Disk Utility failed - have I exhausted all the steps

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Disk Utility failed - have I exhausted all the steps

I have drive genius and have also tried Disc Utility. I have rebooted from an a flash drive and tried to make repairs but when I've tried Drive Genius (it says I have constituency errors and it needs to be repaired) and Disk Utility says that my object map is invalid and that that the first aid process has failed.

My question is - do I need to reinstall my system and do I need to do more than a time machine backup - will I lose anything? Should I use mac genius or just the disc utility program. All my access codes to all my programs like word and final draft will have to be reinstalled? Do I just go into safe mode and just reinstall from the time machine or reinstall the OS system first.

My computer seems to be working fine but I would imagine that I would have to do something about this and want to make sure that I've done everything before I have to do the drastic thing of erasing. I did just install more memory into my iMac if that has anything to do with anything.

Thanks everyone!

iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jun 6, 2020 9:58 AM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

158,166 points

Jun 8, 2020 8:52 AM in response to jake27r

Close, it would be best to erase using the Disk Utility in Recovery Mode, and then, do the reinstall.

Ref: How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Tesserax

Level 10

158,166 points

Jun 6, 2020 12:01 PM in response to jake27r

Thanks for the additional info on your Mac. Six years is still a bit early for a drive to fail, but anything is possible.

What I suggest are the following steps:

Make backups of your drive. Both Time Machine and a clone copy. For the latter I suggest using something like Carbon Copy Cloner.
Then try steps 2, 5, 6 & 7 in the following user tip article: Mac Basic Startup Troubleshooting Steps - Apple Community

Please post back your results.

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Answer 3

Tesserax

Level 10

158,166 points

Jun 7, 2020 8:35 AM in response to jake27r

Ok, sorry those steps didn't help. Attempting a clean install would be worth a try, but if the drive is actually faulty, it may not end up being successful. Still I would give it a go. Should it fail, you may need to consider getting a replacement drive.

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Answer 4

Tesserax

Level 10

158,166 points

Jun 7, 2020 11:58 AM in response to jake27r

Another thing that came to mind, is to consider trying an app, like DriveDX, to determine the overall health of your Mac's drive. It may reveal any underlying conditions to help make the decision to replace the drive or not.

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Answer 5

Tesserax

Level 10

158,166 points

Jun 6, 2020 10:46 AM in response to jake27r

These types of errors tend to indicate a failed or failing drive. You didn't provide the exact model of your iMac other than it is running macOS Mojave. Providing it would be helpful.

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Answer 6

Tesserax

Level 10

158,166 points

Jun 7, 2020 7:55 PM in response to jake27r

I would try the complete erase, and reinstall, before attempting to do anything else with this Mac.

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Answer 7

jake27r Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 6, 2020 11:47 AM in response to Tesserax

Thanks -- I have this 32gb iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014, 4 GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2 GB -- thank you!

Model Name: iMac

Model Identifier: iMac15,1

Processor Name: Intel Core i7

Processor Speed: 4 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 4

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 8 MB

Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled

Memory: 32 GB

Boot ROM Version: 234.0.0.0.0

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Answer 8

jake27r Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 6, 2020 3:48 PM in response to Tesserax

Ok, I did 2, 5, 6 and 7. & said that the volume macOS base system appears to be ok.

Still won't let me repair in safe mode.

would a clean install be effective?

Thanks!

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Answer 9

jake27r Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 7, 2020 2:30 PM in response to Tesserax

ok, I tried the drivedx - the short check - and no errors were found - so what does that mean? Could the errors that i'm finding be a software issue and not a drive issue?

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Answer 10

jake27r Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 8, 2020 8:10 AM in response to Tesserax

The best way to do that is to erase at disc utility In safe more and then reinstall from time machine?

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Answer 11

jake27r Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 7, 2020 4:48 PM in response to jake27r

and I did the clean install as well and did the utility and got a different response - will an erase drive and install from time machine be a solution or do I need to get this repaired?

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Answer 12

Tesserax

Level 10

158,166 points

Jun 7, 2020 7:53 PM in response to jake27r

Ok, DriveDX does a pretty decent job of detecting drive errors. If it it didn't find any, then there is a good chance your Mac's drive is fine.

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Disk Utility failed - have I exhausted all the steps

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