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.

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  • "Extra" Internal Hard Drives won't mount - swap, /, and /home work.

    Hello All,
    *** I'm updating my post finally. Sorry it's so long, I'm not entirely sure what is and isn't relevant.
    *** Also I think it's a mix up with RAID causing the issue, as I'll address below, but in case I'm wrong I wanted to include the other information that came to mind before I noticed the RAID issue (because the RAID issue doesn't make a lot of sense to me).
    First off, I'm running Arch64 and KDE4 with my system up to date. Also I have Gamin installed and not FAM. I use ReiserFS on all of my partitions and drives.
    I have six hard drives in my computer, all of which are SATA drives. One is a WD 150GB Raptor with my swap, /, and /home partitions on it, the other five are for extra storage on what I call my media-server (they mount to /media/media-server/1 ,2 ,and so on). They only have one partition each. Of those five the first (/media/media-server/1) is a WD 1TB drive, the other four are WD 500GB drives of identical model.
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    On top of that the 1TB drive mounts just fine. But the four 500GB drives will not mount at all. They show up in Dolphin, Disk Utility, KwikDisk, KDiskFree, and Partition Manager. However, their size is not shown and/or marked N/A, except in Partition Manager, where their size is shown. They are not seen by 'df'.
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    udev 10M 308K 9.7M 4% /dev
    /dev/sda2 25G 7.7G 17G 32% /
    none 4.0G 0 4.0G 0% /dev/shm
    /dev/sda3 112G 90G 22G 81% /home
    /dev/sdb1 932G 919G 13G 99% /media/media-server/1
    *** As for removable media, it's being a bit odd. When I first wrote this post removable media, specifically USB flash drives and SD media cards mounted fine. A while after that they'd show up in Device Notifier, but wouldn't mount. Just a little while ago they wouldn't show up in Device Notifier and wouldn't mount. Now they show up fine and mount fine again. This is possibly unrelated, I'm not sure.
    Depending on what method I try to mount my hard drives I either get an 'only root can mount that' error or else a HAL drive busy or already mounted error, followed by a 'drive is not mounted' error when I use umount to double check.
    *** Permissions are working better now , Dolphin isn't giving me the 'only root can mount' errors anymore. Still can't mount the drives though.
    All of this output is from when the drives are listed in /etc/fstab:
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    mount /dev/sdf1
    mount: only root can mount /dev/sdf1 on /media/media-server/5
    sudo mount /dev/sdf1
    mount: /dev/sdf1 already mounted or /media/media-server/5 busy
    umount /dev/sdf1
    umount: /dev/sdf1 is not mounted (according to mtab)
    sudo umount /dev/sdf1
    umount: /dev/sdf1: not mounted
    Dolphin output:
    An error occurred while accessing 'MediaServer5', the system responded: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.PermissionDenied: Device /dev/sdf1 is listed in /etc/fstab. Refusing to mount.
    Device Notifier output (pops up when I try to mount the drives in Dolphin):
    org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.PermissionDenied: Device /dev/sdf1 is listed in /etc/fstab. Refusing to mount.
    Partition Manager:
    The file system on partition /dev/sdf1 could not be mounted.
    Details
    ==========================================================================================
    Command: mount -v /dev/sdf1 /media/media-server/5
    ==========================================================================================
    mount: /dev/sdf1 already mounted or /media/media-server/5 busy
    mount: you didn't specify a filesystem type for /dev/sdf1
    I will try type reiserfs
    At boot, when the daemons are starting I get:
    mount: /dev/sdc1 already mounted or /media/media-server/2 busy
    mount: /dev/sdd1 already mounted or /media/media-server/3 busy
    mount: /dev/sde1 already mounted or /media/media-server/4 busy
    mount: /dev/sdf1 already mounted or /media/media-server/5 busy
    This is from when the drives are not listed in /etc/fstab:
    Dolphin output:
    An error occurred while accessing 'MediaServer5', the system responded: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.InterfaceLocked: The enclosing drive for the volume is locked
    Device Notifier output (pops up when I try to mount the drives in Dolphin):
    An error occurred while accessing 'MediaServer5', the system responded: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.InterfaceLocked: The enclosing drive for the volume is locked
    I have tried listing (with the UUID method and the /dev method) and not listing the drives in /etc/fstab, and I have 'hal' and 'dbus' daemons in /etc/rc.conf (and I've tried using only the hal daemon and not the dbus in /etc/rc.conf). I've also tried not listing 'hal', 'dbus', and 'kdm' and only booting to terminal and then mounting the drives manually, that doesn't work either.
    Here is my /etc/fstab (back to using UUID's):
    # /etc/fstab: static file system information
    # <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
    none /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
    none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
    UUID=699cdd5e-3f4a-4b85-8dcb-5d00c00c94a9 swap swap defaults 0 0
    UUID=ce94e7a3-3e07-41e5-90d7-1116e5da3121 / reiserfs defaults 0 0
    UUID=a1dce435-df90-4f0d-892c-61ff3ea0c8d1 /home reiserfs defaults 0 0
    ## Media-Server
