IMac hangs at startup - DU says "Volume can't be repaired"

Came back from holiday to find my 18month old work iMac wont boot up.
Opened Disc Utility in safe mode and says "Can't be repaired" and i can't get into the hdd
http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t190/yorkshirezen/B20CEAD0-77C2-4DFD-9600-282 6839EC450-6981-000004FDDAA4C24A.jpg
Works network won't accept Time Machine so I never got round to getting an external drive and setting it up. (Yeah - I know)
As a last resort, got a 2tb drive and am trying to create a new disc image. Been "reading whole disc" for 3 hours, not even a quarter of the way through.
REALLY not wanting to have to reinstall adobe again and get all by browsers back to how I like them.
IT seemed to suspect a software update issue - one of their macbooks failed exactly the same way last week. But can't find any chatter about it.
Any ideas?

pressing "c" before you hit the power button?
The C key will do nothing unless you have bootable media inserted:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1533
And:
For the best experience with startup keys, press the keys immediately after the startup tone plays.
If not using bootable media, for Lion or ML, boot holding Command + R or Command+Option+R.
For the OP:
I agree with RRFS - give Disk Warrior a try.

Similar Messages

Says "Volume can not be found" when I click my Ipod in Finder.

When I click on my Ipod in Finder, it says "volume can not be found for (my ipod)". And, my ipod doesn't display on the desktop. How can I fix this please??

tortor: Have a read of this article - iPod misisng on Mac Desktop and in iTunes
David
If any answer helps or solves your problem, please mark the post that helped accordingly, it provides an incentive for posters here to try and help and gives others a quicker way of finding solutions faster, thank you

I purchased a Mac book pro in oct 2011, I restarted it after updating and it,s stuck on apple symbol, I hit command R while restarting and clicked on disk utility. It says disk can't be repaired, apple wants $249 to tell me what's wrong. Please help!

I purchased a mac book pro in oct 2011, I restarted it after updating and it,s stuck on apple symbol, I hit command R while restarting and clicked on disk utility. It says disk can't be repaired, apple wants $249 to tell me what's wrong. Please help!

What Apple store told you they wanted $249.00 to tell what is wrong?
If this is a 13" Macbook Pro then that is the cost of the Extended Applecare warranty. As you are outside the 90 days of Free Phone Support then what Apple told you is that to get Phone Support you would either need to pay $45 per phone call or pay $249.00 for the Applecare extended warranty which comes with 3 years Free Phone Support from date of purchase.
Or you can take it to a Apple Genius Bar and have them look at it for Free.
Every Mac comes with 1 year warranty and includes only 90 days of phone support. You can buy the extended Applecare warranty anytime within the first year of ownership, IE until the 1 year warranty runs out.
I suggest you have your computer looked at by either an Apple Authorized Repair Center or Genius Bar and then before the 1 year warranty runs out buying the extended warranty

Disk Utility says disk can't be repaired but it is still working

Recently my MacBook Air had some performance problems--many programs crashing, etc. I ran Disk Utility and it came back saying the disk is corrupt and needs to be repaired. I rebooted and ran the Disk Utility repair function but Disk Utility said the volume could not be repaired and recommended that I back everything up, wipe the drive, and restore.
The thing is that my computer is now functioning normally. Disk Utility still says there's a huge and unrepairable problem, but aside from that, everything is working fine.
I have a time machine backup, so I could wipe and restore the drive fairly easily, but it would take some time to do it. I'm in the middle of some important things for work and so I'd rather put this off for a couple of weeks, if I can.
A few questions: (1) is there other software, aside from Disk Uility, that I should try to repair the disk? (2) How much of a ticking time-bomb do I have with this problem? Though reformatitng and restoring would be a hassle right now, it is less of a hassle than if my computer were to fail completely minutes before a presentation. So, if this is an urgent problem, then I'll probably address it now. But, if Apples have been known to soldier on for months despite error messages like what I've received, then I may take my chances and wait to reformat/restore until a more convenient time.
Any and all thoughts appreciated, thanks!

