Disk error: invalid volume file count & directory count message

Thanks for the quick responses Allan and Linc! Luckily, I have many time machine backups and have been spending the last few days restoring from different backups from different days to see if maybe some software conflict was the problem. All of them worked for about 3 hours before causing some sort of chaos again. I would like to zero the drive, reinstall everything from scratch and move on with my life, but I don't want to waste 2 work days reinstalling and authorizing (many audio plugins and software instruments) only to have more failures a few days later. Is there any way to find out for certain if this is a hardware issue?

UPDATE: So, I ended up buying a brand new drive on June 6th (Seagate Barracuda), re-installed everything and all seemed well. Yesterday, I went to screen share (a normal process for us as another MacPro houses all audio instruments) and it would not connect. Suspecing the worse, I checked Disk Uitility and sure enough, the exact same error message poped up again!

Invalid volume file count

Invalid volume directory count

It is now in the hands of the Apple store geniuses as of a few hours ago, the tech said they will run all their diagnostic tools but made it clear that they will probably not find anything wrong with the machine, suggesting the 8 GB RAM modules are causing the problem or some other 3rd party issue is at fault. Could this be true? Why does this hard drive error continue to show up even with a brand new drive and why does it seem to cause so many problems? I'm a long time Mac user and am completely in the dark on how to diagnose this problem, any help is greatly appreciated!!!!

Thanks all!

Totally agree Allan, just waiting to hear back from apple. In theory, this makes sense but the only problem is this is a recent problem and the computer ran fine for a solid 4 months prior with no changes to any hardware. I guess something could have easily shorted out or something, but just seems odd I can't pinpoint what is wrong (memtest said everything was okay). Very frustrating. Will post back as soon as I get word from Apple. Thanks again Allan!

Big update: Talked to the Genius when getting computer back, computer was thoroughly tested for 72 hours or so, no problems found with any hardware. The only thing the guy thought was strange was the 3 8GB chips of RAM installed since they are not officially supported by Apple, however he did admit the RAM showed no errors when tested. Told to put back original RAM and see if the problem persists.

Got the computer home and all set up again with the origional 6GB chips installed (6 1GB chips). Wiped the hard drive and reinstalled the OS again from the OS disk, updated all software and restored from Time Machine backup. Tried running our Logic project again and found the computer running worse than it was before! Tried screen sharing with other MacPro and it worked very sluggishly, disconnected, restarted both computers and tried again - could not connect via screen share at all. So, something told me this may be an ethernet problem.

Just for fun, we decided to connect the 2 MacPros together directly, bypassing our ethernet hub (one ethernet cable connected to each other). In both computers, I disabled all other network connections so the only active service was the single ethernet port. Viola, like magic, everything was running much smoother! No more glitches in audio performance, no more screen sharing issues! So, I think we are now on the right path to finding a solution. Now, how do I test the hub for problems? Could it not also be one of the other computers on the ethernet network causing the problem as well? We have a MacMini (10.6.7) that has been acting strange lately (random beach balls all the time in safari and iWork, which I'm trying to fix when I find the time) that is connected to the hub and on all the time. It's nice that we seem to have a workaround for now and we can complete our project, but I would still like to get to the bottom of this as having all the computers on one ethernet network is very important for us. Again, I truly appreciate all the continued help from you guys and all the input as this has been a very positive experience. I'm glad I decided to come here for help as I don't feel alone in solving this and am not being scripted through solutions that don't make sense. Great discussion!

polite bump

Okay, scratch that last update: just ran Apple Disk Utility today and the error is back again! Is there anything else I should try? Why does the directory keep writing errors? I thought for sure it could have been the RAM and the ethernet seemed slightly logical. I'm at a loss, any fresh ideas?

Hey Allan,

The boot drive has been replaced with 2 brand new drives over the course of 2 months now, and all the drives test as fine drives. I just put in a new Western Digital 1 TB black 1 week ago when I received the computer back from Apple. I do have a good backup so no worries there.