Install Failed - Disk is damaged

Thanks, Erik. Using your suggestion, I was able to boot from my Snow Leopard partition. Now I can wait until I return home to worry about installing Lion.

I am extremely frightened to reinstall the OS X LION even though I have purchased it directly from www.apply.com my entire HD was damaged and when i tried restarting my laptop the screen was this weird bright grey and these symbols kept popping up simultaneously and nothing else would happen, i took my laptop to the repair shop and had my entire hard drive replaced with a brand new one, the guy asked me if i wanted the lion os and then called to let me know that he wasnt able to install it or something and had to do it externally, although he was so soft spoken i could barely understand him, he said he needed a whole day to do it because the store would close in just 3 hours or something, i have it purchased on my app store but i dont know whether i should install it or not?

Try this:

Insert the cd or the USB key with Lion.

boot the mac.

in my system installation goes wrong. (there is only a generic message)

Now start the terminal

Go in the directory of the Lion update

find the "Install Lion somethinh" excecutable file and execute it, (it is under some directory, sorry I don't remember the exact path, and the exact name of the file )

Now a new installationa of Lion start: you are able to select the disk and go on.

(before, with DiskUtility I erased the disk and created a new partition)

it worked for me: mac mini 2010

Luca

Have no idea what you're talking about there, Luca. There is no install CD or USB key for Lion. If you've already installed Lion but damaged the HD, simply restart the Mac and at the chime, zap the PRAM (hold down alt-opt-p-r) until the mac restarts again. Upon second startup, hold down Opt until Recovery HD partition appears on the screen. Click on the recovery hd and Lion will reinstall.

I have maked a bootable DVD (http://osxdaily.com/2011/06/08/create-burn-bootable-mac-os-x-lion-install-disc/)

but you can also create a bootable USB disk (http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/08/make-a-bootable-mac-os-x-10-7-lion-installer-from -a-usb-flash-drive/)

In my system there were no recovery HD partition... I was never able to install Lion.. (mac mini 2010).

Luca

well I hit the same problem - stuck in boot disk limbo and unable to access or repair the disk partition, which was perfectly fine before I tried to upgrade.

I have not fully resolved the issues yet. I'm posting my experience and what I've done to recover the drive contents - should be straightforward for most folks - but after the guy in the Genius bar said my drive was toast - and I knew it wasn't - I figured I should post this. I was able to access the disk by dropping out of the setup and the GUI version of diskutil and firing up a shell (Terminal). From there I was able to use diskutil to mount the drive and copy my hard drive contents to an external hard drive. As the drive was mounted, I then fired up the GUI verson of diskutil and created a new image from my hard drive to an external drive. Hopefully I'm in a better shape now than before the upgrade. As I said, I have not fully resolved the issues - but at least I've recovered the data.

in summary - these steps will help you get the contents of your drive onto another drive

1. if you exit the setup, then select the Terminal application

2. when in the shell - type diskutil list to see if your hard drive is mounted

3. if the drive os not mounted - used diskutil mount <disk02s> <-- the id of the drive

4. mount the external hard drive

5. cp -Rp /Volume/<drive contents to copy> /Volume/your external hard drive

I will update this post if the suggestions in this email thread resolve the bigger issue.

Thank you so much!! I was having all of the same problems. I even went out and bought DiskWarrior but it said the volume was too severely damaged to be repaired. I followed your steps and I've got my computer back with out having to wipe the hard drive and with no lost data! (Wish I could return the $100 DiskWarrior!)

Before I try to install Lion again, I'm burning it to DVD. That way if bad things happen I can just pop out the disk.

Hi there!

I am having the same problems, receiving the same error message

I do not know my way around a Mac as well as most of the people in this discussion, but have read through all of the thread and tried the suggestions and nothing has worked. I teach in a "small" town in China so visiting my neighborhood genius bar isn't really an option. I dont have my snow leopard disk but do have the startup on an external hard drive, and as far as I know I'm the only one around with a Mac so there's that...

