INVALID VOLUME FILE COUNT and INVALID VOLUME DIRECTORY COUNT

If this problem is happening every few days on completely different hardware, there must be some software you've been running on both machines that is severely screwed up. What that software might be, I have no idea, other than it's something that I'm not using! 🙂 Try posting a list and we can help you weed out known troublemakers.

Update your os to 10.6.4 along with updating the software you listed if necessary.



Disconnect all peripherals from your computer. Boot from your install disc & run _*Repair Disk*_ from the utility menu. To use the Install Mac OS X disc, insert the disc, and restart your computer while holding down the C key as it starts up.
Select your language.
Once on the desktop, select Utility in the menu bar.
Select *Disk Utility.*

Select the disk or volume in the list of disks and volumes, and then click *First Aid.*
Click _*Repair Disk.*_
Restart your computer when done.

Repair permissions after you reach the desktop- http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751

This is my SECOND machine (same set up on the previous machine) that is experiencing these issues. Once I run the disk utility off of the original OS disk everything is fine.

Invest in a couple things - backup drive, Disk Warrior, and SuperDuper

Install OS X to part of your external (small and just big enough for an emergency system and minimal programs).

Booting off DVD is fine, but no Finder and you are limited to the (older) version of Disk Utility on there (and it does get updated and changed).

Clone your system for boot backup, especially before updates and changes.

Disk Warrior recognizes and repairs more issues, some of which Apple First Aid doesn't even look for.

So even though it appears okay afterward...

Next would be to run Apple Hardware Test, and along with that check your RAM with MEMTEST (REMBER is handy and is just GUI wrapper to memtest program) or run Memtest yourself from the Terminal.

I had a problem recently with disk image corruption (sparse bundles I use for
backups). Invalid file count and directory corruption were the symptoms.

It turned out to be a bad user (admin) account as the culprit. I recreated
the account and the problem disappeared. Turns out somehow the account lost
its group membership, and even when I recreated the account, I had to go in
and manually create a group for it (using work group manager) as the new
replacement account was lacking group membership also.

If it turns out to be a directory problem, disk warrior or reformatting are
likely to be your only solutions.

just so you know you are not along - same issue here. Been a long time mac user and never seen this until the last few months. This machine has been around for awhile and seen plenty of file and user changes - perhaps time to reload from scratch. i have a time machine backup to help tho. One difference between your issue and mine - my machine never locks up and i would never know there was an issue had i not run disk utility.

I'll bet you anything it's the Blackberry Desktop Manager. That is one messed up piece of programming. The app won't quit. You have to force it almost every time you sync. It also has a daemon running in the background ALL THE TIME, and if you check it out in Activity Monitor it's always floating around in the top 10 memory suckers.

I've been having the exact same problems with invalid counts every other day. I reboot off of a peripheral drive and repair with Drive Genius. It's fine for a day and a half and then things start to freeze and act weird. Then I go back & repair again.

The only thing similar I have running is the Blackberry software. I volunteer to disable & dump it. I'll report back next week.

Gregg - you may be onto the source of the problem - i dumped several older redundant apps and the associated pref/support files including BB Desktop Manager and my system has not seen the file count issue since. I've been clear of the issue for over three weeks.
I trashed at least a dozen apps so i am not sure which could have been responsible, but glad it's gone.

Hi Gregg,

Could you tell me if deleting the Blackberry software was the solution to this problem? I am pretty sick of having to repair disk every other day.

Thanks!

Hi again. I had the same thought, and was about to direct you here, when I saw you'd already found it. 🙂

You may not get an answer -- subscriptions expire after 30 days, so the previous posters won't get email notices of your post.

But if you have that same software, it sure ought to be near the top of your suspect list!

Hey,

I'm really sorry that I didn't report back. I hate it when people do that and just leave you hanging. I think Blackberry Desktop Manager had something to do with it but not entirely.

I uninstalled BDM and the corruption still happened but less frequently. Maybe every 4 days instead of every one or 2 days. Then after a couple of weeks it stopped altogether. I'm not sure but it might have coincided with the installation of AppleJack. (That is a great utility!)

By the way, BDM is now out with 2.0. It's super slow but it doesn't corrupt my directories and it quits when you tell it to. Much better app.

So I suggest trying AppleJack and upgrading to BDM 2.0. Not a sure thing but not as bad as daily corruption.

Gregg

I had this incessantly annoying issue. Spent far too much time testing drives, systems, you name it. This was the problem for me: Blackberry Desktop Manager and all its associated files! Thanks for posting this as I cannot expressed the major PITA this was.

Note: Use an app like HoudahSpot to locate all the associated files as app uninstalling products will miss many of the associated files.

iDisk is what does it to me. If you are unable to eject a mounted iDisk, due to it being busy or whatever, instant disk problem.