    # media-server/1
    UUID=81998a75-f887-4a35-b3fa-e159190f25a3 /media/media-server/1 reiserfs defaults 0 0
    #/dev/sdb1 /media/media-server/1 reiserfs defaults 0 0
    # media-server/2
    UUID=8cdd114a-b190-44f6-9240-1910a5d048f7 /media/media-server/2 reiserfs defaults 0 0
    #/dev/sdc1 /media/media-server/2 reiserfs defaults 0 0
    # media-server/3
    UUID=59164593-b56d-4c49-8837-277b3c392dfb /media/media-server/3 reiserfs defaults 0 0
    #/dev/sdd1 /media/media-server/3 reiserfs defaults 0 0
    # media-server/4
    UUID=ba6007bd-1e36-431c-85f4-857c83845c86 /media/media-server/4 reiserfs defaults 0 0
    #/dev/sde1 /media/media-server/4 reiserfs defaults 0 0
    # media-server/5
    UUID=6fab5364-1acb-4ba3-9f83-bb171a6d398a /media/media-server/5 reiserfs defaults 0 0
    #/dev/sdf1 /media/media-server/5 reiserfs defaults 0 0
    ## VirtualBox USB
    none /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto,busgid=108,busmode=0775,devgid=108,devmode=0664 0 0
    Here's the daemons line from /etc/rc.conf:
    DAEMONS=(syslog-ng !dbus hal network netfs crond wicd openntpd sshd avahi-daemon avahi-dnsconfd samba alsa mysqld lircd mythbackend !mpd !sensors !sensord !fancontrol cups keytouch kdm)
    Also, /etc/mtab because only the first media-server drive is listed in it (the one that does mount):
    proc /proc proc rw,relatime 0 0
    sys /sys sysfs rw,relatime 0 0
    udev /dev devtmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,size=10240k,nr_inodes=1014438,mode=755 0 0
    /dev/sda2 / reiserfs rw,relatime 0 0
    fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,relatime 0 0
    none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
    none /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
    /dev/sda3 /home reiserfs rw 0 0
    /dev/sdb1 /media/media-server/1 reiserfs rw 0 0
    none /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw,busgid=108,busmode=0775,devgid=108,devmode=0664 0 0
    I attempted to add the other drives to /etc/mtab but they get overwritten upon a reboot. I've drived mounting the drives from konsole and dolphin.
    All my drives used to work. At one point I had Chakra installed and had this issue after an update, however after thinking about it the problem may have actually started after the power flashed on and off here. I couldn't fix it so I installed Arch64 and KDE4 (the normal KDE from the Arch repos, not KDEMod) thinking maybe it was a Chakra specific issue. That fixed it at the time. It later happened on my Arch install. I reinstalled Arch again and the issue was gone. However the issue is back. Again I think it was after a power outage/flash but it was also after an update that included a kernel update. Best I can remember each time it's happened has been after a kernel update and power flash. So I can't say for sure which is the cause.
    Oddly though if I boot from a live disc (in my case a Chakra Live DVD) I can mount and access all of the drives just fine.
    Another oddity, is that in 'Disk Utility' (palimpsest) there is a 1.5TB RAID-5 array listed. The only thing I can figure is that that is what is making the individual drives busy.
    Here's a screenshot from Disk Utility of the RAID-5 array:
    http://theavataroftime.com/sites/defaul … enshot.png
    After talking to a friend I remembered that quite a while back (over a year) we had messed around trying to setup a RAID array and dual boot WindowsXP. However, we never could get it working quite right, not even just in Linux without dual booting. I really can't say what all we did/tried, it's been too long. I realize that's not much help but...
    Anyway I'm pretty certain I deleted everything RAID related at the time and turned it off. However I must be mistaken or I guess the array wouldn't be showing up.
    I apologize, I really know nothing about RAID or RAID controllers. I do have an onboard RAID controller, but it's not a full fledged hardware RAID controller. It's onboard, but doesn't have it's on proccessor like good hardware RAID would. Or that's the way I understand it. Perhaps 'hybrid' is the proper term?
    I checked in BIOS and my onboard RAID controller is off.
    I take it that my attempts at setting up a RAID array before are still in the MBR (on that note I use GRUB and have never used LILO)? That's the only place I can think of that any leftover RAID configurations wouldn't have been wiped during reinstalling and reformatting the drives and partitions? I've reformatted my drives completely and changed the size of swap, /, and /home on several occasions since then, as well as formatting the media-server drives to ReiserFS (not sure what FS I was using when trying to setup RAID before. Perhaps FAT32 since I was trying to dual boot).
    I clicked the stop array button in Disk utility, and then all the options except start array went away. Then I clicked start, and instead of my four media-server drives being listed at the side of Dolphin there was one 1.4TB drive. I rebooted and now it's back to the 4 500GB media-server drives.
    I'm worried about losing a bunch of data, so I'm hesitant to start experimenting. How should I go about getting rid of the remnants of the RAID array safely?
    Also here's a screenshot of MediaServer5 from Disk Utility. The other 500GB drives have the same info minus the names and labels of course:
    http://theavataroftime.com/sites/defaul … enshot.png
    *** I had forgotten about dmesg output. It's quite long so instead of copying it, here's a link to it:
    http://theavataroftime.com/sites/defaul … /dmesg.txt
    Thanks for advice on the matter.
    Last edited by The Avatar of Time (2010-10-07 08:27:06)