Thanks for these replies.
I've got regular time machine backups and just backed up some of my data by copying some key folders to an external drive. I'm bit paranoid about backup integrity and would ideally like to do another full backup to a different drive using a system other than time machine, in the event that something goes wrong with the time machine backup. Any recommendations on good and affordable backup software to do a backup of my TM backup?
One other question: I seem to encounter problems like this pretty frequently. I'd say once a year or so, my drive fails completely or gets near enough to failing that I have to wipe and restore. (I've never had a TM backup fail to work, though the last go around there were some hiccups which has led to my backup paranoia.) I've had this happen on multiple computers, so I'm becoming pretty convinced that the problem lies somewhere in my data. Is it possible (even likely) that there's something in my data causing this recurring problem? If so, is there anything I might be able to do to try and pinpoint and address this problem? I'd love to go one year without having to wipe/restore my machine!
For a while I thought I just had bad luck. But I think this is like the 4th or 5th time this has happened in the past 4 years and every time, I'm restoring from a backup, so I come back with the same data. It's the one constant since I've had 3 different machines over this same time period.

ITunes Hangs at Startup & when Idle. Can anyone relate?

I am using iTunes 7.4.2 for Mac. For this entire year — ever since I replaced my dead Jaguar drive and moved my library to a clean install of OS 10.3.9 on a new hard drive, iTunes just won't function properly. All those updates that have been loaded via Software Update have done nothing to fix the issue. Neither has installing a clean copy of the latest QuickTime. The scenario is always the same: I click the icon in the doc, iTunes begins loading the library. It completes the library as per the status bar, and then NOTHING. No application window pops up — just a spinning beach ball and the iTunes application title in the menu bar.
Because of this problem, my only way of using iTunes is to reboot my machine and IMMEDIATELY click the iTunes icon in the doc before I touch anything else. If I use any other app before I launch iTunes, iTunes will not complete startup.
Once iTunes hangs, the computer will not even reboot unless I force-quit the stalled iTunes app, which is "not responding."
Oh, and even when I do get the iTunes app to come up correctly, if I let it go idle or switch to another app for more than, say, five minutes or so, upon return to my desk or upon switching back from whatever application I have subsequently loaded, I am guaranteed to find iTunes frozen with nothing but a spinning beach ball. The library is still visible in the application window, but there is no means to access it — without force-quitting and rebooting my Mac AGAIN.
Basically, to use iTunes at all, I have to reboot my machine, launch it right away, finish what I am doing in iTunes and then close it down immediately so that it will not have the opportunity to hang in the background.
I do not receive any error message or dialog by which to even Google the problem. Meanwhile, even checking the Consule presents a problem because the last iTunes crash entry is dated back in March '07! Is it possible that the OS doesn't even realize the application is crashing — or is there another place I should be looking for clues?
The one iTunes crash log entry I have says that thread 9 has crashed. At the top, it also reads:
Exception: EXCBADACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERNINVALIDADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x096b2000
So far I've verified/repaired disk permissions many, many times (from the boot CD). I also attempted to download from Apple a fresh copy of the iTunes installer (but it wouldn't launch due to an error).
I've tried searching the Web, meanwhile, and I have yet to come cross anything related to what I'm experiencing. Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot it? I hail from the Mac classic days — all the way back to the Apple IIe — and don't have firm grasp of UNIX troubleshooting methods. For this reason, any help or tips would be MUCH appreciated.
Thanks, all!

It turns out I might have a solution for this problem. I haven't had enough time to determine whether what I am about to describe solved the second half of the problem I reported wherein iTunes, if it sits too long in the background or idle, will crash. But it HAS solved the issue wherein I am forced to reboot the computer in order to get the iTunes application window to launch after the "loading library" status bar completes.
I did a lot of things over the past few months to troubleshoot: repairing permissions, sifting through crash log files, deleting iTunes preferences, downloading and running the shareware OS X maintenance program called Cocktail, reinstalling QuickTime, etc. But what turned out to be the fix was to turn off "search for shared libraries" in the "Sharing" panel of iTunes preferences. Apparently what was happening after my personal iTunes library loaded was that iTunes began a "silent search" for other iTunes libraries on the network, and when it couldn't find them the application eventually quit responding (with nothing but the dreaded spinning beach ball).
For reasons that only Apple's software developers know for sure, iTunes does not, apparently, limit the amount of time that the iTunes application is provided to hunt for non-local iTunes libraries. Nor did Apple developers, apparently, think to provide an on-screen dialog to offer the option to cancel the program's search for shared iTunes libraries. So essentially iTunes provides no feedback as to what the spinning beach ball represents — a nonstop search for other shared libraries on the network.
I hope what worked for me works for you and anyone else who, like me, has experienced this issue and are frustrated by all the searches on the Internet that turn up nothing. Best of luck!

