Hard drive repair "updating boot partitions for the volume as required"

That's entirely normal if such a repair was required. Nothing to be concerned about unless there were unrepairable errors reported.

Required for Snow Leopard. So, were you using Leopard previously? If you access Disk Utility from SL DVD or have multiple hard drives it does need to be done. Probably could have been happening in the past, almost every new OS and some point releases do make changes to the partition table(s) - hidden but essential.

Whenever there is a new OS, I just backup and format the drive so that the drive is prepared and has the latest partitioning, before I ever install OS.

timowen001 wrote:
It is a confusing error message which could do with being a little clearer I think.

It isn't an error message, just an informational one. It tells you the current status of the repair. If you are trying to interpret it as an error message this might be why it seems confusing.

Hi guys!

I've performed a "repair disk" action for an external harddrive. Apparently it was repaired but the "updating boot support partitions for the volume as required" is taking ages! How long should it normally take? My external HD is a 500GB Maxtor One Touch with a FAT format.

Cheers!

I've wondered about this, as well. I'll add my question to the mix. When I get this, nothing seems to be happening. So, after waiting a few minutes, assuming nothing more is going to happen, I just close it out. This is new to me in SL. Should I be waiting for some further message that the updating has finished?

Edit: are the key words, "as required." Perhaps nothing is required, but the message appears regardless? Just tried this on the clone and waited for around 5 min. to see if I'd get some kind of additional message. Also, monitoring CPU showed very little was going on. Showed the usual CPU at idle: often around 1 or 2% for both cores and dipping sometimes to zero.

And the clone has always booted just fine.

Message was edited by: WZZZ

Message was edited by: WZZZ

Why is a status message confusing? DU's reporting that part of its repair routine now includes *updating boot support partitions for the volume* if that operation was required. It just might be a check for a Boot Camp partition, but that's only a WAG.

Why is a status message confusing? DU's reporting that part of its repair routine now includes updating boot support partitions for the volume if that operation was required.

It has to do with the possibly ambiguous wording of the message -- " updating," which suggests something in progress, instead of "+have been updated+," which would suggest something finished.

You wrote, "...if that operation was required." This is exactly what I was suggesting above when I said "are the key words, "as required." Perhaps nothing is required, but the message appears regardless?"

And then it seems it may relate to an invisible boot partition.

http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Comp/comp.sys.mac.system/2009-09/msg0116 8.html

You take your drive and you partition it into ... perhaps two
partitions. But the System really includes another two areas for data
on the drive. One is the one where the partition information is stored
and how to access the drive (duh). The other is a partition used for
telling the computer how to boot from the drive.

Nice find. So, as required, indicates that it's updated if the utility determines that it's required. Again, nothing to worry about.

Only a guess, but it probably does not have to do with the invisible boot partition, which I assume to be the 200 MB EFI system partition ("ESP") partition created on GPT (GUID Partition Table) hard drives by Apple's formatting tools. As Technical Note TN2166: Secrets of the GPT explains in the "ESP Explained" section, Macs support the ESP, although Apple does not currently use it for anything -- thus, there isn't likely be be anything in it that needs to be updated.

More likely, the message has to do with updating the various boot files mentioned in System Startup Programming Topics: The Boot Process on the boot volume itself.

As you can see from that topic, the boot process potentially involves several different files, including two copies of the boot.efi boot loader (& possibly another for RAID boot configurations), a pre-linked kernel cache, etc. It is fairly obvious from the description of the various boot options that a less ambiguous message that actually described which files were being updated would be verbose, arcane, & of little value to most users.

In my experience, the message only shows up while the process is running; IOW, when it is checking & potentially updating the boot-related file(s).

In my experience, the message only shows up while the process is running; IOW, when it is checking & potentially updating the boot-related file(s).

Then back to my original question: should I let it go until I get some further message or the current message disappears? And how long should I give it? The 5 min. I tested with yesterday would seem ample. How does one know when the process, if it is needed, is finished? I suppose next time I could look in AM for something -- don't know what -- but it does seem from the CPU Monitoring that nothing at all is going on when I get this message.

You are doing this to a system drive but not the drive your are currently booted from.

It takes seconds if the drive was format/initialized pre-Snow Leopard. Where you either use Partition in Disk Utility or Erase for the entire raw "SE...." or WDxxxx (vendors raw drive name).

There are the obvious hidden GPT and EFI partitions required, an EFI for each HFS+ volume, but then there are hidden areas also in HFS+ user volumes for volume information block, a backup of the VIB, and others.

Has nothing to do with Windows or Boot Camp support.

And booted from the SL DVD. If you have a Mac with multiple internal drives, and seems that more iMac users are now going for SSD + standard 7.2K drives, or installing to an external.

I first mentioned seeing this a year ago when first got SL DVD.

should I let it go until I get some further message or the current message disappears?

Yes.

And how long should I give it?

As long as it takes. I made the mistake of not doing that once & my internal drive would no longer start up my Mac. I can't say this will always happen, but if it is in the midst of updating a file & you force quit it, it is possible.

How does one know when the process, if it is needed, is finished?

When the message disappears, it is finished. Don't read too much into this. The message tells you what is happening.

There are the obvious hidden GPT and EFI partitions required, an EFI for each HFS+ volume, but then there are hidden areas also in HFS+ user volumes for volume information block, a backup of the VIB, and others.

This may be slightly mixed up. There is normally only one EFI partition, the EFI system partition ("ESP") mentioned in the tech note. The GPT partition scheme info is not technically in any partition, but at a location defined by its LBA (Logical Block Address) on the drive. This in turn defines where the partitions are located on the drive.

Each OS X boot volume has several boot-related files on it, as explained in the System Startup Topic. Volumes not formatted as boot ones will not normally have any of these files in them. For HFS+ file systems, the old volume information block format is obsolete. I do not know for certain, but I think any boot-related files on a non-boot (not "blessed") Mac OS volume & any old VIB formatting info are ignored.

To test, I just let it go for a full hour. The message never disappeared. Looked in AM while this was going on and saw miniscule loads for hidd and diskmanagementd, which I thought might be implicated (looking up their functions, however, it didn't seem they would be related. Could have been some other process, or simply something that doesn't show up in AM.) Got fed up after an hour and closed DU (no need to force quit), then went back into AM and saw all the same Active Processes and same loads, no change. Then booted from the clone, no problem.

I don't know what would have happened if I'd let this go on for another hour, but I'm feeling -- unscientific procedure I know -- there would have been no change. Don't know what to make of this now since you've seen the message disappear eventually. Since this is a clone using the latest CCC, I would think, anyway, those boot files would have been copied properly and wouldn't need updating.

Message was edited by: WZZZ