    Thanks for the reply.
    Here is my output from the commands you suggested:
    fuser -v -m /media/media-server/2
    USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
    /media/media-server/2:
    root kernel mount /
    theavataroftime 2518 fr.e. startkde
    theavataroftime 2561 Frce. gpg-agent
    theavataroftime 2575 .rce. dbus-launch
    theavataroftime 2576 .rce. dbus-daemon
    theavataroftime 2584 Fr.e. kdeinit4
    theavataroftime 2585 Fr.e. klauncher
    theavataroftime 2587 fr.e. kded4
    theavataroftime 2592 .r.e. kglobalaccel
    theavataroftime 2605 .r.e. kwrapper4
    theavataroftime 2613 Fr.e. ksmserver
    theavataroftime 2622 .r.e. kwin
    theavataroftime 2656 fr.e. knotify4
    theavataroftime 2658 fr.e. plasma-desktop
    theavataroftime 2662 .rce. kuiserver
    theavataroftime 2665 .r.e. akonadi_control
    theavataroftime 2667 .r.e. akonadiserver
    theavataroftime 2670 Fr.e. mysqld
    theavataroftime 2714 .r.e. akonadi_contact
    theavataroftime 2715 .r.e. akonadi_contact
    theavataroftime 2716 .r.e. akonadi_ical_re
    theavataroftime 2717 .r.e. akonadi_ical_re
    theavataroftime 2718 .r.e. akonadi_maildir
    theavataroftime 2719 .r.e. akonadi_maildis
    theavataroftime 2720 .r.e. akonadi_nepomuk
    theavataroftime 2721 .r.e. akonadi_vcard_r
    theavataroftime 2739 .r.e. nepomukserver
    theavataroftime 2741 .r.e. nepomukservices
    theavataroftime 2747 .r.e. kaccess
    theavataroftime 2759 fr.e. krunner
    theavataroftime 2765 Fr.e. virtuoso-t
    theavataroftime 2772 Fr.e. kio_http_cache_
    theavataroftime 2774 .r.e. kmix
    theavataroftime 2782 Fr.e. konsole
    theavataroftime 2785 .r.e. kjots
    theavataroftime 2790 .r.e. bash
    theavataroftime 2807 .r.e. kalarm
    theavataroftime 2809 fr.e. kopete
    theavataroftime 2812 .r.e. polkit-kde-auth
    theavataroftime 2815 .r.e. kwin
    theavataroftime 2821 .r.e. dolphin
    theavataroftime 2822 Fr.e. firefox
    theavataroftime 2834 .r.e. kwalletd
    theavataroftime 2839 .r.e. kwalletmanager
    theavataroftime 2842 Frce. gconfd-2
    theavataroftime 2850 .r.e. python
    theavataroftime 2854 .rce. wicd-client
    theavataroftime 2858 .r.e. klipper
    theavataroftime 2861 .r.e. nepomukservices
    theavataroftime 2862 .r.e. nepomukservices
    theavataroftime 2865 .r.e. nepomukservices
    theavataroftime 2867 .r.e. nepomukservices
    theavataroftime 2868 .r.e. nepomukservices
    theavataroftime 2869 .r.e. nepomukservices
    theavataroftime 2870 .r.e. nepomukservices
    theavataroftime 2871 .r.e. korgac
    theavataroftime 2883 fr.e. kmozillahelper
    theavataroftime 2979 .r.e. amarokapp
    theavataroftime 2989 .r.e. plugin-containe
    theavataroftime 3010 .r.e. npviewer.bin
    theavataroftime 3048 Fr.e. kdeinit
    theavataroftime 3051 Fr.e. dcopserver
    theavataroftime 3053 Fr.e. klauncher
    theavataroftime 3055 fr.e. kded
    theavataroftime 3075 .r.e. ruby
    theavataroftime 3081 fr.e. kio_file
    theavataroftime 15311 .r.e. kio_http
    theavataroftime 15312 .r.e. kio_http
    theavataroftime 15313 .r.e. kio_http
    theavataroftime 15314 .r.e. kio_http
    theavataroftime 15315 .r.e. kio_http
    theavataroftime 15316 .r.e. kio_http
    fuser -v -m /dev/sdb1
    USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
    /dev/sdb1: root kernel mount /media/media-server/1
    I ran 'fsck.reiserfs --check' one /dev/sdf1, which is the /media/media-server/5 hard drive.
    Here are the results:
