Need a bootable disk to run repair

I have an older Macbook Pro that is acting kind of buggy (seems to be related to the trackpad responce) I zapped the PRAM, repaired permessions, and verified the disk with Disk Utility, which told me it needed repairs. But I'm having trouble figuring out how to boot it from an external. The computer is currently running snow leopard, which I upgraded using a retail upgrade disk. I tried to rebook from that, but it seems to want to run me through the install again, which I don't want to do. I just want to boot from a disk so I can run Disk Utility. I also have Time Machine backups on an external drive, but that doesn't seem to be bootable either. I probably could dig up my original install disks, but those are on Tiger (or whatever cat preceeded it), so not sure that would work either.
What should I be using to boot from to run Disk Utility?

While booted from the installation disc, select Utilities > Disk Utility from the menu bar.

Similar Messages

Running Lion. Verified Disk. Warned HD corrupt, and need to restart from disk and run repair. No idea how to do this without a physical disk.

Hi,
My MacBook Pro has been acting up a little. I tried the usual repair options: repair permissions, zap P-ram, and Safe Boot (although I've never gotten the machine to Safe Boot properly since installing Lion). I ran Verify Disk and it stopped part way through, saying that the HD is corrupt. It instructed me to start up from the (installation?) disk and run the repair function from the disk utility. (I've included a screen shot of the Verify Disk screen). I have no idea how to go about this without a physical start up disk (Lion). I do have the disks that came with the computer at the time of purchase (Will one of those work?).
Thanks,
JGW

Thank you!
I was able to access the recovery function and used the Disk Utility to repair my HD.
Would you recommend that I still re-install Lion?
Again, thank you for taking the time to help me!
Best wishes,
JGW

In need of system disks for HD repair

The machine's been a little slow lately, so I randomly decided to "verify disk" in disk utility and got this response:
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Volume Bit Map needs minor repair
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume free block count
(It should be 1870686 instead of 1866823)
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Disk Utility stopped verifying “Macintosh HD” because the following error was encountered:
The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair
I realize that I need to repair the disk from another volume. I purchased this computer 2 years ago from a private seller, and do not have the original system disks. Do I need OS 10.3 to do this since Tiger is only an upgrade? Do I need just the DVD or what? And where can I obtain these disks? Should I just head straight to DiskWarrior instead? Thanks
-mJ

What are the capabilities of the retail disks? Am I able to do a clean install from them if necessary, or would I need disks with my specific build number for that? Some people on craigslist are selling the retail disks for 10.4, but I believe its just the DVD. Ideally I know I should have both disks, but in this event can I be able to buy only the one I need? The only disks that I see sold privately are build-specific sets....just seems a little much to spend 300 bucks for the Tiger box just for volume repair. Just making sure before any purchases. Thanks
-mJ
Message was edited by: Mckendre Jay
Message was edited by: Mckendre Jay

Which Version of Disk Warrior will repair hard drive on iBook G4?

A while back I determined with help from folks on this forum that I needed to buy Disk Warrior to repair the hard drive. I've procrastinated in buying Disk Warrior just because my wife has been sharing her MacBook with me (yes, I should just buy another but want to get the data off of this and would be happy using the iBook a while longer before spending the grand or more for another MacBook).
The problem is, I don't know which version of Disk Warrior to buy. Can anyone help me?
Quick History:
I have an iBook G4 that has a ton of data that I don't want to lose, but it won't start. It just stays on the gray screen with the Apple symbol and tries to boot up...you can hear the hard drive...and then just turns off.
With this in mind, I can't figure out which OS I have. I am pretty sure it is either 10.3 or 10.4, but I don't know for sure. The discs I have are for 10.2.1 (the original OS), but when I purchased the computer from a former roommate of mine back in mid/late 2005, he loaded it with the most current OS, which I don't have the disks for so I don't know what it is.
When I research Disk Warrior it sounds like I need to know which I have to determine whether 3 or 3.0.3 or 4 is what I need. Is there anyone who can assist me with this dilemma?
Morris

Morris,
I hesitate to say "yes", but that is my gut feeling. I would do some research/Google searches and in the mean time maybe another discussions member will have the answer to that.
Calling Alsoft is always an option, too. Their tech people are very knowledgeable about their products and applications.
I went right from version 3.3(?) to version 4.2, so I don't have personal experience with 4.0. I should also add that if you own an older version of DW, Alsoft will send you the current version (4.2) for $50 as long as you have the registration number of your old version.
Randy

How can I make a bootable disk so as to repair my drive?

