Repairing volume for 2 hours in Disk Utility?

I recently got the flashing question mark on startup on my MacBook. I booted from the OS X Install Disk and am trying to repair the HD in Disk Utility's First Aid. It's been showing "Repairing volume" in green and "Look for missing items in lost+found directory" with the status bar nearly complete for the past 2 hours - would it ever really take that long?
I'm perfectly content to let it repair and look all night if it's actually doing something but I'm worried that it's not.
My warranty runs out tomorrow so if my hard drive is toast, I'd like to know soon!
Any help would be appreciated.

You might have to invest in a more thorough program like [DiskWarrior|http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior> or [TechTool Pro|http://www.micromat.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid =83]. Disk Utility is somewhat limited in it's ability to repair damaged volumes (which is why you get the flashing question mark).
Steve

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I need to repair a Macbook Pro with disk utility using target mode to another my iMac. Can I use ethernet cable or must it be firewire?

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I have a late 2012 iMac running osx 10.8.5. I keep losing access to my internal hard drive. I can reboot and regain access and it will last for a few minutes or hours. Disk utility does not seems to help.

I have a late 2012 iMac with an I5 precessor running OSX 10.8.5 and a 1tb internal hard drive. I keep losing access to the internal hard drive/startup disk.
I can reboot and everything operates as normal for a few minutes or hours but then I lose all access again to anything on the hard drive. The computer is still up and running but no files can be accessed and certain websites cannot be acessed even though internet access appears to be normal. Disk utility can only find permission errors related to iTunes which can be repaired only to come back at the next scan (I would not think permission errors would have anything to do with the hard drive crashing). It does not seem to matter what program I am using at the time access is lost and it can lose access sometimes right after reboot when no program is running.

You will need to boot into the Recovery Volume (command - R on a restart or hold down the option/alt key during restart and select it) to run Disk Utility/Disk Repair.

Repairing internal hard drive from disk utility

Hey folks,
I need to do a repair of my internal hard drive on my PB. I understand that in order to do this, you need to boot from another disk. I cloned my hard drive using CCC to an external firewire hard drive so I can boot from the external.
So I shut down and rebooted while holding the option key but the external hard drive did not appear as a choice for which to boot. So I booted with the internal and went to the Start Up Disk icon in System Preferences. There, the external appeared so I told it to restart using it.
After restart I went to the Disk Utility to repair the internal but when I did, the "repair" button would not illuminate. I'm pretty sure I'm running off the external because when I use spotlight, it searches the external and not the internal.
Any ideas?
(I'm trying to boot off an external because I cannot find my OS X disc referenced here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6642196#6642196)

If the "repair" button does is not selectable, maybe you indeed restarted using the same INTERNAL drive by mistake? Also, it could be that your INTERNAL hard drive is beyond repair, as which happened to my PowerMac's a few weeks ago and I--which I just mentioned on another forum--had to buy Data Rescue II to salvage my data because the only solution was to reformat the drive. It was beyond repair.
I don't know if this helps, but which did you select? The disk itself? (first in the hierarchy) or the volume (second in the hierarchy... list). Sometimes that matters. But I couldn't tell you since I can't see your screen and don't know your exact issue unless I saw it or was able to test it out.
The other thing could be, are you selecting the EXTERNAL by mistake on the list of drives on the left? You can't repair the disk/volume that you are booted up from, why you would need your software discs / restore discs to do that. But since you are doing it the "workaround" way, which should work, that is my guess.
Message was edited by: Pismo 900
Just a suggestion, why not just erase and reformat the damaged drive, and then once that's over, do a "Restore" from Disk Utility, choosing your external as the SOURCE and the internal that's been reformatted, as the DESTINATION.

'volume check failed', and disk utility can't fix it

I was planning to create a new bootable backup today and ran 'repair disk' from an install disk before cloning.
Unfortunately I grabbed a Panther disk by mistake, and only discovered it was the wrong disk as I took it out. By then, DU had run through the 'repair' - changing quite a few things - until it showed 'volume cannot be repaired'.
I've tried to correct them using DU from the Tiger install disk, but without any luck. DU shows:
+Invalid catalogue record type+
+Volume check failed+
+Error: the underlying task reported failure on exit+
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My iBook still appears to be running perfectly, but obviously I need to repair the disk before I can clone it. Disk Utility can't do it - could DiskWarrior?
I'd really appreciate some advice on the options open to me, and the best way to do it.