Intel iMac hangs at startup on white screen, no logo

Suddenly, my Intel iMac won't boot. When I turn it on, it plays the tone and hangs forever at the white lit screen. I hear the CD-ROM drive spin up, but I can't get it to boot from a CD, even if I hold down "C". I have Bootcamp installed dual-booting Vista SP1 (by default) and OS X Leopard. I can't make the boot menu appear, either.
I tried resetting the SMC as described in a troubleshooting article by unplugging everything, waiting, plugging back in the power and then the other peripherals (only network, keyboard, mouse, and a secondary display.) It had no effect.
Any suggestions, if only to narrow down what the problem might be?

mquander....did the new hard drive resolve the problem?
I have the exact same problem. It all started on a hot day, my iMac froze while just surfing the web. Only option was to power it down manually. After that the machine would not boot into OSX, it would get as far as the blue screen, but never come up with the login window. Then it started acting up and certain keyboard boot combinations would not work consistently. For example holding option down would only occasionally bring up the boot list, other times, it would just stay at a gray screen indefinitely.
Now I can't boot to anything, CD, internal hard drive, external hard drive. The gray screen comes up with no apple logo, eventually if I leave it, 10 minutes or so later it will reboot itself and just do the same thing.
I'd be curious to find out if the new hard drive resolved your problems.
Thanks
Chris

Disk Utility says "drive can't be repaired, disk and restore your backed up files."

My Mac Book Pro froze yesterday and I had to force restart it. It had been showing me messages that my hard drive disk was full for a while and I was in the middle of transferring files to my external hard drive and I accidentally put a huge large file from my external hard drive into the trash on my laptop which makes me wonder if that means I added more GB to a computer that was already very full. Anyway, after freezing I restarted it and the desktop wouldn't load properly. The desktop picture was there, but folders on desktop did not appear, finder bar was missing and the dock was acting super slow and nothing worked when clicked on. Then the next few attempts were around the same result and eventually became stuck on the apple logo, spinning gear and a progress bar that was not loading at all.
Here's what I've tried so far:
Safe mode- nothing happens
Command + R - I am unsure how to work this since I can't seem to find an internet connection when it prompts for one. None of the internet connections have much signal and my own information doesn't seem to load since the gear spins to find the internet connection name and password I typed to load it but can't seem to find it. Perhaps I have the wrong internet information, but I don't think so.
I tried Command + S to use in single user mode and type in a command to help fix the drive, BUT, even though the black screen and white lettering mode did show up, it remained in a place where I was not allowed to type anything and the last thing written at the bottom of the screen was something about set up for bluetooth, I think. I tried this twice and both times it stopped in the same place and I could not type a command.
Disk Utility using installation dvd to verify and repair disk. Verify says disk needs repair and then repair has some red colored phrases: Invalid volume file count. (It should be 786374 instead of 786274) Incorrect number of thread records. And there was another problem listed but I do not remember it. Then, near the end of repairing it says: "Disk Utility stopped repairing Macintosh HD." It tells me it couldn't repair the disk and that I should back up as many of my files as possible, reformat the disk and restore backed up files.
That would be fine and dandy, but I have no idea how to back up my files and do all this. I have no idea how to exactly get the data off my hard drive. If someone does, please list a step by step guide for me on how to do so.
I have an external hard drive and I tried plugging in and selecting the hard drive and making a "New Image" to copy to the external hard drive destination, but it just stops a few seconds into it and tells me there is an input/output error. I tried read only, read/write only, compressed options for making a copy and all yield the same result.
In Disk Utility, I believe I have a partition -the Macintosh HD. I have listed on the left hand side: 320.07 GB Hitachi HTSS45.....etc. and below it in non-bolded, grey lettering it says "Macintosh HD."
The Hitachi, when clicked upon, shows the S.M.A.R.T. status as Verified and the Macintosh HD doesn't show much in details except for "Not mounted."
At one point, the Macintosh HD was in bold lettering and seemed to be mounted for a few minutes. When that happened, I was able to see the details reading: Mount Point: /Volumes/Macintosh HD, Capacity: 319.73 GB, Available: 11.92 GB, Used: 307.81 GB, etc.
I'm getting nervous to keep turning on and off the computer on force start and shut downs, especially since I have been reading up that the longer the computer is on, the more the hard drive is in use and the more chance for it to start deleting or overwriting my files. Is this true?
It's not mounted anymore since it was momentarily mounted. I just want to get my files off the disk and save them to my external hard drive. That is my main goal right now. What can I do?
Thank you in advance for your help!

