2008 MacBook stuck in Recovery Mode

Hi all,


I'm the owner of a very old, usually reliable 2008 MacBook Pro. Yesterday it stopped working normally and now whenever it reboots I'm stuck on the recovery mode screen.


Disk Utility shows that the Macintosh HD has this issue: "Invalid B-tree node size".


I've tried:


- Repairing this via First Aid. No success

- Running an fsck -fy command from the terminal. It says the HD is okay but rebooting shows otherwise.

- Transferring my data onto an external harddrive, so I can reformat it. This doesn't work and the entire MacBook freezes.

- Reinstalling OS X Mavericks. "This is not a supported method of installing the operating system"


I'm honestly at a loss, can anybody help?


MacBook Pro

Posted on Aug 23, 2019 6:03 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 23, 2019 7:46 PM

Disk Utility First Aid is only able to repair the most basic of file system issues. Unless the file system is repaired, the only recourse is to erase the drive and reinstall OSX. I've found Disk Warrior (paid app) is great at repairing a lot of HFS+ file system issues assuming the hard drive is healthy. DW used to ship on a bootable CD, but I don't know how it is distributed now since I just install the app on my own bootable external utility drive.


If you are still using the original hard drive I would suspect it might be failing in which case DW won't be able to help. You can try running the Apple Hardware Test to see if it reports any issue with the drive. If it does not report an issue with the drive, then you need an external boot drive to check the health of the hard drive since many hard drive failures are not discovered by the Apple Hardware Test.


To check the health of the hard drive you can create a bootable Knoppix Linux USB drive using Etcher (Mac/Windows/Linux). Option Boot the Knoppix USB drive and select the orange icon labeled "EFI". At the Knoppix desktop click on the "Start" menu in the lower left of the Taskbar and navigate to "System Tools --> GSmartControl". Within the GSmartControl app double-click on the drive icon which should provide an option to save the output report. Post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.


If the drive is healthy, then we can discuss how to retrieve your data and reinstall OSX if you don't have a backup. If the drive is failing, there may be ways to recover your data. Knowing the health of the drive is critical if you still need your data from the drive and it can save you lots of time and frustration trying to recover data or reinstalling OSX.



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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 23, 2019 7:46 PM in response to elliott246

Disk Utility First Aid is only able to repair the most basic of file system issues. Unless the file system is repaired, the only recourse is to erase the drive and reinstall OSX. I've found Disk Warrior (paid app) is great at repairing a lot of HFS+ file system issues assuming the hard drive is healthy. DW used to ship on a bootable CD, but I don't know how it is distributed now since I just install the app on my own bootable external utility drive.


If you are still using the original hard drive I would suspect it might be failing in which case DW won't be able to help. You can try running the Apple Hardware Test to see if it reports any issue with the drive. If it does not report an issue with the drive, then you need an external boot drive to check the health of the hard drive since many hard drive failures are not discovered by the Apple Hardware Test.


To check the health of the hard drive you can create a bootable Knoppix Linux USB drive using Etcher (Mac/Windows/Linux). Option Boot the Knoppix USB drive and select the orange icon labeled "EFI". At the Knoppix desktop click on the "Start" menu in the lower left of the Taskbar and navigate to "System Tools --> GSmartControl". Within the GSmartControl app double-click on the drive icon which should provide an option to save the output report. Post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.


If the drive is healthy, then we can discuss how to retrieve your data and reinstall OSX if you don't have a backup. If the drive is failing, there may be ways to recover your data. Knowing the health of the drive is critical if you still need your data from the drive and it can save you lots of time and frustration trying to recover data or reinstalling OSX.



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2008 MacBook stuck in Recovery Mode

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