Setting Disk Utility to lock out bad sectors

Setting Disk Utility to lock out bad sectors
When my Leopard DVD arrives I'm planning on doing a clean install to my internal HD. I would like to format the drive to lock out bad sectors but I can't seem to find a setting to do that in Disk Utility or anything about it in Help.

Hi Peggy Lynn;
To the best of my knowledge there is no way to lock out bad sectors.
What you can do is erase the disk and under security tab have zeros written to the disk. When you do this if any bad sectors are found, they will be mapped out so that will no longer be used.
Disk drive always have some extra sector which can be mapped in to replace any that might go bad. The disk drive can continue doing this until the sectors are all used up then you will have to replace it.
Allan

Similar Messages

Hi, i have tryed to install os x leopard, (its a old imac) , disk utility is greyed out , my install dvd cant find any hdd to install on , my only way to format and configure is through terminal but dont know what commands to execute

hi, i have tryed to install os x leopard, (its a old imac) , disk utility is greyed out , my install dvd cant find any hdd to install on , my only way to format and configure is through terminal but dont know what commands to execute...
i tryed diffrent commands such as diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ Disk1
diskutil list , wont show up my harddrive , i now its functionally cause it shows up in disk utility with name and i can get info about it , but everything is greyed out can only switch between "erase , partition , recover , Raid ,....
when i click the apple in the top left corner the whole menu is greyed out... what to do ? help me please
Sincerly AppleNoob92
p.s i have no experience in apple imac's at all never used before, but im kinda windows nerd so computers i understand but this imac make my insane, cant seem to find any solutions anywhere on the WWW....

Your HD may be crashed, so you probably should use the oringinal install discs to run Apple Hardware Test in extended mode. If error codes appear this confirms a hardware failure. In addition you cannnot repair the HD using Disk Utility from the startup disk, you have to use the origninal Install discs that shipped with the computer or the most up-to-date version of OS X on a disc that you have.

Help! My new iPhone is asking for a password but I never set one and am locked out - what can I do?!?!

help!!! My new phone is asking for a password but I never set one and am locked out - what can I do?!?!

Is it asking for your Apple ID password or the passcode to unlock the phone?
If it's asking for your passode, use the steps in this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1212

HT204074 Why did apple set a 90 day lock out to apple devices?

Why did apple set a 90 day lock out to apple devices? I bought my dad a new iphone 5s. He decided to give me his old iphone 4s but i cant download my purchased programs from my apple ID. I got a notification saying that the phone is associated/identified with another apple ID then automatically locked my apple id for 90days. I dont understand why they had to set a 90 day timer.

"Why did apple set a 90 day lock out to apple devices?"
No one can tell you why Apple makes the decions that they do and discussing their decisions/policies is not allowed here.

When the Apple Store tests a zeroed out hard drive, is their test as intensive as wd lifesaver etc. software's in napping out bad sectors etc.

When the Apple Store tests a zeroed out hard drive, is their test as intensive as wd lifesaver etc. software's in napping out bad sectors etc.
I do know one test at the Apple store is a three or four hour test that is very thorough for the whole Mac Pro computer, system by system test, I'm curious what kind of test they perform if you're testing the hard drive for bad sectors or whatever I'm a novice
I mean is it as effective or more effective than the software called wd lifesaver?
Does anyone have any idea what software they use or is their test only testing the systems of the computer and not just the hard drive?
I am moving from PC to Mac right now I have not even use my 2009 Mac Pro yet I was told to have the hard drives zeroed out and tested to start with a clean slate this is what I'm trying to do.
Thank you

The chip on the hard drive itself basically takes care of bad sectors. If an operation tries to write to such a sector, the drive will mark it bad and move onto the next one. That's why zeroing the drive effectively does the operation of mapping bad sectors - the whole drive is checked.
Their general hardware test does not do a full drive check, as far as I remember - the memory check can take a long time, though, since they're looking for random errors.
So for your Mac Pro, you should feel confident that doing a one-pass zero (don't do more than one pass, it's a waste of it me), will be enough initialization for the drive. And many drive experts don't even bother with that, relying on modern drive chips/firmware to do the job of checking for bad sectors on the fly.
Matt

Does the "Zero Out Data" feature in Disk Utility map out bad sectors/blocks?

I would like a definite answer on this one. I have heard that is does and that it doesn't.

