OS X won't boot: corrupt partition after Boot Camp Windows install

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OS X won't boot: corrupt partition after Boot Camp Windows install

Hello,

Yesterday, I decided to setup Boot Camp again (I had previously removed it due to Windows partition being too small). At the time, OS X and Boot Camp were up to date. It took a couple of hours to create the Boot Camp partition. From there, I went on to install Windows 7.

The installation went well, except for the frustration that it had not marked the Boot Camp partition as active, so I needed to continuously select the Windows partition as the boot device throughout the installation of Windows and then the Boot Camp software/drivers/etc.

After it was all done, I went to boot back into OS X, and saw something "new". A progress bar under the spinny thing that normally shows boot activity. The progress bar filled slowly to about 1/8th, then it dissapeared. The machine just sat there spinny it's little icon, never booting (I left it to try a couple times for about 30 minutes).

I finally decided that the disk maybe in need of a repair, so booted from the install CD, and ran Disk Utility. Sure enough it told me that it needed to repair, but when I tried to repair, it simply told me that it could not be repaired (could not rebuild index) and that I would have to reformat, reinstall, and restore from backup.

This did, and still does astonish me. I've never seen such a serious problem on Windows or Linux, and was under the impression that the journaled HFS plus file system was pretty solid. I can't help but wonder if the Boot Camp wizard didn't move some data around that it should not have. Part of the reason I say this is that I told it to allocate 60Gb for the Windows partition, however it only gave it 56.5Gb.

Here is the error from Disk Utility:

Verify and Repair volume "Macintosh HD"

Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.

Checking extents overflow file.

Checking catalog file.

Invalid index key

Rebuilding catalog B-tree

The volume Macintosh HD could not be repaired.

Volume repair complete.

Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.

Error: Disk Utility can't repair the disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.

If any of you out there have experience with this sort of thing, I would be greatfull for your input. I am holding off on doing anything with it due to the amount of time that it will take to rebuild/restore the thing. I'm also quite concerned about the resilience of the file system, and wondering about the future of OS X in my life! 😝

Cheers,

geva

Mac Mini Aluminum 2010, Mac OS X (10.6.6), 4Gb RAM

Posted on Apr 30, 2011 3:36 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Apr 30, 2011 10:56 AM in response to geva

Yes, over on SL Using forum etc.

What you need is Disk Warrior along with Superduper backup clone and something more helpful than just Apple DU First Aid.

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Answer 2

geva Author

Level 1

9 points

May 4, 2011 9:41 AM in response to The hatter

Hey The hatter... thanks a lot for your feedback.

I had a look at Disk Warrior, and it seems to be a great tool with a lot of positive feedback. Sadly it is too expensive. I'm not prepared to spend $100, or about 10% of the cost of my Mac in order to be able to repair a partition once every couple of years - especially when this sort of [working] tool *should* come with the Mac.

You comment about the Apple Disk Utility beeing poor got me thinking, and I ended up finding an article about using Ubuntu to repair HFS partitions. Basically the procedure is to disable Journalling on the HFS+ partition, boot Ubuntu from a Live CD, install the Apple HFSPROGS package to provide HFS+ partition access, and then run the check disk tool.

http://abhinay.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/repair-fix-mac-hfs-partition-using-ubunt u-cd/

I must say that the process to get through this seemingly simple exercise was way longer than simply restoring. I had a lot of difficulty booting Live CDs due to how the "C" boot directive works and EFI boot CDs. I finally figured out that the reason that I was not able to boot was that the Mac boot loader was trying to boot from the CD wrong. The resolution to this was to use the ALT/Option key during boot, and then wait about 60 seconds until it was able to scan the CD, and present me with the "Windows" option to boot from the CD. This allowed Ubuntu to start booting.

From there, I ran into another problem which caused the Live CD load to hang. I ended up needing to hit a key when the Ubuntu boot starts and you see the Keyboard and little man in the circle. This brings up the boot menu for Ubuntu, and from there I could hit F6 and select ACPI=OFF. This enabled me to get booted into Ubuntu - 64-bit edition of course, as I'm running the dual-core 64-bit Mac mini from mid-2010.

From there, I did what the article explained, but I had exactly the same results. The explanation of the hfsprogs library says that it is from Apple themselves. If this is the case, it is perhaps the same code that is running in Disk Utility; which means my exercise was completely futile and a waste of time. The messages and process of the disk check in Ubuntu was letter for letter exactly the same. This said, there are other HFS utilities for Linux, but I cut my losses and gave up at that failed attempt.

I finally went the route of copying data off the disk (from booted Windows), erasing the partition, and restoring from Time Machine backup. I was concerned about the time that this would take due to having read about 18-24 hour time machine restores, however it only took about 1.5 hours to restore about 80Gb. I was very impressed with the speed, and simplicity of this overall restoration!!! Really good thing I had a backup that was current.

Thanks again,

geva

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Answer 3

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

May 4, 2011 9:58 AM in response to geva

I don't wait for problems before using Disk Warrior.

it is part and parcel of regular maintenance, like weekly backup is;

gets used before ever applying any update or patches from Apple too.

The cost over the years is minimal.

I also have a number of paid Windows utilities. Would hate to need to buy them all at once, but spread out over years, the upgrades are usually just $25+.

#1 is of course to clone your drive so you can boot from the clone - SuperDuper or CCC.

I would rate Timemacine as not being a primary backup but used as secondary.

fsck or diskutility or the GUI Disk Utility has not put the top tier programs (Alsoft, Prosoft, MicroMat) 'out to pasture' though. Maybe a new filesystem would, by costing too much to retool. Some of the problems why they are needed are probably in HFS+ itself.

Paragon sells a Mac Rescue program, no idea what it uses etc but they are supporting Macs and Boot Camp already. Looks like an out of the box Linux CD all you need to know is to burn the ISO and follow directions.

There is a reason why DW is rated so well and highly - even when it has taken 2-3 days in rare cases to recreate directory.

After 4.5 yrs I tend to feel NTFS and Windows has been as if not more stable and reliable - and when there is an error with a disk, I am ready for it, and there are tools to deal with.

Oh, and with Mac, reformatting and restore may sound excessive to die-hards, I do it regularly or as needed, I change and move the boot drive a lot, and with any new OS.

I suspect anytime a system had Leopard that it would need to be reinitialized due to partition map changes made to Snow Leopard. GPT was expanded.

New drive? run chkdsk and search for bad sectors before using.

An ounce of prevention instead of pound of cure is always cheaper if take the time to do so.

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Answer 4

geva Author

Level 1

9 points

May 4, 2011 10:27 AM in response to The hatter

Hatter -

This is invaluable information. Thanks for the wise suggestions. Agreed that prevention is well worth it - to a certain point that is.

I'm more of a Windows guy, and have been using NTFS pretty much exclusively for a bit over 10 years. I've always had great results with it, and in cases where Windows disk tools haven't been able to fix things, I've been able to rely on Linux NTFS support for recovering files (very rare). One problem with the prevention idea, is that it is frequently when they have a drive/partition problem that people come to you, and then tell you that they don't have a backup!!!

If the appropriate restore/rebuild procedures are in place, I see your point that a drive reinit. isn't a big deal. I'm use to reinstalling Windows about once a year - and the big pain is really the time the install takes, plus downloading updates, restarting, installing, etc. You are correct that cloning is a good solution to this - one that I don't rely on enough.

geva

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