Nixor wrote:
See photo. I don’t want to have to erase my Original Macintosh Harddrive in case it is retrievable but I simply want to Reinstall OS X El Capitan without effecting my HD. Is there something else to check on the bootable USB or should I try to create another bootable usb?
I understand what you want.
You don’t want to erase the disk.
You want to preserve and recover and continue use your Mac and your data.
If this Mac hardware is failing—that’s a distinct possibility in these cases—then your best approach is to not hammer on the disk with I/O and to not try to re-install macOS and to not try to verify nor to try to repair the disk. In other words, to not do what you want to do here. To not use your hard disk more than strictly necessary.
Not until after you have a backup.
You might only get one and diminishing chance to recover some or all of your data. All of the I/O you want to do here can also reduce what of your data can be recovered, pushing a failing hard disk drive over into full failure, for instance. Hard disks tend to degrade and get slow and show corruptions, and then fail.
Get the backup. Get your data. Preserve your data.
Use the Utilities menu in the macOS Installer, and use Disk Utility available there to (try to) get a backup to external storage.
If that Disk Utility disk copy attempt fails, then you’ll have to decide how much you want to spend to try to recover what is left of your data.
Then...
Since you now have a backup (of what you can get), you can wipe and reload a clean copy of macOS, and fresh copies of apps, and try reloading your own user data from your backup. The Migration Assistant tool makes this import easier, too. This wipe-and-reload approach also hammers on the disk, which is in this case also being used as a test; to see whether the hard disk drive is failing. If the reload attempt fails, you still have a backup copy of (most of) your data; a copy of whatever the initial Disk Utility backup recovered.
Or sure, you can hammer on your disk and potentially reduce what can be recovered, if this is a failing hard disk drive. And what you’re showing can be explained by a failing hard disk. If this is “just” a corruption, this same sequence still works, still clears the issue, and you still get a backup of your data.
Order yourself a disk for Time Machine or other scheduled backups, or network-attached storage for your Wi-Fi network for wireless backups using Time Machine, too. That’ll continue to be useful if you decide to replace this MacBook Pro, too.
If you want to try to keep this Mac for a few years, also seriously consider ordering a replacement hard disk or an SSD upgrade to replace what is in this MacBook Pro, and maybe a hard disk cable. Maybe more memory, if you’re not already maxed out.
