Disk utility repair or not to repair? I am confused!

chama9714 wrote:

Apple hardware came back ok. and also the SMART test came back ok.

This does not indicate the drive is healthy. The only time macOS or Disk Utility will report "SMART status failed" is when the failure count exceeds a manufacturer's predetermined value which typically only happens when the drive is nearly dead, although things are a bit different with SSDs. I've replaced hundreds if not thousands of drives which macOS showed as healthy, but the drive's health report showed early signs of failure. With SSDs, I sometimes find the opposite condition where macOS reports a SMART failure, but the SSD is still perfectly fine. This is due to everyone in the industry not actually utilizing the SMART feature properly (including the drive manufacturers and the operating systems themselves).

The only way to get a true health assessment of a drive is by using DriveDx and posting the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper. If a Mac is using a hard drive, then you can usually trust that any "Warning" or "Failing" notices in DriveDx indicates a problem (worn out or failing drive respectively -- both indicate the hard drive should be replaced). SSDs are different. If DriveDx shows either of these, then it just means that the SSD's health report needs to be manually examined and interpreted to assess the SSD's health. Unfortunately many SSDs only have a few health attributes which is not really enough to properly assess an SSD's health, but it can still be useful if the health values are monitored over time.

Also a passing Apple Diagnostic does not really mean everything is good. In fact the only useful diagnostic is one which reports an error or the diagnostic freezes during testing.

chama9714 wrote:

I am getting this with my disk.

I ran disk utility from the recovery partition on my Mac and it says I need to repair it. THEN it says the disk is ok. So did it need to be repaired? Because when I ran it a second time the same error occurred again.

This is on my internal hard disk. iMac 2020.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/7ead2a3c-d540-4316-af52-f45a53fdf180

If it successfully repaired— run one more time until it returns "no issues found."

Boot into Internet Recovery (Option Command R) and from the dropdown menu: Utilities>  Disk Utility> run the First Aid on your Macintosh HD (and the "Macintosh HD-Data" volume as well if Catalina/Big Sur/Monterey/Ventura) If errors are found and repaired, run again until no errors reported.

Disk Utility>View>Show All Devices The best sequence is —

Volume level

Container level

Parent drive

How to repair a Mac disk with Disk Utility

How to repair a Mac disk with Disk Utility - Apple Support

The Apple SSD appears healthy.

Sometimes APFS file systems just become corrupt. Disk Utility First Aid has never been very good at repairing file systems. I've seen First Aid saying everything is Ok from Recovery Mode, but show errors only while running First Aid while booted normally. Makes absolutely no sense (I do understand that some errors cannot be repaired while booted from the drive). Unfortunately there are no third party utilities available to repair an APFS file system because Apple has not released the necessary APFS documentation. If First Aid is unable to repair the file system, the only option is to erase the drive and restore from a backup.

yeah I think if it keeps happening , unfortunately I think one of the 2 options:

1- there is a major software issue with the partition, that every time you use your Mac it messes something up

2- there is an actual hardware problem with your Mac, and the disk need to be replaced.

On 1, I guess you could start with a fresh install, do not bring anything back from backup, since could be a software bug tripping. Maybe look for a tool that can read S.M.A.R.T status on the disk (sorry don't know any on the top of my head)

On 2., replace HD .

In any occasion, backup your stuff asap. Even if you do option 1 with a fresh install, you need to bring up your files/ photos, etc. Look up Time Machine for your Mac for backup.

Yeah if smart was ok then it's not hardware. I feel that if you bring the full backup back , the error might trigger again.

I would do a fresh install, then manually bring pics, docs, etc form backup.

reinstall the apps manually instead of letting back up do

chama9714 wrote:

It makes me think that Apple are so keen in pushing APFS and the software (disk first aid) are lacking behind. Why change a file system? Leave it to HFS+, if it's reliable, don't try and fix it. I mean look at windows? They have the same file system from goodness how long ago.

APFS is a COW (Copy On Write) file system. Other operating systems are also using a COW file systems (Microsoft ReFS for servers, and BTRFS for Linux) these days as it is the next generation file system which in theory should be much less prone to corruption if a data transfer is interrupted and APFS has been designed to work with SSDs which require a different file system to help prevent unnecessary wear to the SSD. Plus the file system snapshot capability is a huge bonus.