I have done the cmd-option-p-r and when I press the option button during startup I only have the option to choose install. Now my computer is stuck in install limbo.

I keep reading something about accessing the Terminal, but I have no idea what that is, how to do it or what to do once I get there.

If someone has enough patience, could you explain some other options like you would to a 3rd grader?

All I wanted to do was update my computer and now I just feel useless.

Thanks to anyone who can help!

I'd like to thank bart2906 for this - after working on this problem for more than six hours these steps did the trick - I had to run "fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk0s2" twice before the repair worked - I used Disk Utility for repairs at least 3 times earlier in the day to no avail. But I have my files back and am no longer stuck in limbo! Hope to update all software on Leopard and then backup my files carefully before trying Lion again - thanks for this - it was a salvation (I also reset my PRAM, not sure if it mattered, but I'm just so glad after trying so many things that this actually worked!)

im having the same issue "Mac OS X Lion couldn't be installed, because the disc Macintosh HD is damaged and can't be repaired." can someone give me a summary of what to do to fix it, i dont whant to lose all my files.

please help!!!

So i had this problem but i somehow fixed it.

I grabbed my OSX installer CD and i booted it up in there. I then used the disk utility and unmounted my harddrive "MACINTOSH HD" and i ran the verify/repair scan and it was successful.

I mounted it back and restarted and booted with the MAC OS X Installer.

Now it is installing... Hope this works.

Here's my story, with lots of guesswork but success in the end. Installing onto macbook pro 15" which came with snow leopard i got install failed retry loop. I tried starting up from sl disk but it just went into endless grey screen and i had to reboot. I zapped pram a few times, left it powered down a while, and every other suggestion i read here. Since i had burned a lion install dvd i tried booting up from that and it worked. Luckily i had a recent time machine backup so i just erased the hard drive with disk utility, then reinstalled lion from the disk. Once it installed without a glitch on the clean disk i imported all my data from tm seamlessly. It's been a long struggle but lion is now working. It reminded me a bit of the old days of looking for extension conflicts in os 7 or 8, os really hasn't improved much.

I had the exact problem on my macbook pro 15 insatlling Mtn. Lion that has been discussed here, endless loop after "damaged HD", couldn't load back into SL, finally i followed this and it worked perfectly for me, except i was installing Mtn. Lion, not lion, thank y'all so much, i thought it was way worse than it was!

bart2906

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.

Hello! Hoping someone still involved with this thread may help out!

I have read through the thread and have tried several of the suggestions (restart with cmd+opt+p+r, restart with "option", restart with "c") Unfortunately nothing has worked.

I just relocated cross-country and do not have a copy of snow lepord on a dvd on hand. Also the closest Apple Store is over 2hrs away. I'm not super savvy when it comes to knowing how to use Disk Utility or Terminal, so the more detailed the advice the better 😉

I have most of my work backed up on a drive, but I don't have TM set-up and there are files that would need to be recovered before I would want to just erase my HD (yes yes I know TM or a recent back-up should have been made).

Thanks to anyone who has the time and patience to help me out!

Hello... Last night I had a very similar problem with my MacBook Pro and 10.7.5. I had the same errors as you have been posting and the laptop would not restart and kept giving me the same errors. When I did disk verify and repair, it would verify but when I try to repair, it came up with an error that said basically to reformat and reinstall. Luckily I have Time Machine and hard copy/paste backups...

Now, 8 hours later my computer works well, and much faster than what it was doing before this. The culprit was the crash recovery files that had been collecting from Microsoft Word. I noticed that the hard copy/paste would stop abruptly and warn me about one file each time I tried. Then, I recognized the pattern and erased all of the temp directories associated with Office 2008. Then, I verified/repaired permissions first and I verified/repaired disk. At the beginning I was given a lot of red lines, after the deletion, I had none and the computer seems to be fine.

I know this is probably not what is hapening to all. But, I wanted to share my experience as well. I was just getting ready to reformat and did not have to so far.