Success!
I powered down and ran DiskWarrior a 2nd time to rebuild the directory. This time I skipped the recommended Preview stage and went straight to confirming Rebuild. Everything now seems to be fine again. DU finds no faults with the disk, and the iBook feels significantly quicker and snappier.
Two things I learnt that might be helpful - the first is, it's easy to be careless for just a moment and end up in a time-consuming mess. It's the first time I've done it, and I won't be doing it again.
Second thing is, when people say DiskWarrior is slow to boot, they mean it - it took at least 10 minutes to show up on screen, which is unsettling. And the Preview stage, for me, was equally unnerving.
Still, it worked - superbly - all my data is intact, the iBook is overhauled and working faster than ever.

Volumes Greyed out in disk utility

tried to do averify and repair disk when it finished the volumes/partitions are greyed out

Where are you running Disk Utility from - the boot
system, or an installation disk?
from the actual system yea, I understand about thenot being able to unmount a volume you are on but the disks that were doing it were not the system disk so I was able to do repair and verify disk to mount/unmount, they would go through fine but the volume would stay greyed out not the actual disk itself. One is a int HD the other was a ext FW 400 drive. I have haad a lot fo problems laltely so if you want to read all the thiings that have happened here they are. OH thanks so much for your help
OK before I forget the way all this happened I will write it all down so here it is.
I was trying to hook up a ethernet conn to a muse receptor (music gear)I realized after I wasnt successful setting it up that my main Macintosh HD was missing from the desktop , When I would do a search I would see it and could acess it but it was greyed out. I did repair perm it was ok. I tried moving it to the sidebar ,no luck. I then installed a OS x on an ext HD and repaired and verified the disc that way to unount and remount all was good. WEnt back to real Os ,still not there. Then SOmeone in an email said to run a apple script
"System Events"
set visible of (choose folder with invisibles) to false
end tell when I did I then realized that now my other HD is missing from my desktop and I also accidentally made it go poof from the side bar too. now if I go to finder and try to hit show HD nothing happened.
SOMEONE PLEASE HELP!
More info if I do command shift G for , /Volumes/Macintosh HD/ it goes to a shortcut for it and if I do it for the Audi HD I get a short cut to it but this time it is a network shortcut icon
Also My iDisk which I never use is stuck on my desktop and cant get rid of it
I think what happened is maybe I got my user and my main hard drive volume switched up cause if I look into that Macintosh HD and go to users/myname/desktop it looks the same as my current desktop
OBviously these are all guesses
Update
Now when I hit the audio shortcut Icon it says it cant be found and to insert the disk or connect to the sever volume and wait for it to appear on the desktop
Matt

Greyed out Volume Format box in Disk Utility 10.4.

Hi,
i'm trying to open up more space on my hard drive by doing a full erase. Available space is about 6GB on a 80GB drive. Running OS X 10.4.11. on a Mac Book Black. Want to install 10.6. SL.
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How much free space is on the HD, where has all the space gone?
OmniDiskSweeper is likely the easiest/best, and is now free...
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/download/
And if needed, you can use Terminal to run it in admin mode to see files/folders your user can't see...
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_to_recover_missing_hard_drive_space/

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John,
*Reboot Time Capsule*
Unplug the TC from the wall outlet.
Wait 10-15 seconds.
Re-plug it in again.
After it has restarted (30-60 seconds), does it show up in Airport Utilities?
If not try "Rescan" again from the File Menu.
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Now use the slider on the left to turn “ON” Time Machine.
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While there may be ways to fool/hack Time Machine into recognizing previous backups without performing another full backup, they are likely rather elaborate.
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It may simply be easier to begin a fresh series of backups while saving the previous backups until your satisfied that you have enough history built up. Then delete the old backups.
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Cheers!

Unable to drag disk to destination for Restore in Disk Utility

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Raided xserve raid boot volume, OK to run disk utility?

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Yes, you can run Disk Utility to check the disk, or Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro and any other tool that checks the HD.
That is the point of RAID, it changes nothing of what an OS understands of a HD. If there are any problems and the drive/data is somehow 'lost' it is not due to RAID.
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Verify/repair permissions grayed out in disk utility

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I am thinking it's a permission issue but not sure what needs to be set to fix it

No problem. It puzzled me for a while. Now I check it every time I format a drive since DU doesn't correctly set the permissions needed. It's a pain that when you clone one startup drive to another, say for backup, and erase the destination in advance that the drive's ownership and permissions will be wrong. Then you try repairing permissions like the OP did and find those options are grayed out, and you are staring at the monitor trying to figure out why. PITA.

