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Restart from a Mac OS X CD or DVD and use it to repair the hard disk, or use a more powerful application such as DiskWarrior. The Disk Utility will not repair the startup disk.

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You can also boot into single user mode and run diskutil with FSCK -fy command; but you should have another bootable hard drive to work from. And only use DVDs as a last resort.

You should also keep a couple backups current with SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner or other backup/cloning software.

You can't repair your boot drive while boot from it, only when booted from another drive or using the above. Which begs the question, that you haven't repaired your startup drive before.

Also better to do this kind of maintenance before there are problems, and unfortunately, Disk Utility doesn't spot as many problems as Disk Warrior.

Why use the DVD's as a last resort ?
I was under the impression that outside of a few different tasks FSCK and Disk Utility were fairly equal .
Thanks !

Disk Utility evolves so your DVD is likely older than your current system and the best resort of course is to boot off an emergency hard drive just for that purpose.

So I never use the DVD.

If a system has crashed and had a hard restart, I don't want to just restart, Safe Boot at a minimum.

With Tiger, Applejack was/is a real winner. Has not been upgraded for Lepard, but Leopard Cache Cleaner has some of the same features.

Make sure you have an alternate boot drive you can use for repairs, the OP sounded like they had never repaired their boot drive (you can verify only, which isn't even 100% reliable) and Disk Utility I've seen over and over again will not spot problems, let alone repair everything it should.

Who wants to boot from a DVD? slow, you have to have it handy, and you have to get into the optical drive. MicroMat recommends against using a DVD except for minimal work (why they have an "eDrive").

I agree with all the points you make with one caveat . That indisputable point you make about the DVD being dated is no less true for DiskWarrior (my own preferred choice) . Both run behind OS X's system software being updated . I use FSCK myself as it is much more convenient (for me) despite the lamentable absence of AppleJack .
I tried keeping up with MicroMat (two years , 2002 -2004) , but eventually failed to sustain the expensive updates and requisite patience running its program . I note that some of the MicroMat repairs had mixed results .
I enthusiastically agree that another perch to review and repair is fundamental .
Not really much of a qualification .
Thank you for your time and excellent thoughts .
Frederick

OS X made somewhat significant changes in partition maps with 10.4.3 thru 10.4.6, and Apple has a tech note about what to use.

If Disk Warrior was out of date, and was not compatible or supported, I would drop it. But I haven't read or heard of that being the case, only that their CD has older OS X version (which I also never use) and won't boot the latest Macs.

BootCD back in Panther at least allowed one to create a custom bootable DVD and be able to run latest OS X; include TTPro and Disk Warrior and other tools, AND be able to create a memory/virtual user account and run Firefox and other applications. But having a nice 50GB 'eboot drive' on FW/USB or something is something anyone can, and should, be doing.

I was experimenting on my system yesterday, had a freeze, and then had to spend an hour cleaning up my own mess 😟