Hello,
I am away from home and not carrying my Tiger install DVD. I had three crashes after installing Safari Beta 2 days ago and now disk utility reports failure on exit when verifying my Macbook drive. To repair this I need to boot from some other medium and run Disk Utility from there. Is it possible for me to make a bootable DVD? Or a bootable USB memory stick(the one I am carrying is 1 gig in size)? Or can I download something to make it possible? thanks a lot, LJ
PS this has happened me 3 times in a year since moving to mac and it peeves me greatly that such a great OS cannot solve its own directory structure problems - the way Scandisk does for windows.

thanks for the suggestion. I have tried fsck before but for me it has never solved the problem - afterwards, verify disk in Disk Utility still reports failure on exit. Seems I get myself into the biggest possible diffs! Fsck is supposed to do even more than disk utility but I have not found it so. In my previous diffs, when I boot from another medium and run "repair disk," it (nearly!) always solves the problem. If anyone else can give me an answer I would be most grateful LJ

When run repair disk permissions?

I am going to upgrade from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion.
I have heard/read that you're supposed to run repair disk permissions beforehand.
1. Should I run repair disk permissions on my brand new backup disk (am planning to backup Snow Leopard and all apps and docs before upgrading to Mountain Lion - - so can restore Snow Leopard etc. if want/need to)? If so, do I run repair disk permissions on the new backup disk before or after I partition the backup disk [am planning to have two sections, one with all the Snow Leopard stuff, and one for iMac backups that will be made after have upgraded to Mountain Lion])
2. When's the best time to run repair disk permissions on my iMac - - before I download Mountain Lion or right before I do the installation of Mountain Lion?
Thanks.

It's not a requirement, but it may help especially if you don't attend to the state of your running OS. I recommend doing this:
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.
Then you can proceed to click on the Install button after the upgrade finishes downloading. I also suggest you make a bootable backup of your current Snow Leopard system on an external drive just in case things go badly.

Mac won't start following change of permissions. I have started In recovery and run repair disk and reset permissions to all disks inc backups. What do I do now to get the mac up and running without loosing thousands of pics and all other data? I

The problems occurred after photoshop elements said I did not have the necessary permissions to save changes to a photo. I then allowed all to permissions to all disks, I have three external hard drives but I cannot restore from any as they all appear to have some kind of problem. I have repaired all disks in recovery mode and verified all inc mac hd. All permissions are repaired and all disks are saying repaired. So where do I go from here to get the mac back on running mavericks without loosing thousands of photos and all other data ?
Do I need to reinstall Mac OS ?
The only options I get to reinstall is mountain lion?.. I have been running the latest mavericks .?.
Do I reinstall and then update?
The external drives are not smart drives so how do I ensure I retain all my files?

your best option is to connect an external drive and reinstall OS X on that external to run the system from. then copy all your files over to the new install for safe keeping. then try doing a reinstall of Mavericks over the top of the current install on the internal drive and test.

Disk utility says repair needed but repair grayed out

I ran a disk utility verification, which indicated that repair was necessary. However the repair option was grayed out. How do I effect a repair?

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.

Running "Repair Disk" as routine when cloning to new drive?

(Sorry for the duplication of this question - first posted inside "Consiglieri's" thread- but I realized it is probably more appropriate to post separately.
Hi Kenichi (or anyone else in the forum with a possible answer)
From the thread with "Consiglieri" re. Leopard, are you recommending running Repair Disk after cloning to a new drive (in this case, using CCC) as a ROUTINE procedure? I will shortly be installing a new HD and cloning to it with CCC from a bootable external HD. These situations would appear to be somewhat similar.
For that matter, would it be useful to run Repair Disk on the external drive itself, first, even before installing the new drive? Kenichi's original remarks quoted below. Thanks.
"I installed a new hard drive in the second bay about the same time as upgrading to Leopard. I then cloned from the first drive to the new drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. I did a Repair Disk on the new drive using Disk Utility, to make sure there were no disk directory errors. Finally, I rebooted from the new drive to make sure everything worked like with the original drive. The original drive was now my backup."

Thanks. Sorry if I'm dragging this out, but I'm a little confused. You say 1&2 are reversed, but in order to do Disk Repair first on the external, (my step 1) - before using it to clone to the new drive- wouldn't I first have to be booted in a different drive, in this case the original internal drive, before it's removed? And, then, won't I be booted in the external in order to do the clone to the new (target) drive, after which I would run Disk Repair on the new HD, still booted from the external?
If I install the new HD first (my step 2) wouldn't I be unable to run Disk Repair on the external, since I'd be booted in the external?

QUESTION: Running 'repair disk' from installation disks.........

