Hard drive problem, will not load OS X (10.4)

[narsil]

Okay, I'm supposed to be specific when describing my problem, so here goes nothing.

Last night, (more than 24 hours ago by now), my macbook took a spill from a counter top, after which it seemed perfectly fine. It was on when it fell, and it continued to be on for some time while I surfed the internet and such like usual until I went to bed, at which point I merely closed the lid, successfully putting it to sleep. It woke up fine in the morning and continued working like a charm until tonight, when, after closing the lid, it did not completely go to sleep. That happens sometimes when I close and then quickly open the macbook, and is easily resolved by re-closing the macbook and/or abusing the escape button a little. This time, however, it would not wake up or finish going to sleep, so I eventually did the forced shutdown thing by holding the power button down. It shut down like it was supposed to, but when I turned it back on, it would not go past the gray screen with the apple logo and the little spinning dots thing. I shut it off and on a couple more times, but to no avail. Next, I turned it on with Alt+Power, and tried loading from there. It lead to the same results, so I put the installation disc in and Alt+Powered again. It did let me load the disc, and that leads me to my first question: What am I supposed to repair? (I'm just assuming this is the best way to proceed. Alternate solutions are also welcome)

Should I:
A. Verify disc
B. Verify disc permissions
C. Repair disc
D. Repair disc permissions
C. some combination of the above.

Also, which disc am I supposed to repair? Is it the one called FUJITSU MHW2120BH Media, or is it the disc that lists the capacity, available, and used space?

Basically, I just want to get it working again without erasing the data that I've got. I haven't tried everything else yet either (booting in safe mode?), but I just wanted some advice before I went wild on the thing.

Finally, I know that it would be a good idea to try and back up some files to another mac, but that probably wont be possible right now.

Thanks,
Luke

 

[misterredman]

I'd say try the "Repair disc". About selecting the disc the one named FUJITSU is the Harddrive itself, while the entries below (those with the names you actually see in finder) are the volume (partitions) found on that Harddrive. By selecting FUJITSU all of the volume in that hard disc will be checked, so this should be a good choice.

Also check the SMART status in the left bottom corner of DiskUtility (should be Verified). If it's not Verified you drive is failing.


If you manage to boot immediatly backup important data.

 

[H&Kie]

After repairing your disk, repairing permissions of the disk that's listed under the "FUJITSU MHW2120BH" wouldn't hurt. Errors in the permissions can result in unexpected issues at any time.
It's also a good habit to repair permissions before you do system updates.

 

[narsil]

Okay, I tried repairing the FUJITSU disc, but that didn't work because it couldn't unmount (I don't remember the exact error message). So next I tried to repair the disk underneath it, and it started repairing. However, after it said "Checking Catalog file" it said "Invalid node structure" and then "Rebuilding Catalog B-tree." Now it just keeps on saying "Invalid node structure" again and again with "Invalid record count" every once in a while.

What should I do? Should I stop the repair?

 

[narsil]

Alright, here's an update. The repair disc stopped, and this is what it said:

Invalid node structure (There were more before this one)
The volume could not be repaired

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit


1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error
Repair attempted on 1 volume
1 volume could not be repaired

And now the "Owners Enabled," "Number of Folders," "Available," "Used," and "Number of Files" all show "-" where they used to show numbers and stuff. Help! Am I toast? What do I do now?

 

[narsil]

My apologies for posting again, but I'm desperately desiring some help here. As per the recommendations of other members and the descriptions in my previous posts, I have attempted to repair the disc after OS X (10.4) would not load. Though I am not sure, I suspect that this action worsened the situation. Besides the things I mentioned in the post before this, the Mount Point now says "Not mounted" instead of "Volumes" or whatever it said before. Basically, all I want now is to be able to boot OS X and NOT delete all my data (if that hasn't already happened/isn't already unavoidable). Any suggestions are welcome. All I've done so far is try to repair the disc, but after seeing how well that went, I'm to scared to try anything else without getting some advice first.

Thanks,
Luke

BTW, my warranty expired exactly five (yes, "5") days ago. And that gives me a very warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

 

[H&Kie]

The only thing I can think of at this moment, is booting your MacBook in "target mode". You do so by pressing the "T" key just after your startup chime sounds. Keep the "T" pressed until you see a large FireWire logo on your screen. In this condition, your MacBook acts like an external harddisk, that you can connect to another Mac using a FireWire cable. You do need a Firewire cable and a second Mac though.

You won't be helped booting your MacBook this way, but when you're in luck, you could rescue your data. I hope this helps.

 

[misterredman]

If disk utility didn't do the trick you should get a copy of Disk Warrior. I read it's the only way to resolve "Invalid Structure Node" problems.