    fsck.reiserfs --check /dev/sdf1
    reiserfsck 3.6.21 (2009 www.namesys.com)
    ** If you are using the latest reiserfsprogs and it fails **
    ** please email bug reports to [email protected], **
    ** providing as much information as possible -- your **
    ** hardware, kernel, patches, settings, all reiserfsck **
    ** messages (including version), the reiserfsck logfile, **
    ** check the syslog file for any related information. **
    ** If you would like advice on using this program, support **
    ** is available for $25 at www.namesys.com/support.html. **
    Will read-only check consistency of the filesystem on /dev/sdf1
    Will put log info to 'stdout'
    Do you want to run this program?[N/Yes] (note need to type Yes if you do):Yes
    reiserfsck --check started at Mon Sep 27 19:21:20 2010
    Replaying journal: Done.
    Reiserfs journal '/dev/sdf1' in blocks [18..8211]: 0 transactions replayed
    Checking internal tree.. finished
    Comparing bitmaps..finished
    Checking Semantic tree:
    finished
    No corruptions found
    There are on the filesystem:
    Leaves 77863
    Internal nodes 474
    Directories 2856
    Other files 18718
    Data block pointers 77184421 (0 of them are zero)
    Safe links 0
    reiserfsck finished at Mon Sep 27 19:29:03 2010
    Also I just used Partition Manager to check /media/media-server/5 as well.
    Check and repair partition '/dev/sdf1' (465.76 GiB, reiser)
    Job: Check file system on partition '/dev/sdf1'
    Command: fsck.reiserfs --fix-fixable -q -y /dev/sdf1
    reiserfsck 3.6.21 (2009 www.namesys.com)
    ** If you are using the latest reiserfsprogs and it fails **
    ** please email bug reports to [email protected], **
    ** providing as much information as possible -- your **
    ** hardware, kernel, patches, settings, all reiserfsck **
    ** messages (including version), the reiserfsck logfile, **
    ** check the syslog file for any related information. **
    ** If you would like advice on using this program, support **
    ** is available for $25 at www.namesys.com/support.html. **
    Will check consistency of the filesystem on /dev/sdf1
    and will fix what can be fixed without --rebuild-tree
    Will put log info to 'stdout'
    reiserfsck --fix-fixable started at Wed Oct 6 22:29:02 2010
    Replaying journal: Replaying journal: Done.
    Reiserfs journal '/dev/sdf1' in blocks [18..8211]: 0 transactions replayed
    Checking internal tree..
    ***I'm cutting most of this out, it's insanely long: \|/-\|/-\|finished
    Comparing bitmaps..Bad nodes were found, Semantic pass skipped
    3 found corruptions can be fixed only when running with --rebuild-tree
    reiserfsck finished at Wed Oct 6 22:36:43 2010
    block 32772: The level of the node (48287) is not correct, (1) expected
    the problem in the internal node occured (32772), whole subtree is skipped
    block 262149: The level of the node (28423) is not correct, (1) expected
    the problem in the internal node occured (262149), whole subtree is skipped
    block 11326: The level of the node (63701) is not correct, (1) expected
    the problem in the internal node occured (11326), whole subtree is skipped
    vpf-10630: The on-disk and the correct bitmaps differs. Will be fixed later.
    Check file system on partition '/dev/sdf1': Error
    Check and repair partition '/dev/sdf1' (465.76 GiB, reiser): Error
    Thanks for the advice.
    Last edited by The Avatar of Time (2010-10-07 05:53:05)