Yes it does.
The way it works is this, your drive normally tries to write to sectors and if it can't write to one or more, then it writes someplace else and maps the bad sectors off in the driver software.
That's how it's supposed to work.
What I believe what happens is drives are made, but not checked for bad sectors at the factory as this is a considerable time consuming process.
So when a computer comes down the line, it's hard drive is just injected factory style the data it needs right on the drive, over bad sectors and everything.
Now it could be that, and or it could be the result of time and the drive sitting and being shipped. Normally the heads are locked.
Whatever, if you move a drive while the heads are over the platters, they can strike the platters and cause data loss from bad sectors. So it's important not to move or jar the computer while the hard drive is spinning, why Mac's have Sudden Motion Sensors built in.
So, if data is laid over bad sectors, or one has possibly damaged their drive slightly and the data on it, could result in glitchy or unexplained behavior.
Large files like video that take much space on the drive are more likely to encounter bad sectors and thus become incomplete when read later.
What the Disk Utility > Erase with Zero option does, is it tries to write 0's to EVERY BIT on the drive. A sector is made up of bits, 1's and 0's so this method ensures every bit is checked if it can be written too or not.
If a sector fails, then it's mapped off, never to be written too again.
When one places their data on the drive after a Zero, it's on 100% reliable bits and sectors. Thus there is less chance of file corruption when it's read later.
A video production guy told me this little trick as they have huge files so thus needed very reliable data retention and recovery.
I've been using this technique with all new drives for decades now and it's worked for me, unless I forget to do it.
Like anything, others may not require perfection. Regular users with small files all the time likely will lose a file here and there and go about living with it.
Big files are a different story obviously. So optional, not mandatory.
If your confident you can reinstall your operating system, then that's one thing, but if your not, then don't bother.

