Boot Camp may have messed up my HD...pls help!

[ckeck]

I have a new iMac with a clean install of Leopard...been using it for ~2 weeks...everything works great, no issues at all.

Today, I opened the Boot Camp assistant and tried to create the Windows partition...I got a basic error that said it could not create the partition.

So I opened Disk Utility, repaired permissions and rebooted...now the iMac just reboots over and over and over...never making it into Mac OS...

I booted off the Mac OS X CD...tried to repair the disk and I'm getting this error:

Invalid node structure
Volume check failed.
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.

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Why is this happening and any ideas how I can fix this without erasing and re-installing? I have a TON of important data on this computer

 

[xUKHCx]

You could try FSCK.

It is always best to have backups especially when messing around with partitions.

 

[Cleverboy]

Why is this happening and any ideas how I can fix this without erasing and re-installing? I have a TON of important data on this computer

EDIT: I'd have thought your data was lost, but I noticed you said that you fixed permissions on the device. That implies that the file system is still being recognized. I missed that. It sounds like you need to make a COPY of the drive, and then low-level REFORMAT it. If you need to buy an external hard drive to swing it, then that's what you need to do (or borrow one). I wouldn't perform another operation on it until I'd attempted to COPY my valuable data off. It could make things worse if its currently possible to perform a "successful" run-through of permissions fixing.

You could try FSCK.
It is always best to have backups especially when messing around with partitions.

Great tip, xUKHCx. I've gotten entirely out of touch with the boot key commands available in this Unix-era MacOS.

~ CB

 

[xUKHCx]

Odds are that you're up a creek with ALL of your data on that drive. You're likely going to need to low-level format it simply to make it usable again. You can access the "disk utility" program from the installation boot CD.

There are things we can try before doing this which will almost certainly screw the data.

 

[Cleverboy]

There are things we can try before doing this which will almost certainly screw the data.

You're right. I'd updated my post when I realized that I missed the detail that he'd performed a successful permissions fix. I thought the drive had been left unmountable and not simply unbootable. I should read things more carefully.

~ CB

 

[ckeck]

Ok...so I booted to the command line and ran FSCK...it spit out the same errors as the "Repair/Verify Disk" utility off the Mac OS CD...

I can see all my data though from the command line...any other ideas??

 

[xUKHCx]

Ok...so I booted to the command line and ran FSCK...it spit out the same errors as the "Repair/Verify Disk" utility off the Mac OS CD...

I can see all my data though from the command line...any other ideas??

So it spat out the exact same errors (?) it didn't fix them, did you add the options –fy

 

[ckeck]

So it spat out the exact same errors (?) it didn't fix them, did you add the options –fy

Yes

 

[ckeck]

Well, I took my iMac to the store this evening and after they poked with it for a while they just offered to give me a brand new one.

I didn't want to deal with the hassle of re-installing everything but that was a good enough offer. I was planning to head out there and buy an external drive for Time Machine anyhow, so I picked one up and had them dump all my data on it for the mean time.

I believe just formatting and re-installing would have fixed it but they didn't seem to feel like messing with it (was fairly busy).

So now all is well...and a brand new iMac (fyi, my other iMac was only about 2.5 weeks old).