Install Failed - Disk is damaged

Yes I am about to resolve that I have a hard drive issue, If the drive was in a state of failing I assume the Lion install pushed it over the edge to finally fail? It is still jut odd that so many others had a hard drive failure issue at install and were able to correct using the many different sufggestions in this thread. If I can figure out how to use Disk warrior as "jefferson136" suggest I will try that first. If that does not work ifixit.com has a great step by step tutorial on how to replace a hard drive and I will do that and hope and pray I can salvage my pictures from the old hard drive by hooking it up as an external drive and trying to sccess from my Mac with the new hard drive. This is way to stressful and time consuming but my closes Apple Store is 75 miles away and from what I read they will just wipe the drive and fix it or replace it and will not focus on trying to save my files. I have had the Mac for 3 years and never a single problem to research. Very refreshing after going through multiple PC's and major issues about every year. PS - I am in Tennessee - USA

I have access to a Macbook pro (friends) so I could use it to download the Disk Warrior software, burn it to a disk then stick the disk in my Mac slot and it will boot / load to it and allow me to run it? Or do I need to purchase an external hard drive and make the download copy to it and then hook up to my Mac and run it? Sorry for my lack of knowledge on this stuff...

ssfelts wrote:

I have access to a Macbook pro (friends) so I could use it to download the Disk Warrior software, burn it to a disk then stick the disk in my Mac slot and it will boot / load to it and allow me to run it?

This is correct. Once you burn the disc, you reboot and hold the option key, which will give you the option to select your boot disk, where you select the Disk Warrior DVD from the options. When it runs, the only thing I had to use was their "Rebuild" feature. For me it was just one button and I let it do it's thing.

Here is the info from the Disk Warrior site:

"DiskWarrior 4 version 4.3 is now available on DiskWarrior DVD revision 1107. This DVD is a universal startup DVD that can start up both PowerPC and Intel Macs. All Mac models meeting the system requirements for DiskWarrior can be started from the DVD. Some newer iMacs with wireless keyboards have timing issues when starting up from any DVD. Instead of pressing the "C" key immediately upon start up, wait for the startup chime and then press the "Option" key. This will bring up the Startup Manager which will allow you to choose the DVD as a startup disk. If your wireless mouse is not working in the Startup Manager, use the arrow keys to choose the DVD, then press the "Return" key to continue starting up. Click here to learn how to repair the directory of a disk in a Mac model that cannot be started from the DiskWarrior DVD."

I installed Lion on all three of my Macs without a hitch. Even a low-end MacBook C2D without problems. But as soon as my brother-in-law tried to install it on his top end MBP >WHAMMO< disk damage/errors/unrecoverable data etc. Thankfully your instructions helped a ton in getting the partition repaired and, surprisingly, found Lion to have actually been already installed! And it actually worked! We were able to boot into Lion. However, after an hour the computer ran horrendously sluggish, and the reboot took more than 2-1/2 minutes before the desktop showed up (compared to 15 seconds on my MBP, and his model is faster than mine) What happens exactly upon reboot is you get the normal Apple logo behind the white screen, the busy circle, then on his laptop, the screen blanks for like 30 seconds, then goes to the blue screen with the mouse arrow for another 30 to 45 seconds, before finally opening the desktop. Any suggestions how to fix this?

What exactly did you delete? I have access to my mac drive from my bootcamp drive, and I'm willing to try this.

Having same problem here, no idea what to do tried PRAM, nothing

Not an apple expert

Please help Apple

@darylfromredhill Just start your mac, after the first chime, hold down option-command-P-R (all four keys) at once, keep holding it down until the screen blacks out and u hear the Mac chime again. Then let go all the buttons and you should see your Lion installer. Assuming you've backed up all your data with time machine, I would wipe the hard drive and do a clean install of Lion on your hard drive.

Just read the entire thread.

Considering the number of crashed HDs that were ok before installing lion,

can we assume that Lion instalation is crashing peoples HDs?

Who is supposed to pay for them?

In the thread replies, how can I know who is an from apple (Apple Expert) and who is not?

That way I would know wich are the "OFFICIAL" answers (those which were written from HIRED apple advisors/experts).

I had no idea there's so many reports of this. There's definitely something wrong in this install, especially the fact that Lion needs to create a new Restore partition could be the reason why HD's are getting corrupted in this process. Fortunately my installs went smoothly, but had it gone wrong, yeah, you'd see me ranting in this thread endlessly 😝

Same problem, damaged my disc and stuck ina void. Standing by for apple to fix this....?

Ok, same problem here folks. Tried most of the mentioned suggestions and now trying the Disk Warrior thing..

So I have a version of DiskWarriors on a CD but now the problem is that my Snow Leopard CD wont come out of the cd-drive :/

I have a backup but it's not very recent..

Zap the PRAM. Restart the computer, then hold Opt-Com-P-R until the computer chimes again. The Lion installer should appear thereafter.

(this is thierrybcd awnsering from other account)

1. The problem is not that the Lion installer isn't appearing, it is, but I need the snow leopard (whos CD is in my drive but wont show and wont come out)

2. I ran the fsck_hfs with lion installer booted and it said it tried 3 times to repair but failed. Then I tried to investigate in disk utilities and it gave this error:

Checking volume file count

invalid volume file count

(it should be 676736 instead of 626970)

invalid volume directory count

(it should be 199041 instead of 187699)

So now I seem to have lost some files.. :/

I'll try to reboot in snow leopard and maby try to repair it there, otherwise I'm taking it to the store tomorrow

Thanks anyway for the reply!

I am happy to inform you guys that after another random PRAM-reset my Mac decided to just reboot as usual, sending me to the standard supernova desktop. All settings are factory-restored but I didn't lose any of my files.

Hope the others dealing with this problem get to solve it..

Cheers!

I want to post here that after all the problems, I checked my warrantly here under my account and was able to acces an 'advisor' because my question recently installed Lion ..... Tome was very helpful. Lion was installed before my call on its own partition. I had Time Machine set up with a backup, so we erased Machintosh HD and then we reset PRAM .... restart, cmd, opt, p, r, all fingers down at once. The machine chimes 3 times... then go forward with Lion install and then restore from Time Machine.