and files, so this shouldn't be the case at all.
I have found that my the problem is with my Users folder - within Users, my user account (the main account, I have another account setup so my mum can use her iPhone) has 67GB used. But when I go into my user account (clicking through the icons, after double-clicking the MacintoshHD desktop icon), none of the folders within my account run to anwhere near 67GB. Totalled, they come to around 10-15GB at most. There's a good 50GB or so of hard drive that just seems to be missing.
I ran Drive Genius to repair permissions and that eliminated a couple of GB of this 'missing space' but no more than that. How can I go about finding and reaccessing my lost hard drive space?
FWIW - I reinstalled the OS in September because this was my University laptop and the result of 4-5 years use had resulted in loads of unwanted files. I saved the important stuff to discs and then reinstalled because it was much easier (I thought) than trying to find and get rid of all the unwanted stuff.
Please please help. At the moment, the computer is running fine if a little sluggishly (understandable given how much of the hard drive is 'used'), but I had a nasty experience earlier this year with my G5's hard drive crapping ut and really don't want to end up in the same boat with this one. I also need that extra space back so I can use some programmes I can't install or work with as things stand.
Many thanks for taking the time to read this and respond, I don't know enough about computers to have any clue as to how to proceed, so your help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

eww - will do and report back.
cornelius - apologies for the ambiguity there. Hope this clears things up a bit:
Users folder = get info says 69.34GB used
Double-click on the Users folder and I get three folders - the shared folder, my mum's account folder, and my account folder. My account is the main/master account.
The shared folder is empty. My mum's account folder has a couple GB used, mine has 66.5GB used.
I double-click on my account folder, and get icons/folders for Desktop, Library, Movies, etc (the usual stuff). When I do Get Info for each of these, the sum of GB used by them is about 10-15GB, nowhere near the 66GB supposedly used.
If it helps any, the File System is Journalled HFS+
S.M.A.R.T. status is verified, and Drive Genius, Disk Warrior, and Disk Utility aren't picking up anything bad other than the corrupted permissions I repaired prior to making this post. Repairing permissions only freed up a few GB more space, still got 50 missing GB to locate and free up. Or start saving for a replacement HD, but if this is a sign of a crash, I'd rather know now so I can plan for that.
Many thanks to both of you for responding so quickly - hopefully this problem is solvable.
It doesn't make sense, there's nothing else which could have used those 'missing' GB. And, as I only reinstalled everything in September I know there's no way the few programmes I've added and 10 or so CDs I've copied onto the G4 could account for the missing 50GB. My HD should have most of its space free - minus the space used by OSX, any OSX updates, and literally a handful of small apps and files.

I cannot install, only hard drive test. please help!

hi,
my iBook G4 crashed about 2 months ago and I got a new harddrive but it came with no operating system. I borrowed a friend's disks but everytime I put in disk 1 it will only go to Hard Drive Test and I cannot make it go to a section where I can actually reinstall. I have tried pressing command, c, command and c, and nothing. every time it goes to the Hard Drive Test and I have already run it and I passed.
the girl with the disks also has an iBook G4 and I do not understand what the problem is. she just bought it after I did.
I bought my laptop in the US but I am currently in Denmark and could not get Apple to actually fix my laptop but there should be no problem.
please help!

heychristaay,
As I asked in My Previous Reply;
"What OS was installed on your iBook before you replaced the HD?
Have you tried installing, using either the disks that shipped with the iBook, or a Full Retail Version of an OS, that you may have upgraded to? Your own disks?'
If the borrowed disks, do not look Exactly like THESE, they will not work to install Panther 10.3.x.
Additional info in these links.
Using OS X Install CDs/DVDs On Multiple Macs
What's A Computer Specific Mac OS X Release
Software Update, Upgrade: What's The Difference?
ali b

HT5958 We are 4 min in to editing a video on final cut pro. now my computer is freezing up. I have heard that this is a glitch from downloading. (beyond frustrated) is this from working from 2 external hard drives? PLEASE HELP! =)

PLEASE HELP. =)
we are about 4 minutes into editing a video for the first time on final cut pro x 10.1. everything was going very smoothly, but then it started freezing up. I had to do a hard reset and took it into the computer store that actually installed final cut for us. they suggested that our mac actually is not capable of keeping up with final cut. (I FIND THIS HARD TO BELIEVE!!) We work on an IMAC 2.66 ghz intel core 2 duo. 8 gb 1067 mhz ddr3. software os x 10.9.1 (hopefully that info will help for your suggestions) Because we have soooooooooooo many hours of high def video, we are working off of two external hard drives.... is this a problem?? or do we really need to upgrade our computer?????

