"The volume MacHD needs to be repaired. Error: FileSystem verify or repair failed.

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Level 1

11 points

"The volume MacHD needs to be repaired. Error: FileSystem verify or repair failed.

Aloha gang,

I recently inherited an iMac 20" intel (I believe 2008) from work. It booted up without incident the first couple of times and, once on, I saw that the computer was running both 10.5 and Windows XP. No one had any disks for the machine so I couldn't readily change the admin password without doing so in single user mode using the following commands:

mount -uw /

rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

shutdown -h now

when I restarted the machine, it went back to setup (as I figured it would) and I created another Admin account so I could run software update, etc. I did, in fact, run the updater but when the machine restarted again, it stayed on the gray apple and gear for more than 20 minutes before taking me to the log in screen. I opened Disk Utility and verified/repaired permissions then verified the disk and got this message: "The volume [name] needs to be repaired. Error: FileSystem verify or repair failed".

Once I got a Leopard disk, I started from the CD to run Disk Utility and attempt to reset the original admin password from there. It didn't see the hard drive to reset the password. When I tried first aid, it took about 5 minutes to see that there was a hard drive and once I got that far, it still can't be repaired. I know Disk Warrior is usually good at these things but I don't have that software.

Are these issues stemming from the fact that the computer is running both operating systems? Is there anything else I can do, short of buying Disk Warrior? any help you folks can give is much appreciated. Thanks!

Posted on Jan 25, 2012 8:29 PM

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Answer 1

Eric Ross

Level 6

11,807 points

Jan 26, 2012 12:15 AM in response to nalani

No problems with your system running both Windows and Mac OS X, you just need to try DiskWarrior.

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Answer 2

May 13, 2012 8:13 AM in response to Eric Ross

I'm sure you have gotten some excellent advise from Apple's Support Community. I've had the same problem as you have with Error: FileSystem verify or repair failed. Nothing seemed to have resolved the issue completely, at least for me.

May I ask if you have the File Vault turned on? If so, I have found after much trial and error that turning off this feature will delete the error message and you are up and running again. And yes I see that others have suggested Disk Warrior. That's an avenue to explore too. Good Luck!

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