Time Machine, Disk Utility, and clearing out corrupted snapshots

Hi, all. I've been having some troubling issues with Time Machine and could use your collective insight.
I have a 500GiB external USB2 disk that I've been using for Time Machine since December (the oldest snapshot in Backups.backupdb is named 2007-12-13-222250). Everything worked fine until sometime in late January, when Time Machine decided to ax 2/3 of my Applications directory. Time Machine's logging is terse, so I wasn't able to determine what caused the corruption. The fact that this error wasn't caught and flagged by Time Machine bothers me.
Especially because I discovered this in the process of needing to recover from a crash on my laptop's hard drive -- I had to roll back to a previous, complete snapshot to get all my applications back.
After that I had to engage in some jiggery-pokery to get Time Machine to re-snapshot everything, but things proceeded normally until I received my new copy of DiskWarrior 4.1 last night (although DiskWarrior is an innocent bystander here). I tried to use DiskWarrior to rebuild the directory on the Time Machine disk, but it failed before trying to write anything.
(For those who care: after some back and forth with Alsoft tech support, we determined this was likely because my Time Machine volume has 6.2GB of catalog data, and DiskWarrior works by rebuilding the directory in memory, so it has to be able to fit the whole catalog into virtual memory.)
I was a little paranoid that something might be wrong with the disk after that, so I fired up Disk Utility and told it to repair the disk. It churned for about 6 hours and repaired an extraordinarily large number of hardlink reference count errors, but completed by claiming that the disk had been repaired.
When I next told Time Machine to run, instead of copying over a couple GB of data like it usually does, it started copying 38GB! ***? I took a look at the previous Time Machine snapshots, and discovered that Disk Utility had totally corrupted every snapshot I'd made since last month's fandango. Most of the root-level directories in the snapshots now look like this:
$ ls -al /Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups/Backups.backupdb/xxx.net/2008-03-13-025640/Euphrosyne/
total 128
drwxrwxr-t@ 16 root admin 1020 Feb 15 00:17 ./
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root ogd 204 Mar 13 02:56 ../
-r--r--r--@ 9151 root 20051003 0 Feb 11 23:13 .DRM_Data
-r--r--r--@ 50574 root 20051004 0 Feb 11 23:13 .DS_Store
-r--r--r--@ 9154 root 20051006 0 Feb 11 23:13 .SymAVQSFile
-r--r--r--@ 9155 root 20051007 0 Feb 11 23:13 .VolumeIcon.icns.candybarbackup
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 ogd admin 68 Feb 29 2004 .buildinstaller1.tmp/
-r--r--r--@ 9149 root 20051001 0 Feb 11 23:13 .com.apple.timemachine.supported
-r--r--r--@ 9150 root 20051002 0 Feb 11 23:13 .com.apple.timemachine.supported (from old Mac)
-r--r--r--@ 9153 root 20051005 0 Feb 11 23:13 .redethist
-r--r--r--@ 58730 root 20051009 0 Feb 11 23:13 Applications
-r--r--r--@ 37526 root 20051012 0 Feb 11 23:13 Desktop Folder
-r--r--r--@ 13328 root 20051013 0 Feb 11 23:13 Developer
-r--r--r--@ 64211 root wheel 0 Feb 11 23:13 Library
-r--r--r--@ 49886 root 20051080 0 Feb 11 23:13 Network
-r--r--r--@ 5643 root 20051120 0 Feb 11 23:13 System
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root ogd 60 Mar 13 02:56 User Guides And Information@ -> /Library/Documentation/User Guides and Information.localized
drwxr-xr-x@ 5 root admin 204 Dec 6 02:07 Users/
-r--r--r--@ 2554 root wheel 0 Feb 11 23:13 Volumes
-r--r--r--@ 37448 root 20051010 0 Feb 11 23:13 bin
-r--r--r--@ 37525 root 20051011 0 Feb 11 23:13 cores
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root ogd 11 Mar 13 02:56 etc@ -> private/etc
-r--r--r--@ 26309 root 20051078 0 Feb 11 23:13 mach_kernel
-r--r--r--@ 26310 root 20051079 0 Feb 11 23:13 mach_kernel.ctfsys
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root ogd 12 Mar 13 02:56 opt@ -> /private/opt
drwxr-xr-x@ 8 root wheel 272 Dec 6 02:31 private/
-r--r--r--@ 52664 root 20051119 0 Feb 11 23:13 sbin
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root ogd 11 Mar 13 02:56 tmp@ -> private/tmp
-r--r--r--@ 41668 root 20052660 0 Feb 11 23:13 usr
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root ogd 11 Mar 13 02:56 var@ -> private/var
That is clearly, completely wrong, and it alarms me that Disk Utility could cause so much damage to a Time Machine volume.
Since I also use SuperDuper! to regularly clone this disk, it's not as big a nightmare as it could be, but this means that I'm going to have to clear out every snapshot for the last month by hand, both because I obviously can't trust them anymore, and because I keep getting messages like this in the logs:
2008/03/13 7:25:35 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1229] Error: (-36) copying /.com.apple.timemachine.supported to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/xxx.net/2008-03-13-192246.inProgress/70254508-90E3-4FF A-AE46-9E8210095DAE/Euphrosyne
2008/03/13 7:25:35 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1229] Error: (-36) copying /.com.apple.timemachine.supported (from old Mac) to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/xxx.net/2008-03-13-192246.inProgress/70254508-90E3-4FF A-AE46-9E8210095DAE/Euphrosyne
2008/03/13 7:25:35 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1229] Error: (-36) copying /.DRM_Data to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/xxx.net/2008-03-13-192246.inProgress/70254508-90E3-4FF A-AE46-9E8210095DAE/Euphrosyne
2008/03/13 7:25:35 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1229] Error: (-36) copying /.DS_Store to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/xxx.net/2008-03-13-192246.inProgress/70254508-90E3-4FF A-AE46-9E8210095DAE/Euphrosyne
2008/03/13 7:25:35 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1229] Error: (-36) copying /.redethist to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/xxx.net/2008-03-13-192246.inProgress/70254508-90E3-4FF A-AE46-9E8210095DAE/Euphrosyne
2008/03/13 7:25:35 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1229] Error: (-36) copying /.SymAVQSFile to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/xxx.net/2008-03-13-192246.inProgress/70254508-90E3-4FF A-AE46-9E8210095DAE/Euphrosyne
2008/03/13 7:25:35 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[1229] Error: (-36) copying /.VolumeIcon.icns.candybarbackup to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/xxx.net/2008-03-13-192246.inProgress/70254508-90E3-4FF A-AE46-9E8210095DAE/Euphrosyne
I'd like to keep the old snapshots if I can. What's likely to happen if I just go and clear out the b0rked backup sessions by hand?
(Hmm... it appears yes, because I just deleted them all and the disk didn't recover the freed space.)
Here's the important question: has anyone else had issues using Disk Utility on a Time Machine volume, and does anyone at Apple have any plans to add integrity checking to Time Machine? As it stands, I don't really feel like I can trust it in its present form, as convenient as it is...

I have trouble with disk utility on my new (1 TB Lacie) as well as on my old (500 GB WD) drive. After doing a backup, du tells me a never ending list of errors like
HasFolderCount flag needs to be set (id = 599567)
(it should be 0x10 instead of 0)
Everything was O.K. before doing the backup; so is the disk to be backupped, according to du.
Up to now, no other problem occurred, but I´d like to clear this issue before my trust in time machine is restored.