Like Russ said, check Activity Monitor and see what else is running and turn off any Applications that aren't needed.
Turn off wi-fi or disconnect the wire that goes to the Internet
Turn off Background Rendering (if you see an orange line on the top of the time line that moves along and gets shorter while you're not doing anything that is a good sign that Background Rendering is running.
I haven't used 10.1 yest but on the previous version there was a small circle approximately in the middle of the screen, about 1/2-inch or 1 cm in diameter, and it would have a number inside. The number is the percent complete of what is hapening. When it is Rendering the percentage will be shown.
Basically, you probably need to free up resources.
For what it is worth, my previous Mac Pro was a 1,1 2.66 machine, also with 8GB of, I think, 667 memory, and it would process FCPX 10.0.9 okay. It did have an upgraded video card, though.

Macbook Pro Hard Drive Problem - Please Help

My macbook pro had a hard drive failure so I went out and bought a new hard drive and got it to work with the Mac OS, although 2 days later it crashed and now it is not being found when I use the disk utility (Cmd-R), I even ran a hardware test and showed no trouble found.
Should I return this hard drive and get another?
Or is there another problem that is occuring?
I have a Macbook Pro (mid 2012)
Thank You.

I just installed a new ribbon cable for the hard drive...Now I get a new error that is popping a message saying "2003-f", this happens when I try to go to the online recovery (CMD-R). I tried two different hard drives and still won't let me get to the utility.
Someone please help, my mini semester classes have started for my University, and I am stuck with no laptop.
Thank You.

Big problems after hard drive failure - Please help.

About 2 weeks ago, my Macbook seized, and was sent to Apple to repair.
It was found that the hard drive failed, and 2 weeks later I received my macbook back with a new hard drive.
Luckily I had backed up my home drive and was able to restore it using backup.
Now this is where my problems start.
My home drive is not the same name ( I think - I can'r remember too well what it was called previously )
I have my entire music library backed up to an external hard drive, and mounting this hard drive is a REAL pain in the *** now.
Sometime it loads up, sometime it just doesn;t get recognised, and I can put the USB connection in and out 10 times before it mounts.
I have verified the disk, and nothing is wrong.
Does anyone know what this problen could be ?
I have left the external hard drive in during the night, and after the macbook goes to sleep, I will go back to it in the morning, and the hard drive has been unmounted, and I repeat the exercise over again of trying to mount the drive.
Its so annoying, and I just dont know wht to do.
If anyone can help, I;d really appreciate it.
Griff

SMART status is a pretty reliable indicator of what is going on. You should back up your irreplaceable files as soon as possible.

I have updated my software on my Mac to OS X v 10.9.5 and now my mac doesnt read any external hard drives? please help

HI, I updated my software of my Mac Pro to OS X v 10.9.5, after I installed it, my MAC doesn't read any external hard drives. Not sure what to do now. Please help? Is there a way of updated drivers

I have no idea where to change that
Finder/Preferences/Sidebar and General for the Desktop.
Do they show in Disk Utility?

Moving all my stuff to external hard drive. Please help!

I just bought a western digital external hard drive with 500 gb since my g4 only has about 14gb left. Ive been noticing my computer has been slower when ive been using certain programs. How can I take off all my music and move it to the external hard drive safely? I have about 20+gb of music and I just thought it would help if I moved it.
Can someone please explain how I do this?

Assuming your music is in iTunes, this Apple note should explain it.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748

HP Pavilion p6653w hard drive crashed please help

HP Pavilion p6653w 1TB hard drive unknown if seagate. It completely crashed and all I get on start up is "hard drive failure is immenent please backup hard drive and have it replaced" then I pressed F2 to continue and then all I get is a DOS prompt. I only bought the computer in 2010. Is there anything I can do to save it?

Hi,
Are you able to type anything in the DOS prompt screen? Or is it just a black screen with a blinking cursor?
Note:
If you have HP Support Assistant installed on the computer(The Blue Question Mark) then open it ==> Complete all pending Updates & Tuneups==> Restart and Check. It may solve your problem
Although I am an HP employee, I am speaking for myself and not for HP.
**Click on “Kudos” Star if you think this reply helped** Or Mark it as "Solved" if issue got fixed.

T43. New hard drive. Please Help

Hi
I have a T43 2668 F3G, I am having so many problems with it I have decided it needs a new hard drive. The hard drive that was original from new is a Toshiba 80gb HDD2D09, to replace it I have a Samsung HM211HC, it says 120gb/5400rpm/8m/pata.
Firstly I need to know if this new hard drive will fit my T43?
Secondly I have re-installed my laptop before but how do I re-instal with a new hard drive?

Welcome to the forum!
That drive will fit in your T43, but will give the infamous "2010 error" on boot. I suggest getting a Fujitsu 120GB that will boot without triggering this warning.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
George
In daily use: R60F, R500F, T61, T410
Collecting dust: T60
Enjoying retirement: A31p, T42p,
Non-ThinkPads: Panasonic CF-31 & CF-52, HP 8760W
Starting Thursday, 08/14/2014 I'll be away from the forums until further notice. Please do NOT send private messages since I won't be able to read them. Thank you.

IBook Possible Hard Drive Corruption - Please help diagnose

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for