If you want to preserve the data on the boot drive, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data, you can skip this step.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is unable to fully boot. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
1. Boot into Recovery (command-R at startup) or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) Launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in the support article linked below, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.”
How to back up and restore your files
2. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, boot the non-working Mac in target disk mode by holding down the key combination command-T at the startup chime. Connect the two Macs with a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable. The internal drive of the machine running in target mode will mount as an external drive on the other machine. Copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
How to use and troubleshoot FireWire target disk mode
3. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.

IMac internal hard drive won't mount/can't be repaired

hi there,
my 11yo son has been using my older imac. it's a 24" 2.4ghz imac with a 500gb drive from around 2007, i think. anyway, yesterday he said it was acting funny, he restarted it and it hung on the grey screen with the logo.
i looked at it more closely today and tried restarting in safe mode, tried the PRAM thing, and got no where. i then booted from the 10.6 dvd that i have. i ran disk utility and tried verifying and repairing it. it said there was a missing thread record (id = 92600) and an invalid sibling link. it tried to rebuild catalog b-tree.
then it said that disk utility can't repair the disk. i tried to re-install the system software, but disk utility couldn't mount it.
the system profiler can see the disk, but as i mentioned, i can't get it to mount and am sort of at a loss here. thought? ideas?
thanks in advance,
emily

Your HD seems to have crashed. I would recommend running Apple Hardware test 3x in Extended Mode, if you get error codes as I supsect this will confirm the problem. If you aren't familiar with AHT you will need the original install discs that shipped with the computer and you can find instructions at:
support.apple.com/kb/ht1509
If it errors your next step is taking it in for repair at your local Apple Store or AASP.

Hfs checked. volume can not be repaired

Ok. So ive done some research. Gone bold and reinstalled tiger 10.4 downgraded from snow leapord to reinstall as i dont have a snow leapord start up
i thought this would solve my issues. But hasnt. Without forking a 100 quid on disk warrior how do u fix a corrupt drive. I think it has serious directory issues. I thought reinstalling os x woild wipe the drive and start from fresh.
I might have corrupt mp3 files that caused the issue in the first place.
My first aim is to fix the hd
Your feedback is more than welcome

Ok. So ive done some research. Gone bold and reinstalled tiger 10.4 downgraded from snow leapord to reinstall as i dont have a snow leapord start up
i thought this would solve my issues. But hasnt. Without forking a 100 quid on disk warrior how do u fix a corrupt drive. I think it has serious directory issues. I thought reinstalling os x woild wipe the drive and start from fresh.
I might have corrupt mp3 files that caused the issue in the first place.
My first aim is to fix the hd
Your feedback is more than welcome

Mac Pro 3,1 (early 2008) RAID card hangs at startup

Hello,
I have a Mac Pro 2.8Ghz Quad Core (early 2008) with 10GB RAM and 512MB VRAM.
I have noticed that the Mac Pro RAID card hangs at startup for RAID volumes.
It seems to start okay with a single boot drive (have used both WD Raptor 150GB 10K and Seagate 'factory' 320GB 7200rpm as boot drives...)
But the RAID 0 array using two factory 1TB WD 7200rpm is what seems to hang at startup. I have run Disk Warrior, Disk Utility and RAID Utility and found no major errors...
Any suggestions? Have already replaced the RAID Card battery with OEM part.
Thanks!

Say good-bye to the Apple Pro RAID card. It started its life as a $999 card to support SAS/SCSI and/or RAID5.
Then the problems with 2.5TB drives, battery, and does it really do something and add to your system.
I would use SoftRAID and create a 3-drive mirror of 2TB drives instead.
And an SSD for the system.
Seems like those are some very old drives.
I have a lot of the 150GB 10K VR drives, and some 300GB along with older 74GB and a couple of the Raptor series. Loud and while solid I would use for spare boot drives, clone only.
Backup your data, pull the RAID card, and restore to the drives. And clone the system onto a 250GB $109 SSD. $139 buys a 400MB/sec writes and 800MB/sec reads Samsung PCIe-SSD XP941. None of my SCSI 15K drives would come close.

