Start up disk needs to be repaired by downloading new osx but will loose programs?

My startup disk needs to be repaired by installing mavericks. But if I instal I will loose my microsoft programs like word and powerpoint. I am a student and cannot afford to loose those programs because I use them for assignments. Is there something I can do where I can download maverick and not loose my microsoft or even my old adobe programs?

Reinstalling Mavericks will not cause you to lose your installed applications and your data. That being said, anytime you reinstall or upgrade your OSX, you should have an up to date backup, whether it be a clone of the current volume or Time Machine backup.
OS X Mavericks: Reinstall OS X - Support - Apple

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Yosemite won't install on my computer because the disk needs to be repaired. I verify, it indicates repair is needed but then the repair disk button can't be clicked. I tried to start in safe mode but it just froze.

I'm to install Yosemite but it tells me the disk need to be repaired. When I verify the repair disk button remains pale and in-clickable. I'm not sure which version of OS X I'm running but I do know I forgot to back up. Help me o-message board, you're my only hope!

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
First of all, open the Apple menu -> About this Mac, and tell us what OS X version you have.
If it is 10.6.x, you need the Snow Leopard DVD. Insert it, press the C key while your Mac is starting up, choose your language and go to Utilities menu (in the menu bar) -> Disk Utility.
If it is 10.7.x or higher, hold down Command and R keys while your Mac is starting up to boot up in OS X Recovery, and open Disk Utility.
After opening Disk Utility, choose your OS X partition in the sidebar (it is usually named "Macintosh HD") and press "Repair Disk". When it has finished, restart your Mac, make a backup of your files and try upgrading to OS X Yosemite.
The backup will help you in case you decide to go back to the OS X version you are using now. If you cannot make a backup and the disk repair does not work, you will have to format the hard disk.

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.

Two HDDs saying 'disk needs to be repaired' at same time / external drive.

Hello there,
I have had a strange problem within the last couple of days. Both my iMac which I use at the office and my MacBook Pro have had problems writing to an external FW800 drive which I work directly off [the error comes when I try and save from an application / try and copy / rename files on the drive]. The message is that either a problem occurred or that the filename is too long [it isn't]. When this happens I try and restart, but the disk causes the finder to hang.
This has happened with both machines [the iMac and MBP], and as a consequence - when I run disk utility on each machine, I get a message that the disk needs to be repaired:
Error: 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.
Has anybody had similar problems? Is this a coincidence? Or would blame point to the external drive?
The drive is a Lacie Rugged 250gb FW / USB. It does get rather hot - don't know if that should affect anything.
Many thanks,
Ben

Could this problem in turn cause the internal HDD problems I've been experiencing with the iMac and the MBP after the Lacie becomes unresponsive?
Or, your internal HD problems are transferring to the Ext.?
It's hard to say. I would at least do the following basic repairs to all your hard drives.......
Try using Disk Utility to do a Disk Repair, as shown in this link, while booted up on your install disk.
You could have some directory corruption. Let us know what errors Disk Utility reports and if DU was able to repair them. Disk Utility's Disk Repair is not perfect and may not find or repair all directory issues. A stronger utility may be required to finish the job.
After that Repair Permissions.
No need to report Permissions errors....we all get them.
Think it might have to be returned...
Yes I would return it just cause of the heat issue alone.
Dale

Disk needs to be repaired using the recovery HD

Hello,
I have received an error when running disk utility that says, "This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD." This issue has popped on a couple of times on my previous MacBooks and maybe once on my current one.
I have followed the suggested protocol (restart + command + r), and I choose disk utilities from the menu at start-up. I have both verified and repaired the disk (my HD), and disk utility says there are no errors; however, when I do a normal restart and run disk utilities again, I get the error message This disk needs to be repaired" again. I have cycled through this process and each time verify and repair disk on the Recovery HD indicates that nothing is wrong while verifying the disk on normal startup results in the same error. I computer has also been laggy.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

computer has also been laggy
When you have the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.
These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
          SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
          View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.
Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.
Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

I want to upgrade to mavericks but my disk needs to be repaired but i have the wrong disk

i want to upgrade to mavericks but my disk needs to be repaired with a disk. so i did a disk utility verify and it told me i needed to repair it with another disk.
but my mac was preinstalled with snowleopard and the disk that came with it is mac 10.5 so when i tried to do a start up with the disk it just freezes the moment i click on the start up disk. (did this by trying holding down option/alt button since holding down the C button just locks my screen to the gray screen)
and 'repair disk' is greyed out. and i read somewhere that you can't boot with a disk that is lower than what the mac is.
what can i do?
in case anyone asks for my model:
it is a macbook pro early 2011 model with preinstalled snowleopard

You need to boot using the 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD that you bought from the Apple Store.
If your machine had 10.5 when you got it then in order to upgrade to 10.6.8 you must have purchased 10.6. If you've lost that DVD you can buy it again from the Apple Store.

