Mountain Lion install failed and now can't access HD

I rarely post, however, because of a major screw up with Mountain Lion, I will. I have been using mac computers since 1987, have obviously installed and upgraded multiple OS new and upgrades and never, I mean never had a problem with any of them, until now. The install stalled with the message that the hard disk needed repair. I thought all of my data was lost, except for time machine backup, which was not as current as it should have been. Losing that data would have been a royal pain.

Went through the restore OS from Time Machine, then tried to repair the disk with apple disk repair utility. Not repairable. Why? I still don't have a clue. After reading multiple threads, decided to go ahead and buy DiskWarrior. This was a weird experienc. Loaded it onto external hard drive, hooked my MacBook Pro as Target disk. Loaded in DiskWarrior as hardware probelm. ???? Immediately went online to see what advice about this message. Looked like a massive coincidence had hit my laptop. Worked perfectly until loading Mountain Lion, the decided to have hard disk melt down. Suddenly, DiskWarrior indicated it was ready to rebuild my directory. The hardware warning was gone. A few minutes later, directory repaired. Rebooted, same problem. Can't load OS X, need to repair hard disk. Apple disk repair still unable to repair disk. Used DiskWarrior, repaired it no problem.

Deleted original OS 10.8 dmg. Rebooted and downloaded fresh copy of OS 10.8. This time install went flawlessly. Mountain Lion transferred all info flawlessly. Mid 2009 MacBook Pro running flawlessly and actually more smoothly now than in Lion.

1. I think original download was somehow corrupted and that is what screwed up the disk directory.

2. I do not know why apple Disk Utility would not repair the disk and Disk Warrior would. Expensive fix, but ultimately worthwhile. Did it mysefl and did not have to mess with "Genius" bar.

3. I will never go so long without backup again. That was a big mistake.

My advice:

1. Be sure you have smooth download of entire Mountain Lion file, if not, start over. My download was paused a couple of times.

2. If the install is messed up and you need Disk Repair, buy DiskWarrior and repair directory, it works flawlessly. If it initially says your disk has hardware problem, wait a few minutes while it finishes entire evaluation. It may well disappear like mine did, then actually repair the directories without a problem.

3. Be sure you have deleted old OS 10.8 Install file and load fresh one.

4. Install OS 10.8 and you should be OK.

5. Good luck.

Mountain Lion seems to have some problems, but many of them may be due to server overload at apple, delayed download with incorporated unrecognized code problems. If there is any delay, start over and get a smooth download.

Disk Utility is too light weight. Apple needs to beef it up. This is my biggest complaint. Apple utility should be able to fix disks. We should not have to spend $100 to fix a disk, but there you are.

Once fixed however, back to usual beautiful, flawless apple experience.

After time on the phone with Apple support and them giving me wrong information and trying to charge me for something their Mountain Lion software did I am done with Apple. Thousands of people are having the same problem because of their Mountain Lion software and they try to tell people that their hard drives are fried and it was failing before you installed Mountain Lion. I guess it is just a coincidence that everybody's hard drives failed once they installed Mountain Lion. Everytime they come out with a new operating system I have to call support because there is some kind of problem. No more Apple for me. I do not think I will ever buy another Apple product after this experience.

If you have not overwritten it, the following file (or a near neighbour, viewed in Console) will contain details of actions performed on disks and volumes during installation:

/private/var/log//install.log

Your case may be dissimilar from the opening post so I should recommend posting details under a separate topic.

Not everyone's drives failed. Coincides do occur.

In my case: failure of the hard disk drive of my MacBookPro5,2 occurred some time after installing Mountain Lion. The cause was not Mountain Lion. This class of drive is reportedly relatively bad. I restored most data from backups.

Apple Support had to format my drive completely and install from scratch. Very cumbersome to again migrate all settings and files and wait for hours till it is complete. Mountain Lion is indeed buggy, even after install. Seems it is still not a Gold version. I guess Snow leopard was the most reliable version.

What was reported by Disk Utility?

I started with a MacBook with Leopard & smoothly upgraded to SnowLeopard with an install disk. I then updated to current status all Apple software to prepare for Mountain Lion. My Mountain Lion installation stalled out & the MacBook shut down while running very hot. All attempts to reinstall Mountain Lion from download failed in the same way even after booting up in recovery mode & verifying hard drive volumes & even after erasing my hard drive. Booting up from a proven Mountain Lion disk image on CD obtained from my local Apple reseller, the installation still failed in the same way even after hard drive verifications. I then attempted to boot up & reinstall SnowLeopard from my installation disk- the initial message indicated that no installation was allowed on the Macintosh volume so I verified the volume & tried again only to get the same result. I then tried again but after verifying the Macintosh volume as OK, I nonetheless repaired the volume. This time the SnowLeopard installation was allowed & so I proceeded to install. Guess what- the SnowLeopard installation stalled out & failed just like the Mountain Lion installation! Many explanations are possible but the most simple one I can think of is that the original Mountain Lion installation attempt altered my hard drive to cause the install failures. Perhaps repairing my hard drive with DiskWarrior or something will support a solution. I welcome any thoughts.

Hey technolliegy,

I had the same problem and figured out I had to disable my firmware password by going into recovery mode, then I did a reboot back into recovery mode, repaired my hdd using disk utility and then did the upgrade to mountain lion again without a hitch.

Hope it helps!

I downloaded Mountain Lion tonight and tried to upgrade from Snow Leopard. BIG MISTAKE!!! Got the error about the HD failing, which is not true. Now I'm trying to restore all my files from Time Machine. Had to use my Snow Leopard CD to reboot the computer first. Estimated time for restoring the HD is 8 hours plus. Not cool. I think I will request a refund for the ML download and not try it again. Others have suggested make a USB boot first if anyone is interested.

OK, so here's my experience on a MBP 17".

1. Tried to install ML yesterday -> received hard drive message.
2. Restored the hard drive from a Time Machine backup -> success.
3. Cloned the newly restored hard drive to another drive, just in case.
4. Booted from the new clone.
5. Verified the internal drive -> no errors found.
6. Verified permissions on the internal drive -> found errors.
7. Fixed permissions on the internal drive -> all but one SUID permission was fixed.
8. Booted from the internal drive -> success.
9. Re-downloaded and installed ML -> Success.

After reading some of the other posts, I'm sure that I didn't have to restore from a TM backup in step 2, but I had already started that before checking the groups. Booting from the clone and fixing permissions also seems like overkill.

I had the same problem when trying to instal OSX Mountain Lion, "Error occured please try installing again" Easy solution for me was to restart my Mac & try again. This worked first time! Now loving the upgrade....

good Luck everyone & enjoy

GazzR

Thanks Famaman. Your guidance worked flawlessly for me and got me back to my normal OS. Can't believe month's after this post there's still an issue. There must be a conflict with the state of the end user's disk and if it has any problems. I know mine had errors that were fixed and found by running the disk utlity. One I did that I tried the ML OSX again and it worked.

This helped me format

all details in this link

http://www.rawcomputing.co.uk/use-diskutil-in-os-x.html

hope it helps