However, developing a new file system is a huge undertaking and takes years to develop and test. I do think Apple has probably rushed the public release a bit and definitely has not devoted any time to developing a repair utility. After all even the First Aid summary results are known to be lies with some "Ok" results hiding huge issues which affect data integrity and performance -- even causing system crashes. Plus Apple has overlooked providing a safety buffer to prevent a full file system from being unable to delete files to free up space. Linux had the same issue early on when a drive became full and made sure to reserve some space (the Linux kernel developers are still tweaking this bit after 10 years). I know Apple started using APFS on the iPhone & iPad a year or two before employing it in macOS. I would actually prefer to use APFS if Apple would actually be able to have First Aid repair any errors when they occur, but don't want to erase & restore a large drive every time it happens.

I remember back in the day how awful both the HFS and HFS+ file systems were as they always seemed to be corrupted. It was so bad that our organization relied on a paid third party app Disk Warrior to fix the HFS & HFS+ file system corruption because First Aid was incapable of repairing it. It was only in later years when HFS+ actually became much more stable, possibly also due to better detection of physical drive failures. Unfortunately there are no third party apps which can repair an APFS volume because Apple has not released the necessary APFS documentation.

Regardless of all this, everything is prone to break from time to time. It is inevitable. Sometimes you may understand the cause, and other times it may remain a mystery especially if we just want to get things working again.

chama9714 wrote:

This is on my internal hard disk. iMac 2020.

There is nothing wrong with the disk. Describe what problems you are having that originally led you down into this rabbit hole.

I've had APFS fail twice in the last 12 months with 1Tb drive about half full. Both times first aid was useless, and fsck_apfs couldn't fix it. I was however, able to recover files that weren't backed up DRAT https://github.com/jivanpal/drat under Linux. Basically, the workflow was something like:

$ sudo drat-0.1.3-linux-amd64 list /dev/sdb2 0 /Documents

$ sudo drat-0.1.3-linux-amd64 recover /dev/sdb2 1 'Documents/File1'

I've had APFS fail twice in the last 12 months with 1Tb drive about half full. Both times first aid was useless, and fsck_apfs couldn't fix it. I was however, able to recover files that weren't backed up with DRAT https://github.com/jivanpal/drat under Linux. Basically, the workflow was something like:

$ sudo drat-0.1.3-linux-amd64 list /dev/sdb2 0 /Documents

$ sudo drat-0.1.3-linux-amd64 recover /dev/sdb2 0 /Documents/File1 > File1

chama9714 wrote:

My backups were not working well.

What does that mean? Please describe the problem. People often try to use external drives that are too small for Time Machine. Such drives will have to be more frequently erased. If that’s what’s going on, it’s normal.

chama9714 wrote:

it means, that the drive was failing. So, I had to buy a new one. The internal disk is 500GB the new external backup is 1TB.

I think I have the right size drive?

You have provided no evidence of a failing drive. Even if you had, you are talking interchangeably about your internal and your external. Which one is the drive that you claim is failing? And fundamentally, why are you saying that it is failing?

A failing hard drive is a common problem. It wouldn't surprise me if you did have a failing hard drive. But you have not provided any evidence of any kind that indicates a failing hard drive. You've said that you have a 2020 iMac. That isn't one the iMacs that typically has hard drive problems.

Anything you saw in Disk First Aid can be dismissed out of hand. That check isn't what you think it is.

You still haven't said anything about the old external drive. How old was that? How big was it?

I don't know enough to say if your new hard drive is big enough. It might be just barely big enough. 2 TB would have been better. With a new 1 TB external as your Time Machine drive, I would expect it to run fine for 3-4 months at a time before Time Machine fails and you have to erase it. That doesn't mean the drive has failed, it just means the drive is too small and has become too full. Time Machine is designed to delete old backups. But there are limits to that functionality. The smaller the hard drive, the more likely you are to hit those limits. When that happens, you'll need to erase the backup drive and start over.

Since you've purchased a new drive, I recommend letting it run on the new drive to make a few backups. Then, erase then old backup drive and reconnect it as a 2nd Time Machine backup. Now you can run with two backups.