How to repair a filevault sparsebundle with disk utility?

I've been experiencing some oddness with my filevault home directory so I wanted to drop into disk utility and run a check/repair on it. The odd thing is, when I log out and into another account, the sparsebundle says 0k in the finder, and appears to be a directory. When I sudo to cd into the directory, it appears to work, but I remain in /Users/username. When I drag the sparsebundle into disk utility, it appears in the bar on the left side of the screen, but clicking repair or verify causes the progress bar to activate for a split second then stop with no error message. Trying to mount the sparsebundle yields a "No supported socket" message.
I am able to log into the account. When I do that, in /users/.username directory, I can see the sparsebundle with its true size, 35 gigabytes.
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Well a bundle and a disk image are both, likewise, "very different things" than actual independent storage devices, but disk utility is able to reason out that it needs to ask for the password for the disk image and open it in order to repair it. There's no reason why it couldn't be as bright when it comes to handling a sparseimage.
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However on doing so, disk utility can repair the disk.
See:
http://blog.hardmac.com/archives/how-i-saved-my-corrupted-time-machine-sparsebun dle-image

How do I make NTFS format for partition in disk utility ?

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The other partition would be mac os extended journaled . Does it have something to do with partition scheme ? I'm running mountain lion .

anonymous4a wrote:
ok i wasn't clear,
That would have helped.
I want to make a backup of my windows partition and mac partition on my macbook pro retina on to ONE external hard drive.
Ok, so you have OS X and Windows in BootCamp on your Retina MBP.
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Get another powered external drive slightly larger than your internal boot drive.
Use Disk Utility to format this external drive with a GUID partition table and two partitions each slightly larger than your MacintoshHD and BootCamp partitions
The first external partition formatted OS X extended journaled (MacintoshHD2) and the second one exFAT (WindowsBootcamp2) The OS X parittion is first at the top.
Download these two programs, Carbon Copy Cloner and Winclone 3.
Use CCC to clone the OS X MacintoshHD to the MacintoshHD2, and use Winclone 3 (runs in OS X) to backup Windows BootCamp to WindowsBootCamp2.
The OS X clone on the external drive is bootable if you hold the option key down while booting the computer.
The Winclone 3 partition on the external drive is not bootable, it's a backup only as Windows is copy protected and will invalidate itself if it ran.
Warnings:
Don't use CCC to clone BootCamp, it's not designed for that and won't restore to run Windows.
There is no software that can do both parittions at the same time and be bootable or restore properly to a different sized drive or restore the RecoveryHD partition. Some have tried with some other softwares and have problems with lost drive space.
Both partitions have to be cloned/backed up seperatly as there is some intelligence involved and the user needs the option to adjust partition space.
Also, backup your files in Windows (and OS X) to a regular external exFAT drive that was formatted on the oldest Windows machine your going to connect to, OS X doesn't do exFAT correctly so Windows can't read it. The exFAT partition using Winclone likely won't be readable by a Windows PC.
Most commonly used backup methods
.Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's
Again, you can't run Windows from a external drive, it's copy protected and takes the hardware id's into that, so it's essentially worthless to use NTFS on the external WindowsBootcamp2 partition.
All you need is a partition format that can handle over 4GB sized files, and exFAT is ideal and free to use. FAT32 can't handle 4GB+ files and is being phased out.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/review-is-microsofts-new-d ata-sharing-system-a-cross-platform-savior/

Volumes not visible in disk utility

Hi All
I'm running an X-RAID and just updated all the disks to 250GB in all fourteen slots. Then I made two new RAID 5 arrays, one on each side, using RAID Admin 1.5.1. All lights are green and the arrays seem fine, only they do not show up in disk utility or any other disk software like Disk Warrior. Nothing shows. I read somewhere that I might need to disable the LUN masking but the new RAID Admin won't let me do this as far as I can see.
It's running OS 10.4.11 on a Mactel 2x2.66Ghz 8GB Ram

Did you upgrade the firmware to 1.5.1? If you didn't, then LUN masking is in place but RAID Admin will not let you turn it off. If you upgrade the firmware to 1.5.1 then there should be no LUN masking since 1.5.1 dropped support for it.
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Music Server Can't See External Drive Formatted for WIN with Disk Utility.

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HW Specs:
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Exchanged drive. Works now.

Repairing volume for 2 hours in Disk Utility?

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