disk utility question. . .
 

my macbook pro will not boot from the hard drive so i boot the system from the leopard disk and i am running disk utility to try to repair the disk. After running for about 5 minutes the filesystem reports back that it cannot verify or repair. the details to the repair go as follows:

Checking journaled HFS plus volume
checking extents overflow file
checking catalog file
Invalid node structure
rebuilding catalog B-tree
The volume could not be repaired

I am not mac wiz; does anyone have any ideas as to how I can some how boot from the disk so that i can back up all my files onto my external? I have another hard drive on the way and I would like to try anything before i take the current one to a data recovery shop. Would diskwarrior be an option for me?

You should do "Repair Disk" (different from "Repair Disk Permissions"!) in Disk Utility when booted from the Install CD/DVD. I.e. you restart from the Install CD/DVD, then run the version of Disk Utility that is available from one of the menus there (in 10.4.x, it's the Utilities menu), then go to the First Aid tab, select your boot drive, and click "Repair Disk" (NOT Repair Disk Permissions). If Repair Disk finds any errors at all, repeat the repair until no errors are found.
See this Apple doc:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

It has been my experience that Disk Utility can rarely repair this sort of B-tree error, but that DiskWarrior usually can. I strongly suggest that you purchase a copy of DiskWarrior from Alsoft (www.alsoft.com). It is not a free solution, but it is money well spent.

Joe VanZandt

Repair disk is what i have been trying to perform. its my understanding that repairing disk permissions might erase the hard drive. I think DW may be one of my last options. Is running DW pretty logical straight forward?

Repairing disk permissions, while completely useless at this point, won't erase your hard disk drive. DiskWarrior comes on a bootable optical disk; you boot from that disk and allow it to analyze and repair the affected disk. It -will- take some time, so be prepared to be patient. The exact amount of time depends on how much DW must repair. In one of it's only flaws, it gives relatively little feedback about its progress, but it -will- tell you if it cannot complete the task for some reason, so do not assume it is not doing anything if the screen remains pretty much static for long periods of time.

Joe VanZandt

This is not accurate. Where did this understanding come from?

edit: beaten

B-tree errors are tricky. Is your drive making any sort of clicking or other noises?

I had this happen to me on an iBook G4 a few years ago. I was going to buy DiskWarrior but instead decided to spend a few more dollars on a new MacBook since the hard drive sounded as though it had physical problems as well as file structure problems. (I also wanted an Intel processor since all of my other Macs were PPCs or 68ks and my optical drive died one day later, so I figured I would be better off with a new machine).

Consider the drive's physical health by taking a good listen to it. You may be better off replacing the drive altogether (which I ultimately did with the iBook before my cousin got it).

If you've got important data, back it up ASAP. If the drive doesn't work well enough to run the system reliably consider connecting it to another Mac and using FireWire to mount your Mac as a hard drive. This was the only way I could access files on my drive with a bad B-tree after some time.

While I think that a new MacBook is more than a "few more dollars" than DiskWarrior, your point that the error could in some cases point to hardware problems is accurate, but not all such errors indicate drive failure. DiskWarrior does a pretty good job of warning you if the drive is having communication problems, which is useful in deciding the health of the drive. Not all drives make unpleasant sounds as the fail. I still believe that DiskWarrior is an extremely useful utility to own. All file systems on all platforms are subject to corruption and it sure is nice to have something on hand that can help one recover from that eventuality.

Joe VanZandt

If you do decide to get DiskWarrior, and if it doesn't solve the problem, be sure to contact AlSoft. I hear they have excellent customer support reps that know what they are talking about.

DW has been my friend since OS X came to be and has saved me many times. It is one of the best spent money with macs ever.
Then there are things to do if you have external drive. You can install OS X to that drive and start fron there and try to recover important files from your main drive and then reinstalling OS X. If your HDD is not physically broken then this should get you going again.
Or if you have another mac then try to boot you problematic drive as a target disk and then recover files and reinstall.

Joe should have added that "long periods of time" is not 5 minutes, it is many, many hours, possibly stretching to days. Start it, then go away* until it says "success" or "failure".

*beach, skiing, Tonga etc.

Acme is entirely correct to clarify this. It doesn't ALWAYS take days, but it occasionally does. But hours is a pretty good bet.

Joe VanZandt

Ok, my disk warrior finally came. When i start it up it does not detect my hard drive. I found while attempting to boot from the os x disc that disk utility has been temperamental as far as detecting the hard drive. In other words, Sometimes it sees it and other times it doesn't. Is it possible that the hard drive could some how be loose? any suggestions?

Certainly that's possible, but somewhat unlikely in a MacBook as there isn't just a lot of space for connectors to loosen. You could certainly try re-seating it to be sure. It sounds a lot more likely, I hate to say it, that the drive electronics are failing. DiskWarrior is VERY good at finding attached disks. Since Disk Utility has been spotty about finding it, it sure makes it sound like a physical problem with the disk, most likely the on-board controller. If that is true--well, there aren't a lot of user-options to deal with that other than replacing the drive, I fear.

Joe VanZandt

update: just repeating the process, i was able to start diskwarrior. The hard drive was detected and now its rebuilding the drive. right now it says speed reduced by disk malfunction 20.

That's good news! Most people suggest considering replacing the drive when you get that error. It may indicate drive failure; at the least, it indicates some bad blocks are present. So, you may want to make plans to retrieve all important data to another drive if you have one and decide whether the current drive is trustworthy. At the price of drives these days, taking chances isn't worth it for most people.

Joe VanZandt

Yup, already have the replacement ready to go and my external is ready for a quick transfer. Ok its still running after about 30 hours and is says speed reduced by disk malfunction:486. does this tell me at all how close it is to being complete?

No, not really. It is some sort of count of errors it has encountered, but I don't know precisely what it measures. I've seem much higher numbers, but I don't know how to correlate that to a time-to-completion estimate. But your experience is not uncommon; when DiskWarrior is repairing the file system on a disk with hardware problems of some sort, it does it VERY slowly. If the drive actually becomes unreachable by DW, it will give you an indication of that.

Joe VanZandt

. . . still running after over 100 hours. . . now says disk malfunction 1680. . . is this still looking good?

No, but neither is it looking hopeless. 100 hours is the longest I've heard of, I have to admit, and I don't know WHAT I would do in your position. DiskWarrior isn't doing any damage to your disk (it doesn't write anything until it completes the analysis), so you could terminate it if you have other data recovery options you'd rather pursue. It may be that Data Rescue 2 would be another option for recovering what can be recovered, though it won't rebuild the file system. They give a free-trial period so you could at leas discover whether it could save the data before deciding whether to purchase it. This sounds like a real mess; I hope it all works out alright in the end.

Joe VanZandt

I've heard of DiskWarrior taking something over a week when having to deal with disk malfunction. My advice is to let it keep working.

Trevor