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Is my HD broken

M

mac2thefuture

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 15, 2007
1,106
30
Lancashire, North West, UK
Having to boot via install discs again for no apparent reason. Got disc utility via install discs and did repair disc. I got the following report

invalid node structure, rebuilding catalog B tree
invalid node struture, invalid key length, invalid node structure, the volume macintosh HD could not be repaired
Error-the underlying task reported failure on exit
1) HFS volume checked.
1 volume could nor be repaired because of an error

Repaired attempted on 1 volume
1 volume could not be repaired.

Why has this happened? Thought macs were supposed to be more reliable than the comp hence the higher price. 24 inch iMac 2d2 2.5 yrs old.
What's the expected cost of repair UK price?
Thanks for any help you may give but not happy as this is the third weekend where it's just given up with the blue screen of death!
 
On all 3 instances the system was woken from sleep mode and was unresponsive at desktop. I had to to a hard restart, that's when I got the light blue screen. I did a another hard restart holding option key and the windows partition works. I tried the mac HD again but to no avail. Hard restart again followed by complete black screen with a White cursor flashing in top left corner. That's when I did the start via OSX discs to run disk utility which gave the info stated in first post. I'm as far from being as expert as you can be, that's why I'm an apple fan as most things just work with little intuition required. But this is turning out to be time consuming and I did think that there' be plenty left in the tank to pass on to my daughter. That's why I'm after a costing for potential repair in ££. Times are hard.
 
The question you really want to ask is if your hard drive is mechanically failing, which is leading to the data corruption and causing your crashing problems, or if you just have data corruption caused by a software issue and the hard drive is fine. If it's just software, there's no point in replacing the hard drive.

The good news is if it is a failing hard drive the replacement is relatively inexpensive--the new drive only costs about US$100, and while labor on that particular model is probably on the high side it shouldn't be prohibitive (you could even do it yourself, if you're feeling confident). I'm assuming you didn't get the Applecare extended warranty (if you did, Apple should fix it for free if it's only been 2.5 years).

Before you do anything else, make sure you have any important data off the computer backed up. If not, use Windows or whatever other method to make a backup and set that aside as insurance.

I'd try booting from the Apple Hardware Test disc that came with the computer and let it run a long test--this won't always find issues, but there's at least some chance it will. If it says there's a problem with X component, then it's time for a repair.

If it checks out ok, then maybe you're ok on that front, though the question would then be why the drive got so badly corrupted (the journaled file system should prevent this from happening in most situations). At that point, it's probably a good idea to wipe the Macintosh HD partition and do a completely fresh OS install from the discs you have. If you have an external hard drive you can make a clone before doing this, then use Migration Assistant to bring your files and settings back over, so it should end up almost exactly the way you left it.

Note that Archive and Install won't do it; that would just put a fresh OS on a corrupted filesystem, which will inevitably lead to more problems down the line if not immediately.
 
If you have 10.5, I would buy a new drive and an external enclosure. Put the new drive in the enclosure, install OS X and move over all the data you need. Then get the new drive installed in the iMac and then take the old drive and put in the enclosure. So you are swapping them from where they initially were. Use the iMac and make sure that you don't need anything off of the original drive. Once you have determined that you don't, format it and use it with TM. This way you always have a backup of your important data. If the TM (original drive) starts to have issues again, then you know the drive was going bad. Then you can buy another to continue having a backup and using TM.

The same drives are used by all of the manufacturers. There are not that many drive manufacturers out there.

With the Mac only 2.5 years old, you might be able to get the drive manufacturer to replace it. I would still buy a replacement first and then worry about trying to get a replacement.
 
Before you do anything else, make sure you have any important data off the computer backed up. If not, use Windows or whatever other method to make a backup and set that aside as insurance.

^^^
Very interested in this procedure - as windows is the only way I can use my iMac.
After the last two clean instals of Tiger, I made two different log ons but I can't access either to my knowledge.
How can I make a back up via windows partition-Thanks
 
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