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Disk Utility: Error: "illegal name" - cannot fix !

Hi everyone,

well my G5 started losing menu items for no reason, so i put 'Disk Utility' to work, from another start-up drive, and this was the result: "volume could not be repaired" - here is the log:
______________________________________________________
Verify and Repair disk “Tiger_400”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Illegal name
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Repairing volume.
The volume Tiger_400 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
______________________________________________________

I have done an extensive search (and edit), of all possible 'offending text characters' in filenames, it has taken most of the day, these 400GB HD's and 500,000 files later...

any help will be greatly appreciated in tracking down the problem

many thanks...

Posted on Sep 22, 2005 1:08 AM

Reply
6 replies

Oct 16, 2005 12:50 PM in response to kwikg5

I have similar problem:

I run Disk Repait AND AppleJack and get the error:

Verify and Repair disk “Mac OS X”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Illegal name
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Repairing volume.
The volume Mac OS X could not be repaired.

Then I run TechTool 4.0.6 and from there is no complaints at all???

Ps. There is some thing messing with my hard drive for a long time now. I have changed the hard drive AND the RAM memory. But still I have this problems. Ds.

Oct 19, 2005 6:09 PM in response to kwikg5

"well my G5 started losing menu items for no reason, so i put 'Disk Utility' to work, from another start-up drive, and this was the result...."


What version of OS X was on the other start-up drive? To properly check HFS+ volumes used by Tiger, you'll need to use either Disk Utility from a volume running Tiger, or a volume running OS X 10.3.9. Versions prior to that do not have the proper support for the Extended Attributes file, and will often report problems that do not actually exist, were you to check the volume with the proper version of Disk Utility.

Hope this helps....

Oct 28, 2005 3:54 PM in response to MarkDouma®

Hi Everyone,

many thanks for your help, but nothing worked, but i have it fixed now after 'racking my brains, losing all my hair...'

the problem was bad blocks on the hard drive ( 24 to be exact !), that eventually corrupted the start-up authentication files, locked me out of my HD, but into a black screen, etc... F@*Kit !

so how did i fix it you ask ? - simple: start up from system DVD, do 'archive and install' a new system, start up from another drive, update it to 10.4.2 (att: this needs to be done !), and the error message has never come back, so whatever it was, it has something to do with corrupted files, as there is no other explanation for it, as all my data still remains on the HD

once i remove all my mail etc from the HD, it is getting the full treatment again, e.g. zeroed drive etc, new system...

hope this helps anyone else in the same situation, and thanks again

Disk Utility: Error: "illegal name" - cannot fix !

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