How to proceed from Disk repair "invalid directory item count" "this disk needs to be repaired"?

I'm trying to repair the hard drive on a MacBook running Mac OS X 10.6.8. To be honest I'm surprised the machine has lasted so long. It's very sluggish at the moment.
When verifying the hard drive, I get these details:
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Performing live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Invalid directory item count
(It should be 37 instead of 35)
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
"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."
How should I proceed from here? Is the only path to use a mac OS X installation disk (which I don't have, so would have to source and borrow)?
Many thanks

Get the disk and insert it in the optical drive, then restart holding down the C key. You will come to an install screen to pick language. Unless you want some other language click inter. Then before you go any further, look to the top of the screen for a drop down utilities menu. Go to disk utilities open an select your Internal hard drive use repair option in the menu and repair drive . You may have to do this more than once. If this will not repair you drive,you will need a third party repair tool such as disk warrior or a new drive.

Error:The Disk needs to be repaired

Hopefully someone can help guide me. I have been noticing a few more spinning beach balls. Nothing dramatic but as a recent convert to Mac (about 1 year) it has me frustrated. A few months ago they got worse and disk utility said my drive was corrupted. Disk utility could not resolve it and through a suggestion I rebooted from the install disk and it repaired the drive. Now with a routine check of disk utility I received a message like below. So I used disk utility from the start up disk to repair the error successfully. Now, just rechecking two days later, it appears that the error is back. Is this something to worry about? If so, it seems I need a more robust tool to repair the disk. Any suggestions? Anyway to tell which program might be causing this? Thanks in advance for any help offered.
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Performing live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume file count
(It should be 673026 instead of 673027)
Invalid volume directory count
(It should be 174521 instead of 174520)
The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Error: 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.

Thanks for your response. I finally received my DVD from Disk Warrior in the mail, ran the program and everything seems to be fixed and running more smoothly. Thanks for the tip. Sorry it took a bit to respond back. Thanks again.

"Error: This disk needs to be repaired."

Greetings
I ran the disk utility on my Macbook drive and got the following message;
Error: 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.
I have googled around but can't seem to find a concise way of doing this, everyone's going on about making new disk partitions?
I have my snow leopard install disk to hand, what is the simplest way to make this repair with my install disk?
Thank you!

The hatter wrote:
Install OS X on a 2nd drive and use that.
Note that there are a few drawbacks to this as well as the benefits:
1. Obviously, you need a second drive. It's great to have one for backups but there are other ways to back up your important data if your budget won't stretch to include the extra drive just yet. Plus, if it comes down to space for important backups vs. space for the OS & utilities, go for the first. That's the irreplaceable stuff!
2. Any software (including the OS) installed on a hard drive is subject to possible corruption, including the kind you are trying to repair. This is not true of software running from an installer DVD, since its contents can't be altered (short of physical damage). So, if the DVD boots the Mac & its included utilities run, you can be certain you are not using corrupted or damaged items. This is not true when you run from a second hard drive.
3. Because you can make intentional or inadvertent changes or additions to the OS on a hard drive, & because some of them can adversely affect its stability, just as in #2 you cannot trust the hard drive to be as safe to use as the DVD.
4. The DVD runs everything as the root user, without the need to log in to any user account. This is beneficial because similarly to #3, some user login items can interfere with normal operation. However, running as root user is dangerous unless you know exactly what you are doing. The DVD greatly reduces this danger by limiting what you can do while running from it to installing the OS or running the included (& known uncorrupted) utilities. this is not true if you run as root user from another hard drive.
So, it is a good idea to weigh the benefits of the second drive approach against the safety of the DVD one & choose which is best for you.

Error : disk needs to be repaired | macBook Pro 15"

Hello everybody,
when I try to verify my HD from the Disk Utility, it tells I have a problem and I get this message " this disk needs to be repaired using the recovery hd restart your computer..... " as shown in the photo below.
after restarting the computer and choosing Disk Utility, I first choosed to Verify and Repair the "Virtual Whole Disk" it worked well for both and the result was OK and the "Disk Status is : Online"
But the problem is I can't repaire the "OS X Base System", I can only verify. The button "Repaire Disk" is greyed out
Can someone help me solving this problem?
Thanks

Pretty difficult to tell. I'm guessing a serious mess-up in the directory structure and/or partition map. But that's just guesswork.
Can you still successfully boot from the Recovery HD? If so, then you can do the following:
Install or Reinstall OS X from Scratch
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 Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Erase the hard drive:
1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the
      left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on
      the Security button and set the Zero Data option to one-pass. Click on
      the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Install button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
           because it is three times faster than wireless.
This should install the version of OS X that you had installed.

This disk needs to be repaired:

I have just checked my hard drive and got this message:
Disk Utility has stopped verifying "Macintosh HD"
This disk needs to be repaired. Startup your computer with another disk (such as your Mac OS X installation disk), and then use Disk Utility to repair this disk.
I don't have the disk as I am in a remote part of Ireland miles from both my disk and an Apple store.
Now, my question is, if I update to 10.7 or later via the App Store - I'm currently using 10.6.8 - will I not need to use the OS X disk?