Disk utility says "keys out of order,... HD could not be repaired"

I have been trying to install osx 10.4.3 (just the update version) from the store bought kit. It fails during check of destination volume. First I found out that it was not a good idea to have 3rd party memory installed so I removed that, but no change. I have tried to repair HD using disk utility launched, at first from 10.4.3 install disk, then from original 10.3 install disk. Disk Utility now says:
Keys out of order
Rebuilding Catalogue B-tree
the volume Mac HD could not be repaired
Error: the underlying task reported failure on exit -9972
1 volume could not be repaired
Shortly after I install these 2 sticks of memory yesterday (referenced above), I was having troubles. Don't remember exactly what or what sequence, but got the locked beachball 2 or 3 times. At some point, there was a 'static' type "POP" over the speakers and maybe from the tower too but at that instant the desktop background reverted from some green apple swirls to the default blue swirls. Other than that everything continues to work perfectly fine. Static electricity is really non-existent here ; very humid, and I was carefull during install of the memory.
I made a disk image yesterday to back up selected files prior to trying to load 10.4.3 and not sure if I may have done something wrong there....
I have some 3rd party software installed like Nikon scan, Audacity, Firefox. What else do you need to know?? How do I fix the HD? How can it be messed up if everything is working normal?

It's not likely that the memory installed caused the corruption of the B-Tree, more of a coincidence that you noticed it soon after the installation. To fix a problem of that magnitude, you have two options:
1) Back up all of your important data, erase the hard drive, and reinstall everything.
2) Buy a program such as DiskWarrior to fix the B-Tree without requiring you to erase your hard drive.

Partition Tab in Disk Utility is Greyed Out

Basically I wanted to try out Mac OS X Yosemite, so I created a partition on my hard drive. Now, I am trying to remove this partition, because it is no longer needed, but Disk Utility is simply not allowing me to.
I heard there may be a way to solve this using Terminal. Is that possible?
Any answers and/or helpful comments is appreciated in advance. Thank you.

And, this was from the Internet Recovery utilities window, right? OK, this next suggestion depends on which MBA model you have. Check the link below. If your model came with Lion pre-installed then it is capable of using Internet Recovery. If it came with a late version of Snow Leopard it can be upgraded via a firmware update. You will find this in the link below.
Computers that can be upgraded to use OS X Internet Recovery
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Internet Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-OPTION- R keys until a globe appears on the screen. Wait patiently - 15-20 minutes - until the Recovery main menu appears.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet
            if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.
Once the Utility Menu appears select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button. Now try removing the partition again. If you have the same error, then do the following:
From the screen's menubar select Terminal from the Utilities menu. Enter the following at the prompt:
     diskutil list
Press RETURN. You should see a display of your devices. Next enter:
     diskutil unmountDisk force /dev/disk0
Press RETURN. Now, if this works your internal drive should be unmounted. Return to Disk Utility and try the process of removing the partition.

Disk Utility reports "keys out of order"

The machine I have is now reporting some worrying signs, when using Disk Utility it reports "keys out of order" which I have no idea what this means.
When starting in single user mode and running sbin/fsck -f it comes back with disk0s5: I/O error keys ot of order. Also its unable to repair
Bought Drive Genius and this say unable to fix and reports
error: invalid HFS resourse fork clump size in volume header (0)
HELP, what do I need to do and does anybody know what the problem is, come to to that what should I do.
Have just bought a 160GB D2 extreme hard drive firewire extreme drive as I think this might be very handy here. Assume that back up every thing is going to be essential
Thanks in advance of possible solutions
David

This is a difficult error to repair and neither Disk Utility nor fsck may be able to repair it. In which case you would need to try Disk Warrior which may have success depending upon the extent of the problem.
Boot into single-user mode and run the command, fsck -fy, at least four consecutive times but not more than seven. If fsck finally returns with a drive OK message, then it has successfully repaired the problem. If it does not succeed, then either use Disk Warrior or reformat the drive.

Verify Disk under disk utility is grayed out

When I go into first aid in disk utility, and click on my system drive, the verify button is grayed out.
If I remembered correctly, I was able to verify my system drive before.
Any idea?
Thanks!

Hi, and a Warm Welcome to the Power Mac G5 Forum!
You could check that Journaling is enabled on the drive - in Disk Utility > File menu > Enable Journaling
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672
Good Luck.