Hi
I am trying to learn the basics of OS maintenance.........
1 question.........
A commonly described maintenance procedure is :
...Booting from the original O S disk that came with the computor and selecting disk utility off that disk, in order to run a 'repair disk' operation.
My question is this: my original installation disk-set is O S X 10.3 . However i have updated to OS X 10.3.9 via the internet in several steps... Once an update to 10.3.?, then 10.3.8 and fianally 10.3.9.
Can i still use the 'disk utility' 'repair disk' procedure from the original disk which is only 10.3 , if i have updated the OS to 10.9 via the internet ? If not, how do i do a 'repair disk' procedure from disk utility ?
thanks for your time.....
d
eMac 800MHz Power PC G4 Superdrive Mac OS X (10.3.9) LACIE - 160GB external HD - external burner

del12,
Not Kappy here...but.....
Judy,
First of all, Welcome to the Discussions!
re: "I repaired permissions using Install CD, I think it's the first version of Panther"
Not to fret, but I would return to your HD>Applications>Utilities>DiskUtility and repair permissions from there. This should have updated permissions that will take care of the new permissions that need to be set for the update increments in the OS since your initial 10.3 install.
As for the symptoms you are seeing, ie. no startup chime, black screen for seconds and hum I would return to the Disk Utility on the install disk #1 and run Repair Disk. Report back any errors it finds.
Does your computer have a Apple Hardware Test CD? If so you may wish to run this to check for any damage it will report.
As for Anacron, CacheOutX, PreferentialTreatment what features of these do you run? Clearing the Caches with CacheOutX for example should only be run for troubleshooting and not general maintenance of the OS.
A very good FAQ by Dr. Smoke for maintenance can be found here.
Hope that helps some,
littleshoulders [:-)
PS. Judy, in the future, if you find a need to post you may wish to start a new topic (even if your problem seems similar) as once a thread is marked answered by the original poster other users here may miss seeing your query for help. If you need help with figuring out how to do that let me know.

Running "Repair Disk Permissions"

I recently brought my imac into the apple store to resolve a noise issue. The mac genius recommended I first back up all my data (which I have now done) and run "Repair Disk Permissions". I did that and the message I got after it finished was "ACL found but not expected on Applications/Utilities"
"ACL found but not expected on Applications"
"ACL found but not expected on Library"
What does that mean? Any steps I need to take at this point?

Search the forums for ACL, sort by date, and review the many posts on the subject, then see http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306925

How to run repair in disk utility without a start up cd

Hello,
I have a macbook pro 2.3 GHz i5. I have run disk utility and it says that my disk needs to be repaired. It says I should insert the start up CD and then run repair but my mac book did not come with a disk. I ran disk utility because there are 247GB of miscellaneous files on my computer.
Any help gratefully received.

Lion has the 'install disk' built in.
You access it by restarting your mac and holding down the 'command' and 'r' keys. When the disk icons appear, choose the 'Recovery HD' icon. In the menu up the top, you can choose Utilities > Disk Utility.

Have a mac book pro that crashed. ran disk utility to repair. comp booted and ran for short time. then crashed. ran repair again. disk utility said it could not repair files and i needed to format hard drive and start again. now nothing works

have a mac book pro that crashed. ran disk utility to repair. comp booted and ran for short time. then crashed. ran repair again. disk utility said it could not repair disk and needed to format and start again.
comp said it could not unmount disk and now when comp trys to boot all i get is a question mark on the screen. help

Erase and Install
1. 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.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. 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.
4. Quit DU after formatting completes and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.
5. After restart into Snow Leopard download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

I have just made a clean instalation of Lion, with a bootable disk, and I planned to restore my files (music, photos, etc.), but Lion doesn't find my backup files. So, I'm about to loose all of my iTunes library, work docum The installation run perfectly,

I have just made a clean instalation of Lion, with a bootable disk, and I planned to restore my files (music, photos, etc.), The installation run perfectly, but Lion doesn't find my backup files. So, I'm about to loose all of my iTunes library, work documents (I'm a lawyer!!), my kid's photos.... How can I restore my files?? Help!!

Since you seem to be using a new disk for Lion, Time Machine will consider previous backups to be for a "different" computer. Try doing a control-click or click-and-hold on the Time Machine icon in the Dock, then choose "Browse Other Time Machine Disks". This should allow Time Machine to see the previous backups.
In the worst case you should be able to open those Time Machine backups and copy your documents from there to your home folder.
By the way, you've been misled by poor field labeling on this forum into typing a large part of your message into the field intended for the subject. In the future just type a short summary of your post into that field and type the whole message into the field below that.

How do I do this: "This disk needs to be repaired. Start up your computer with another disk (such as your Mac OS X installation disc), and then use Disk Utility to repair this disk?"

"This disk needs to be repaired. Start up your computer with another disk (such as your Mac OS X installation disc), and then use Disk Utility to repair this disk."

Stick the disk in, reboot holding c.
Disk Utility is a menu option about the 2 or 3rd screen in the installer. (don't install OS X!)
Because your booted form the installer disk, you can repair the disk.
Quit and exit the installer and reboot.
If your drive is not repaired, make a note of all what it says, for Apple to use.
Reboot and get your files off to a external drive,
Take the note and your comptuer to Apple for a warranty/Apple care call, they will replace the drive.

Need a bootable disk to run repair

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