Disk Utility sees problem invisible to Disk Warrior?

Hi Tom,
Yes, I installed Adobe CS3 yesterday, just before this all happened. But they seem to be working fine. In fact, the only 'symptom' I've noticed (other than DU telling me dire things about my startup volume) is that I get the spinning beachball quite a lot in Finder. But even that's improved now. Mysterious!

Jason

Dual G5 2.5Ghz 2GB RAM, Powerbook G4 1.33Ghz, iPod 60GB Mac OS X (10.4.8) 500GB internal HDD

Update: symptoms seemed to be occurring (like VERY sluggish Finder) so I installed the 10.4.9 PPC combo update. Disk Utility still says 'underlying task reported failure on exit'.
I had emailed Alsoft (makers of Disk Warrior) who replied to say DW was working perfectly... but I'm not convinced they'd read my email fully. (Trying to sort out which bits of this are a distraction, I think first to go are the things about permissions - that seems to me unlikely to be a problem now because I've successfully run repair permissions from Onyx and Preferential Treatment reports that everything's fine on the system preferences.)
The thing I keep coming back to is that 'underlying task reported failure on exit' message in DU which also says 'incorrect number of extended attributes'.

Anyone?

Dual G5 2.5Ghz 2GB RAM, Powerbook G4 1.33Ghz, iPod 60GB Mac OS X (10.4.8) 500GB internal HDD

Hey thanks for the idea, macjack.
I tried the test on Disk Warrior (the manual diagnostic tab) and it said everything was fine... but it looks to me as if it's just checking the SMART status ("verified").
I ran the extended test in Apple Hardware Test (1hr+ ) and the results looked fine ("The extended test has been completed and no hardware problems have been found.")

Then I thought that maybe my copy of Disk Utility might be damaged, so I trashed the plist but it's made no difference: it's still reporting underlying task reported failure, and inaccurate extended attributes.
This time I watched Activity Monitor while it was running, and noticed that fsck_hsf ran smoothly throughout the process while Disk Utility went red and non-responsive fairly quickly, before the failure message came up.
Does that offer a clue?

Thanks for your help


Dual G5 2.5Ghz 2GB RAM, Powerbook G4 1.33Ghz, iPod 60GB Mac OS X (10.4.8) 500GB internal HDD

Hi Andrew,
Many thanks for this idea. The problem's on the G5 that shipped with Panther installed and now that you mention it, I've been using DU from the install CDs (ie original, Panther ones) not from the Tiger DVD.
It's unbelievably annoying, but the reason I did this was because I've just been out of the country for 3 months - I took my laptop and the Tiger DVD with me in case of problems and posted it back to myself in the UK but it's now being held by customs who want me to pay import tax on it! I'll be able to sort this out, but that's why I reached for the old CDs.
Anyway, but I'm not certain this would help because I get the same result from DU on the CD and from DU run ('verify') internally. They both quote the same 'incorrect number of extended attributes' and give the same failure message.
As for not using Warrior (v3.0.3) until after DU reports that everything's ok, I'm afraid it's too late for that.





Dual G5 2.5Ghz 2GB RAM, Powerbook G4 1.33Ghz, iPod 60GB Mac OS X (10.4.8) 500GB internal HDD

Hi Allan,
Sure thing. Here's the business.

Disk Warrior (v3.0.3)
DW reports that it's successfully rebuilt a new directory each time I run it. I've run it three times now. The first time, there were differences between the original directory and the rebuilt version and it displayed a message coloured red describing this. On the subsequent two occasions, it has displayed a message coloured green and said there are "no changes to the number or contents of the files and folders" in the rebuilt directory.
DW's manual diagnostic reports that the drive itself is "operating normally."

DU
Running DU internally (from the volume that also contains 10.4.9), it can only 'verify', of course. The volume's name is 'G5 hard drive'. The full message is:

Verifying volume “G5 hard drive”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
%)
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Incorrect number of Extended Attributes
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
d.",1)
G5 hard drive
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit

1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair

Running DU (repair disk) from the install CD (for Powermac G5, OS X 10.3.5) produces the following report:

Repairing disk for "G5 hard drive"
Checking HFS plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierachy
Checking extent attributes file
Invalid leaf record count
(It should be 3 instead of 422)
Repairing volume
The volume G5 hard drive was repaired successfully

Repair attempted on 2 volumes
1 HFS volume repaired
1 HFS volume could not be repaired



So let's say that DW is doing it all right, and the copy of DU on the install CD (10.3.5) is producing an inaccurate result because it doesn't match up with Tiger, I can understand that. But why would the same problem come up with DU run internally from (in the course of the last 24 hours) both 10.4.8 and 10.4.9 (because the problem survived my upgrade)?
On the other hand, Allan, possibly DW isn't the right tool for the job. In that case, do you know what is?

Thanks,

Jason



Dual G5 2.5Ghz 2GB RAM, Powerbook G4 1.33Ghz, iPod 60GB Mac OS X (10.4.9) 500GB internal HDD

Wow, I can follow that. But Boece, (and excuse my lack of experience here), is my machine ok?
I mean, I just want it to work, which it's doing ok now. I'm just scared that the disk's about to fail or do something drastic. What would you do?

Jason




Dual G5 2.5Ghz 2GB RAM, Powerbook G4 1.33Ghz, iPod 60GB Mac OS X (10.4.9) 500GB internal HDD

And also, if DW's 'fix' renders DU unusable or unreliable, then I won't know if and when I DO develop a problem on the disk - I'll be flying blind, if you like. Not exactly comforting.