Fixing sluggishness with SMART Utility reading: "1 Reallocated bad sector, and 6 errors"

Specs are as follows for Macbook Pro 15" late 2008:
Processor: 2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB
Software: OS X 10.9.5
As instructed in other discussions, due to sluggishness (apps loading slowly, web development tasks requiring significant loading downtime) of my recently acquired Macbook Pro 15" late 2008, I've installed Volitans-Software's SMART Utility tool, and the results are that I have are:
1 reallocated bad sector
6 total errors (last error type uncorrectable, prior command READ DMA EXT)
My question therefore is, to fix the sluggishness, to the end of making this a responsive web-development machine, what should I do?
Insofar as I've researched, I see my current options as
Upgrade the RAM to 8GB
Do the above and replace the drive
Do some kind of factory reset or electrickery to fix the sluggishness.
I'll happily provide more info required: Any and all advice would be appreciated

My opinion: Backup, then replace the drive. Increasing the ram may be a good thing too, but unless you're really pushing things 4 gigs of memory should be sufficient, and if that's the original drive then it's high time to replace it anyway. Besides, it will only cost you maybe a hundred bucks and less than an hour of work.
Also, check how full your drive is. If you only have a few gigabytes left it can start to slow things down. Some people recommend that you keep 5% of the drive free at all times for system use; I usually suggest from 1 to 2 times the amount of installed ram.

HT203161 When turn on computer just get envelope with ? so did a internet recovery. If I pick install mac os x lion it is blank where you pick where you want to install. When I go to disk utility everything grayed out under the tabs

When I turn on computer just get envelope with ?, so did an internet recovery. If I select reinstall mac os x (it is nac os x lion), it is blank where you pick where you want to install, nothing to pick. If I go to disk utility, to the left it lists "mac os x base system", but if I click on any of the tabs it is all grayed out.

Your HDD needs to be replaced. It apparently is dead.
Ciao.

How to set disk utility preference to default to my external DVD drive?

I uyse an OWC external DVD drive to burn DVDs. It is faster as well as on my old MBP the DVDs often didn't burn correctly. Now I'd like to set a preference so that when I use Disk Utility to burn, the default drive is my external drive instead of the built-in drive in my iMac. Anyone know how to do this?

greenteafrappucinos wrote:
, it said I had to "repair" it. So I tried, but it didn't work.
If there was a message in red that said the HDD could not be repaired, then the disk should be replaced.
Ciao.

My partition menu in Disk Utility is greyed out in recovery partition

So upgraded to yosemite and after a while decided that i would do a clean install of it because it didn't update the recover partition and i could no longer boot into Ubuntu partition. So i made my bootable drive and booted into it. I was met with:
When i clicked on the hard drive in the sidebar that it was only 300gbs, which is the size of my os x partition.
I then went to the partition menu and i could not change anything there. I can't resize anything or repartition anything.
I've tried to do multiple things in terminal from recovery and bootable disk but to no avail. It still won't work. The thing is that when i type diskutil list into terminal i get
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         300.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data                         1.0 MB     disk0s4
   5: 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4               195.0 GB   disk0s5
   6:                 Linux Swap                         4.2 GB     disk0s6
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *299.6 GB   disk1
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS MacBook Pro Back Up     398.2 GB   disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk2s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS Back up of files        100.9 GB   disk2s4
/dev/disk0 is the internal hard drive that i want to reformat, /dev/disk1 i don't know what that is. It could be an internal thing in the drive? And /dev/disk2 is my external hard drive that is running mavericks that i writing this on.
I've tried resetting PRAM and SMC but that didn't help.
Didn't know if reinstalling the OS would help?
What i want to get is to reformat /dev/disk0 so that i have a 500gb hard drive that i can then do a clean install of yosemite on and then possibly make an ubuntu partition later. PLEASE HELP!!!

And, this was from the Internet Recovery utilities window, right? OK, this next suggestion depends on which MBA model you have. Check the link below. If your model came with Lion pre-installed then it is capable of using Internet Recovery. If it came with a late version of Snow Leopard it can be upgraded via a firmware update. You will find this in the link below.
Computers that can be upgraded to use OS X Internet Recovery
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Internet Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-OPTION- R keys until a globe appears on the screen. Wait patiently - 15-20 minutes - until the Recovery main menu appears.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet
            if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.
Once the Utility Menu appears select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button. Now try removing the partition again. If you have the same error, then do the following:
From the screen's menubar select Terminal from the Utilities menu. Enter the following at the prompt:
     diskutil list
Press RETURN. You should see a display of your devices. Next enter:
     diskutil unmountDisk force /dev/disk0
Press RETURN. Now, if this works your internal drive should be unmounted. Return to Disk Utility and try the process of removing the partition.

Setting Disk Utility to lock out bad sectors

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