IMac (Mid 2007) hangs at startup before the Apple logo comes up

I have a 20" 7,1 iMac (Mid 2007) with Lion installed on it that hangs at startup before the Apple logo even comes up. The machine is on a APC surge protector, but not on a UPS. We had a few power outages yesterday that were caused by high winds. When I came home the machine was stuck at a white screen. When I tried cycling the power it got stuck at the initial white screen. Since then I have tried the following, with no luck:
- booting in safe mode
- booting in verbose mode
- booting into single user mode
- booting into hardware test mode
- booting in recovery mode
- booting from the original DVDs
In all cases it just hangs at the initial white screen. About the only thing that has worked is reseting the PRAM and NVRAM. Which definitly reset the speaker volume and screen brightness, but did not get it to boot any further.
Oh, and I should note that I have unplugged all external devices and switch back to the orginal (usb) keyboard and mouse.
Any thoughts on what the issue might be? I have done a number of searches, but I did not find much info about machines hanging so early in the boot process.
Thanks in advance.

Good work so far, about the only thing left to try is...
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

My external hard drive is 'seen' by my iMac and I can go into the Finder and open files and folders. I am using the hard drive for Time Machine back up. However Time Machine says it can't find the drive. Same thing has happened with Final Cut Express.

My new LaCie external hard drive is 'seen' by my iMac and I can go into the Finder and open files and folders. I am using the hard drive for Time Machine back up. However Time Machine says it can't find the drive.
The same thing happened recently between Final Cut Express and my other LaCie external hard drive used as the Scratch disk. It fixed itself.
I've run out of ideas. Help would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

have you done some searches on FCPx and time machine? Is there a known issue with using a TM drive with FCPx? dunno but ...wait...I'll take 60 sec for you cause I'm just that kind of guy.... google...." fcpx time machine problem" Frist page link
http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/fcpx-bug-best-practices-for-using-external-hard- drives-and-final-cut-pro-x/
You cannot have time machine backups on your hard drive if you intend to use it in FCPX.
booya!

I am a newbie...and I think I did a big no-no as my Ipad isn't working. I synced it to a second computer at work which is a new Imac after already syncing to my pc at home with Itunes. Now it says it can't restore and can't get it to open. HELP!

I am a newbie...and I think I did a big no-no as my Ipad isn't working. I synced it to a second computer at work which is a new Imac after already syncing to my pc at home with Itunes. Now it says it can't restore and can't get it to open, getting error messages but can't fix myself. Can anyone help??

iPad can connect only in one iTunes Library. If you want to connect it to a iTunes Library then you have to erase it. You can erase it from iTunes. Make sure you iPad doesn't have a password, or if it has a password make sure that you connect to the computer and enter the password of your iPad

I am trying to install Lion on my imac and it says it can't make a recovery disk

I am trying to install lion and receive a message saying it can't make a recovery disk. I am using a 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac. I do have bootcamp on it, but was never able to install Windows.

What happens when Lion installs is it creates a Lion Recovery Partition at the very bottom area of the drive, this is used to Command R boot into and perform Disk Utility Repairs and reinstall Lion from Apple's servers much like a 10.6 disk will.
So when you ran the Lion installer, it couldn't create this small partiiton, either because the GUID partition table (the map of your paartitions on the drive) is borked or there is data all the way to the bottom of the drive or OS X thinks there is.
You set up the bootcamp parittion, so run that and delete the Bootcamp partition as your not using it or Windows, once it's finished reboot and try installing Lion again.
I should warn you, Lion will not run your Rosetta based software or hardware drivers for external hardware, you may have to purchase all new versions. Not only that, hardware drivers may not be available for 10.7 thus rendering your third party printers, scanners etc useless.
Before you install Lion, you should consult this web page
http://roaringapps.com/apps:table
to see if your current programs will break and when to expect a new version (likely paid)
Also you shoudl check your hardware and the makers site if there is a 10.7 compatible driver/software for them.
And once you think your ready to go to Lion, get a blank external powered drive and a free/donationware copy of Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your present (non-Filevault) 10.6 boot drive to the external drive.
Later if 10.7 doesn't work for you, simply hold the option key and boot off the 10.6 clone, use Disk Utility to Erase the entire drive (the whole drive!) and reverse clone 10.6 back onto the internal drive.
http://www.bombich.com/get_ready_for_lion.html

Every time I fire up my iMac a window pops up saying "Mount notification quit unexpectedly" and it gives me the option to either "Reopen" it or click OK, which gets rid of it. What is this please and how can i stop it?

Every time I fire up my iMac a window pops up saying "Mount notification quit unexpectedly" and it gives me the option to either "Reopen" it or click OK, which gets rid of it. What is this please and how can i stop it?

Hopefully this will help you. Try placing your iPad in recovery mode again. You may have to try this a few times.
iOS: Unable to update or restore

IMac hangs at startup - DU says "Volume can't be repaired"

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for