Repair Startup Volume in Lion

[hthomas]

I was running onyx in Lion tonight and it says I need to repair my startup volume with disk utility from the osx leopard disk. can I do this and fix it while running lion? will it erase all my data or will be ok?

very confused.

 

[Intell]

You should backup all of your data before doing any disk work. It is ok to fix the startup volume with your Leopard disc, even if the current OS is Lion.

To do that, put the reinstallation dvd in the drive and reboot the Mac while holding down the C key. It should then startup into the Leopard installation. Select your language. When you get to the Installer screen, click the Utilities menu and open Disk Utility. From there you should be able to repair your startup volume.

 

[hthomas]

You should backup all of your data before doing any disk work. It is ok to fix the startup volume with your Leopard disc, even if the current OS is Lion.

To do that, put the reinstallation dvd in the drive and reboot the Mac while holding down the C key. It should then startup into the Leopard installation. Select your language. When you get to the Installer screen, click the Utilities menu and open Disk Utility. From there you should be able to repair your startup volume.

thanks for your help. this might be a stupid thing to ask, but how to a backup my mac? I've tried time machine but never could figure it out. is there an easier way?

 

[Intell]

thanks for your help. this might be a stupid thing to ask, but how to a backup my mac? I've tried time machine but never could figure it out. is there an easier way?

There are no such things as stupid questions. Remember, we where all pink, pooping, stupid, crying, things once.

You could try Carbon Copy Cloner. It can clone or copy your hard drive on to a blank hard drive. It can also make an image of your computer for storage on an external drive. I've found it to be pretty reliable and easy to use.

 

[tygrubb]

You may not necessarily have to boot off another disk to effect a repair. I was able to boot into Lion's recovery partition (reboot and hold down the Option key, then select 'Recovery HD') and run Disk Utility to repair my startup disk's file system.

It confuses me that that should even be possible, as I figured that the recovery partition would be on the very disk to be repaired. Dish Utility doesn't see the partition, so either it's hidden somehow (which I don't like the idea of) or the 'Recovery HD' is actually a mounted ramdisk loaded from a file on the disk that Lion is installed on (most likely).