  • Internal hard drive won't mount

    First off, thanks in advance to any who offer help with my frustrating problem.
    It would appear that my primary drive has come unmounted and will not remount. Yesterday I went to upgrade Corel Painter. The computer hung up when I launched the installer so I walked away from it for a few hours. Upon returning I found a screen telling me I had to restart. After the first restart I was looking at a Darwin command prompt (I don't know Unix, so this didn't help!). I restarted again and got the grey apple screen and a blue screen for a long time. I finally booted up from the OS X disc.
    After unintentionally installing Tiger on my secondary internal drive I ran Disk Utility. My primary drive shows up in the left hand window, but greyed out. When I verify or repair the disk it tells me it passed verification and does not need to be repaired. When I try to mount the disk, it says "the disk cannot be mounted"
    Looking at the additional info gives me this:
    Name : Hard Drive
    Type : Volume
    Disk Identifier : disk0s2
    Mount Point : Not mounted
    File System : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    Connection Bus : ATA
    Partition Type : Apple_HFS
    Device Tree : mac-io/ata-4@1f000/@0:2
    Writable : Yes
    Universal Unique Identifier : 0D681EDE-DA84-3486-AC05-16F7794AC9BA
    Capacity : 28.0 GB (30,020,235,264 Bytes)
    Owners Enabled : No
    Can Turn Owners Off : Yes
    Can Be Formatted : Yes
    Bootable : Yes
    Supports Journaling : Yes
    Journaled : No
    S.M.A.R.T. Status : Verified
    Disk Number : 0
    Partition Number : 2
    I just don't understand what happened. This is the first trouble I've had since using OS X so I am lost in how to troubleshoot it. Any input would be great. I am a dummy and haven't backed up my drive in over 6 months so I am quite sad over this.
    Erin
    G4 450 Dual   Mac OS X (10.4.7)  

    Have you tried mounting the partition from the command line? Even if it doesn't work, the command line sometimes gives more informative error messages. As a variation, the hint below describes how mounting a drive as "read-only" may sometimes succeed where a regular "read & write" mount might fail. If successful, it should be possible to pull files off for backup.
    http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20041127045644235
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  • Internal hard drive won't mount after running Tech Tools Pro 5

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    I'm wondering whether or not to spend $100 for full version to attempt to restore content of HD to an external.
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    Does anyone have any other suggestions to get the HD mounted????

    Hi, never "Optimize" a drive before Repairing it AND having a backup clone to boot from.
    I assume I'll have to erase the HD and reinstall data from the Stellar Pheonix collection, hoping that it's all intact.
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  • Hard Drive Won't Mount After Repair by Second Computer

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  • Lacie Hard Drives won't mount

    My two Lacie hard drives won't mount on my G5 running Tiger. They were fine on my G4 iMac running Panther. I've tried using the Lacie Update Tool but the drives aren't recognised. I've tested the firewire cables on another drive that works and they're fine, so it's not cables.
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    Reply
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    My two Lacie hard drives won't mount on my G5 running
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  • External Hard Drive Won't Mount- Need to recover files

    Hello Everyone,
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    ~
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  • Internal hard drive does not mount in disk utility

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    Good luck & happy computing!

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    Message was edited by: Flamingcreatures

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    Cheers!
    DALE
    p.s. Hi to you too Sherry! Keep up the good work!

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