Startup screen hangs, disk repair reports "invalid b-tree node size"

[Dybbuk]

I was using my MacBook last night and all of a sudden everything started to run very slowly. I powered it off and powered it back on, the Apple came up and pinwheel was spinning indefinitely. I've tried powering on and off, resetting PRAM and PMU and that didn't work.

I finally found my OS X disks this morning and tried to do a repair via Disk Utility, but it reports an error, "invalid b-tree node size" and won't repair the disk. I can't reinstall OS X, my HDD doesn't show up.

I don't have any files backed up (yeah, yeah ... I don't have a way to do this right now). Is there any way to fix this, or am I screwed?

 

[abijnk]

This happened to me a few months ago on my MBA. Turned out the hard drive was d-e-a-d. I know the feeling too, I had about 1600 photos on there that hadn't been backed up (go me!). I doubt you are going to find any useful solutions on here. I would suggest making an appointment at a genius bar.

 

[Dybbuk]

That's what I was afraid of ...

No genius bar here (Canada), will take it down to local Apple repair centre tomorrow and see if they can do anything to at least get some files off there.

Looks like it's time to get Leopard and Time Capsule, but I'm broke.

 

[Dybbuk]

Brought it in today. Dead. Lesson learned, ugh.

 

[runplaysleeprun]

I had something similar happen to me, and disk utility didn't fix it. I tried, I believe, an old techtool pro copy I had by booting the computer in target disk mode and repairing the disk via another Mac. It took a few times through the program, but it eventually did the trick. I wouldn't necessarily put 100% faith in the repair shops.

 

[doykitlee]

you can try DISK WARRIOR, it works!