Install Failed - Disk is damaged

Been mostly on my own with it. So managed to boot off snow leopard in the cd drive then I erased the drive using snow leopard utilities. Then I let snow leopard reinstall on the drive. Ater it finished, it asked me if I wanted to copy files off another computer, the web or time machine ... I selected time machine from which it is copying now.

I have the same problem.

Following some of these instructions, I am now stuck in Mac OS X Utilities, I can't repair the disk, and when I reset PRAM/NVRAM and hold down option after the sound, I only have two options : OSX Installer and Bootcamp. I've tried resetting the PRAM/NVRAM a number of times. I can't restart using "Startup Disk..." because when I choose my Macintosh HD 10.6.8 it says it can't gather enough information. Anything else I can try????

Well good or bad talked to tech and my less than yrs old mbp is going into the store in a few hours for a new hard drive. My iMac worked fine during the lion upgrade.

Plz do the software update then update a combo leopard download on the lion "things to do before you install". I did those steps faithfully and had zero problems with my iMac. Just my two cents worth

J

Good news! 😀

I have had exactly the same problems all day since downloading Lion at 9:30am

Tried reinstallling, creating disk image, running repairs, etc etc

I have spoken to support on the phone who told me it sounds like a broken hard drive, which as Im out of warrenty will cost me to get fixed! 😢

Have gone to my local Apple store to visit the Genius bar expecting the worst and have come out with all my files safely backed up on a portable hard drive - snow leopard reinstalled as a fresh new install and everything working as it should be!

Dont give in and just change the harddrive, the guys on the genius bar are wizards and it seems they can fix anything!!!! 😍

The details of that repair will be in the log of Disk Utility. Could you paste those few lines (not the entire log) here?

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Thanks

Up and running with 10.6.8 as OS. Now I'm afraid to run the Lion install. Wish I could anticipate.

Ok, I managed to resolve my problem.

I couldn't repair the disk using the Mac OSX ultilities Disk Utility that appeared during the Lion Installation. I pulled out my Snow Leopard disk, and ran Disk Utility there. Same problem, it could not repair the disk. I then tried the following:

1. In disk utility(when booted on my Snow Leopard disk), I unmounted my partition(mine was called Macintosh HD). To do this I clicked on my drive and clicked the Unmount button. I then quit Disk Utility.

2. I then opened Terminal(also found under Utilities on the Snow Leopard disk). When that opened I entered fsck_hfs -rf /dev/disk0s2. This took about 10-15 mins. It eventually ended and said that it had repaired my disk. Success! I closed Terminal. Your partition may be called something other than disk0s2...make sure you know what it is.

3. I went back into Disk Utility(while still booted on my Snow Leopard Disk), mounted my Macintosh HD drive and reran verify disk. This reported no problems!

3. I then restarted my machine and held down the Option button. Instead of seeing OSX Installer that I had seen when I had got stuck in the Lion installation loop, I had my Macintosh HD drive back! (and my Bootcamp partition)

4. Once logged in, the Lion installation app was still in my dock, so I clicked on it again, and this time it installed no problem.

I use Super Duper... I wonder if that had anything to do with it. Anyway, I now have Lion - it's awesome.

Good luck, I really hope you find a way around this.

Trouble, I can't tell if you're joking or not.

The large exclamation mark screen that pops up says,"Mac OS X Lion couldn't be installed, because the disc Macintosh HD is damaged and can't be repaired."

That is not what you want to see when you install a new OS update. How do we suddenly get "broken hard drives" doing an install? And you are excited be be back at less than square one? Haha.

Bart, please be serious, all that? Not to mention how do we reclaim our $30? Lame!!

Well I reformatted the HD and restored everything using TM. For some reason Iphoto didn't restore properly but once I downloaded it from the App store that recovered also. Of course it cost me $14.99. :-(

Should I try to install lion again and if so how do I ensure a good install? I have 20Gig free on my HD.

Question is, How do we ensure a good install? Right now my computer is sitting absolutely stuck in the middle of an upgrade, with no way to back out.

Steve

Help!!!! I Have the same problem!! How is this possible!! Apple people you must fix this inmediatly!! we are in a limbo. We have months with great expectations with lion. What a mess!!!!

Steve, apologies if the way I wrote it made you think I was joking. I am definitely not. I was just very excited that I was able to get my Mac drive back and may have overused the exclamation marks...I thought I had lost everything. My Mac drive has all my photos and music and I had stupidly forgotten to backup before I started the process.

Anyway, if you read my first post, my original error when running verify disk was "invalid node structure". I searched for "fsck_hfs invalid node structure" in google to find my solution. You can verify what I said looking through other posts that come back from that search.

I hope that helps.

How did you do it? I'm still trying to get my machine back. When I try to use disk utilities and repair or verify disk, the process stop it.

Bart, it was trouble1220 that I thought was joking, but I was being facetious. I find it funny that he was excited that he got screwed over.

My comment to your post was meant to be about how you have to be a genius to figure out how to fix this problem. Your explanation is well written. I know my way around the Mac OS pretty well, but I've never had to use the terminal or partition a HD. I made the mistake by not backing up my computer to a disk image before the install, but I've never had to do it before. Lesson learned. I've always been the guy who reads posts about people having outrageous problems and saying to myself, "Why does this stuff happen to people? Apple stuff always runs smooth for me". Now I'm amazed that an installer like this can trap us with no way out. I brought my tower in to my work and IT is going to look at it. When we fix the problem I will publish our results.

Thanks, Steve M