The "Repair" button in Disk Utility is greyed out.

Question

The "Repair" button in Disk Utility is greyed out.

Hello everyone, as first-time user of the Apple Support Community i hope to find someone who can help me.

Issues:

{ "Volume Header needs minor repair"
"The volume Hard Disk needs to be repaired"
"Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit

Disk Utility stopped verifying “Hard Disk” because the following error was encountered:

The underlying task reported failure on exit

1 HFS volume checked

Volume needs repair" } - Disk Utility (Log)

And finally the "Repair" button is unavailable even though i am in the Admin Account.

I would appreciate your input : )

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on May 18, 2011 9:39 PM

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Answer 1

Niel

Level 10

732,359 points

May 18, 2011 9:41 PM in response to StudentFromToronto

You need to restart from a compatible Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer disk or installed system and run the Disk Utility from there, or into safe mode temporarily to silently run a repair tool.

(58437)

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Answer 2

dwb

Level 7

33,100 points

May 19, 2011 7:17 AM in response to StudentFromToronto

Just to add to Niel's description of what to do - Disk Utility cannot repair the drive you used to boot your computer. To repair a drive you must boot with another, either your system DVD or another hard drive. This is one of the reasons I use SuperDuper! to create a bootable backup of my computer.

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Answer 3

Jun 21, 2011 8:07 AM in response to StudentFromToronto

Hope this helps..

Mac OS X: fsck reports benign errors when journaling is turned on

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2028?viewlocale=en_US

Symptoms

You can safely ignore some errors that fsck reports when journaling is enabled.

Note: This document applies to Mac OS X 10.3.9 or earlier.
Below is a list of errors that fsck reports that you can safely ignore when using journaling:

"Volume bitmap needs minor repair"
"Invalid volume free block count"
Note: The volume free block count is a type of cache of the real information stored in the volume bitmap, and the count being off does not mean your volume is damaged in any way. An incorrect volume block count message (block count changed from X to Y) is an example of this type of message.
"Volume header needs minor repair"
"can't locate IOPlatformMonitor"
"Incorrect block count for file"
Note: In the case of this message, you can erase the file and restore from the most recent backup if needed.

Products Affected

Mac OS X 10.3.9, Mac OS X Server 10.4.7, Mac OS X 10.4, Mac OS X Server 10.2, Mac OS X Server 10.4, Mac OS X Server 10.3, Mac OS X Server 10.5, Mac OS X 10.5

Resolution

Each of the messages above is benign, and indicates no damage to the file system. You may safely ignore them.

Additional Information

With a journaled volume you do not need to start up into single user mode. When a volume is made available to the file system, the journal is replayed and the file system brought up to a consistent state. If you do run fsck, it is best if you use -n and -f flags so that it will not actually modify the volume. Options explanation from fsck man page (short for manual page):

-n Assume a no response to all questions asked by fsck except for 'CONTINUE?', which is assumed to be affirmative; do not open the file system for writing.

-f Force the check.

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