You can not install OS X in system without a properly verified and repaired disk.
Wait until you can get hold of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard disc to do the Disk Repair.

"Error: disk needs to be repaired.. "

When I run disk utility I got the message "Error disk needs to be repaired.." In addition i got the errors:
Incorrect number of file hard links
Volume bitmap needs minor repair for orphaned blocks
Invalid volume free block count
When I restart and after command R, I run the Disk utility but then it shows no errors, what is the problem then?. Thanks

Try removing these one at a time:
     /Home/Library/Containers/com.apple.iPhoto/
     /Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPhoto.plist and com.apple.iPhoto.LSSharedFileList.plist
     /Home/Pictures/iPhoto Library
Place one at a time into the Trash but do not Empty the Trash. Try to open and use iPhoto. If iPhoto works then the item you put in the Trash is the cause of the problem. If the problem turns out to be iPhoto Library, then you will need to look to a third-party utility that can fix the library.
To find the invisible library folder:
Exposing the /Home/Library/ Folder
Pick one of the following methods:
A. This method will make the folder visible permanently. Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder and paste the following at the command prompt:
chflags nohidden ~/Library
Press RETURN.
B. Click on the Desktop, press the OPTION (⌥) button, select Library from the Finder's Go menu.
C. Select Go To Folder from the Finder's Go menu. Paste the following in the path field:
~/Library
Press the Go button.

Disk needs to be repaired, but I don't have the OS X installation disc.

My MacBook Pro has been slow and crashing so I verified the HD. "Disc utility stopped verifying Macintosh HD. This disk needs to be repaired". I don't have the OS X (snow leopard) disc here, I don't have any friends with Macs nearby, and I'm not near an Apple store. Is there anything I can do? I will be able to get the disk tomorrow, but I need to finish a project today.
Also, if it makes any difference, before this Pages stopped working and I couldn't get it going even after Community help, then I tried to download OS X mountain Lion and couldn't get it to complete the upload, but I couldn't find a reason why even after checking the community board's answers to other people.
Thanks for any help.

Downloading Mt Lion will only cause more problems, because a lot of present software (and hardware drivers for printers, scanners etc) you might have will not work with it.
You will not be able to get a disk today, the disk you need is only available from Apple by calling them on the phone.
You have to find out your exact Mac model, like MacBook Pro 3,1 for instance, because the free MacTracker will tell you something very important, the version of OS X that came with the machine.
You see Intel Mac's that came originally with 10.6.2 or earleir can use the 10.6.3 white retail disk (sans the free iLife) which is easy and cheaper to get. Even Amazon will carry that if your in a rush and willing to pay more.
Mac's that came with 10.6.3+ need machine specific versions that can take longer to get from Apple, could cost more and include the free iLife suite.
If your machine came with 10.5, then the 10.6.3 white retail disks will do and you can extract iLife from the 10.5 disks with Pacifist from CharelsSoft in case it comes to a reinstall.
To boot from the 10.6 disk, hold c or option key down.
However if your computer can't be repaired via the disk, you might have to backup, erase and install 10.6 again.
I have published a HUGE amount of User Tips here to do just about any software repair on Mac's
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6
Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents

My start up disk Macintosh HD is full on my McAir OSX 10.9.4 memory 4GB. I need to clear the disk so that I can update it with the new software IOS 10.9.5 requiring 2.05GB. Need guidance on how to clear space.

My start up disk Macintosh HD is full on my McAir OSX 10.9.4 memory 4GB. I need to clear the disk so that I can update it with the new software IOS 10.9.5 requiring 2.05GB. Need guidance on how to clear space.

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article. If the Storage display seems to be inaccurate, try rebuilding the Spotlight index.
Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. Then restart the computer. That will temporarily free up some space.
According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation—not the mythical 10%, 15%, or any other percentage. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of the data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as Backups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Ask for instructions in that case.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) or GrandPerspective (GP) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one. Note that ODS only works with OS X 10.8 or later. If you're running an older OS version, use GP.
Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS or GP can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
Install the app you downloaded in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the corresponding line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
sudo /Applications/GrandPerspective.app/Contents/MacOS/GrandPerspective
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. Type carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator. Ignore any other messages that appear in the Terminal window.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size. It may take a few minutes for the app to finish scanning.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with the app, quit it and also quit Terminal.

When I did verify disk, it says "the disk needs to be repaired.." how do I repair it?

When I did verify disk, it says "the disk needs to be repaired.." how do I repair it?

If you verified via Disk Utility then the Repair button is right below the Verify button.
If you verified in some other manner then execute Disk Utility, select the disk, click on Repair.

Start up disk needs to be repaired by downloading new osx but will loose programs?

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