I'm having problems repairing an external disk on Leopard

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Level 1

106 points

I'm having problems repairing an external disk on Leopard

I'm running Mac OS X 10.5.2 on a PowerMac G5 and I have an external Maxtor OneTouch III 1-Terabyte drive that I use for Time Machine. I noticed that the drive didn't mount when I powered up. I ran Disk Utility and tried to Verify the disk. It reported "Invalid node structure" upon verify. I tried to repair the disk and I got:

Invalid node structure
Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
The volume Backup could not be repaired
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.

I would like to run fsck on it, but how do I tell what the device name is? How can I turn a Connection ID shown in Disk Utility into a /dev/rdisk#s# device that I can give to fsck?

.... time passes ......

Okay, well never mind. I used "pdisk -l" to find the unmounted disk and also figured out which partition contained the filesystem. I ran fsck_hfs on the raw disk partition and got this:

$ fsck_hfs /dev/rdisk12s10
** /dev/rdisk12s10
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
(4, 27990)
** Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
Invalid record count
(4, 21605)
Invalid record count
(4, 21606)
Invalid record count
(4, 22719)
Invalid record count
(4, 22720)
** The volume Backup could not be repaired.

I'm not sure what to try next. Anyone know of a disk repair utility that might at least get farther than fsck? I noticed that the man page said that fsck sometimes can't repair the disk.

Any pointers or tips would be appreciated. Thanks!

Message was edited by: kae

Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on May 1, 2008 8:31 PM

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Answer 1

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

May 1, 2008 8:43 PM in response to kae

kae wrote:
I'm running Mac OS X 10.5.2 on a PowerMac G5 and I have an external Maxtor OneTouch III 1-Terabyte drive that I use for Time Machine. I noticed that the drive didn't mount when I powered up. I ran Disk Utility and tried to Verify the disk. It reported "Invalid node structure" upon verify. I tried to repair the disk and I got:

Invalid node structure
Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
The volume Backup could not be repaired
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.

I would like to run fsck on it, but how do I tell what the device name is? How can I turn a Connection ID shown in Disk Utility into a /dev/rdisk#s# device that I can give to fsck?

.... time passes ......

Okay, well never mind. I used "pdisk -l" to find the unmounted disk and also figured out which partition contained the filesystem. I ran fsck_hfs on the raw disk partition and got this:

$ fsck_hfs /dev/rdisk12s10
** /dev/rdisk12s10
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
(4, 27990)
** Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
Invalid record count
(4, 21605)
Invalid record count
(4, 21606)
Invalid record count
(4, 22719)
Invalid record count
(4, 22720)
** The volume Backup could not be repaired.

I'm not sure what to try next. Anyone know of a disk repair utility that might at least get farther than fsck? I noticed that the man page said that fsck sometimes can't repair the disk.

Any pointers or tips would be appreciated. Thanks!

Message was edited by: kae

It could be a hosed drive. Sure sounds like one.
i would suggest running fsck_hfs on it although some might say it does not matter.
fsck_hfs is supposed to be the correct fsck for the hfs file structure.
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/fsck_hfs .8.html

You might also invest in DiskWarrior as a repair tool
If you cannot repair the filesystem, then immediately get another drive for TM to backup your system so you have something to fall back on.
Copy whatever you can from your Maxtor and then erase it, repartition it and see if it works OK.
There is some question about Maxtor's reliability. i prefer LaCie.

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Answer 2

kae Author

Level 1

106 points

May 5, 2008 10:07 AM in response to nerowolfe

fsck_hfs didn't get any farther. I bought DiskWarrior and after running it for two days it was able to get some data back. Copying it off is another story. I agree with your assessment of Maxtor quality. This will be my third Maxtor drive out of nine drives that I own which has had sudden catastrophic failure (by that i mean it works one day and the next it's toast).

I bought a lacie drive on Saturday. I'm hoping I can get the data off the Maxtor drive and then maybe I can start moving off the maxtor drives entirely.

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