Can't repair Mac HD

Robbie_2327 · Post by **Robbie_2327** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 12:20 pm

Hi all

I've never had a problem with my imac (knocking on wood). I just purchased a second external hard drive and a copy of snow leopard and DP 7. I was told that before I upgrade my OS I should make a copy of my existing HD just to play it safe.

So, I set up the new external Glyph 500 this morning. Made 4 partitions and read some info on how to properly copy my Mac HD. I started off by running disk utilities to verify and repair the disk. Well....it didn't work. To make a long day short here, I tried to run disk utilities from my OS X install DVD that came with my Mac and it tells me "Invalid Sibling Link" "Volume Check Failed" and the repair button is grayed out.

Any thoughts here on the best way to proceed? As I mentioned, I've never had anything odd happen on this computer and I've spent a lot of time searching the net for info and have seen all sorts of suggestions. Should I say "screw it" and just copy the files that I need from the HD and reformat it with Snow Leopard? Or should I just copy the hard drive as is and upgrade?

Any thoughts or input would be much appreciated as my copy of DP 7 is itching to come out of its box.

Thanks,
Robbie

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 12:53 pm

If you have Disk Warrior that is probably your last best chance of repair. You could clone as a backup and I personally would probably do a Time Machine backup and restore after reformatting the internal drive IF it checks out healthy after the reformat.

Maybe someine eose has a less severe idea.

Robbie_2327 · Post by **Robbie_2327** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 1:01 pm

I don't have disk warrior. Hoping to not drop another $100 if possible

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 1:18 pm

I hear that! Haven't needed to buy it yet but those who have sweqr by it. If I was in your shoes I'd consider it.

cuttime · Post by **cuttime** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 1:31 pm

Sometimes you can repair a drive by making a clone, formatting the original drive and zeroing it out, then copying the drive from the clone. Good luck! YMMV.

kgdrum · Post by **kgdrum** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 2:52 pm

+1
DW great app

macguy · Post by **macguy** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 6:48 pm

Robbie_2327 wrote:I don't have disk warrior. Hoping to not drop another $100 if possible

I'd have DW anyway because it is an indispensable tool for HD directory repairs in which this sounds like a directory issue. Recording audio to disk calls for tools to fix them... just part of the territory.

Robbie_2327 · Post by **Robbie_2327** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 6:56 pm

Well, I bit the bullet. I bought disk warrior. I'm installing a fresh install of Leopard on one of the partitions on my new hard drive so I can run DW from it to fix my main HD. Of course than I still need to upgrade to snow leopard and DP 7. All I need now is an application to recover all of the outstanding music that I'm sure I would have certainly written had I not been dealing with this for most of the day

Robbie_2327 · Post by **Robbie_2327** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 8:04 pm

Wow! Disk Warrior says that it cannot replace the original directory because of disk malfunction. I find it so strange that I never ran into any problems on this computer. So does this mean that I need a new internal HD or can I just reformat it with snow leopard and move on?

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 9:04 pm

If it is a corrupted directory or bad sector that can be marked and not used or something like that you can probably use the drive bit I'd relegate it for a work disk or a temp holding disk (scratch disk) if you have a bad sector. Otherwise a reformat that overwrites corrupted data should be fine.

macguy · Post by **macguy** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 6:50 am

If you can start up from the drive or copy a file to and from it, I'd use CCC to clone the drive so you can push the image back to the new drive if it is a failing mechanism... beats swapping installers all day he he. You may be able to salvage the image... cross your fingers!

Robbie_2327 · Post by **Robbie_2327** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 7:15 am

I don't think I can start from that drive anymore since its not visible when I boot from the external, right?

macguy · Post by **macguy** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:45 am

Robbie_2327 wrote:I don't think I can start from that drive anymore since its not visible when I boot from the external, right?

It may just be stubborn to mount!
Once you boot from your new OSX installation, you'll hopefully see the drive by using Disk Utility and try to "mount" it then if it can be, you can use some utilities to recover the data on the drive, then reformat if it's not DOA. IMHO, I'd just toss it if you can recover anything off it... HD's are CHEAP these days.

bad andy · Post by **bad andy** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 2:56 pm

Sounds like there might be a hardware issue in the drive. As suggested, if you can run CCC (carbon copy cloner) do it and make an image file for backup.

Then when booting the Mac, hold cmd-s. you'll see a black screen with white writing. The machine is booting to single-user mode. When it appears to stop, at the cursor type FSCK -FY

let it run and see if it can fix the directory.

Robbie_2327 · Post by **Robbie_2327** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 3:04 pm

bad andy wrote:Sounds like there might be a hardware issue in the drive. As suggested, if you can run CCC (carbon copy cloner) do it and make an image file for backup.

Then when booting the Mac, hold cmd-s. you'll see a black screen with white writing. The machine is booting to single-user mode. When it appears to stop, at the cursor type FSCK -FY

let it run and see if it can fix the directory.

I tried that already and it didn't work

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