Mountain Lion damaged my hard disk

Do you have a backup?

Have you tried booting from your install disks and running DU?

I have updated from Lion and not seen this problem, however it is unlikley that the drive is faulty, unless it was ready for failing before the install and the extra work of the install broke it completley.

The important question have you a recent backup of your data or better still the complete system. With those you can restore your system. If the disk is definately broken, it will need to be replaced but I think it would have not been long before it would have failed just using SL.

Without the backup it gets more difficult.

ML did not damage the disk it simply revealed a problem. Your disk is probably failing and simply had not totally failed before your attempted the upgrade. You need to invest in a external drive to pull off your data and then use it in the future to backup your replaced HD. Taking to an Apple Store would be a good move at this point. Did you run DU before the upgrade?

Message was edited by: hpr3

Sorry about the above post, I wrote it before seeing your other replies.

Can you put the machine in Target mode and read the disk with another Mac, both will need a firewire port.

I'm not going to argue your point but your disk is failing . If you persist in trying to do anything with this computer you risk losing your data permanently. Your disk isn't reparable. You are going to have to replace it. It's your choice.

Message was edited by: hpr3

Whatever you decide if you have no backup and your data is important to you I thought the best thing would be to get that data off the compromised drive.

Target mode may work to get the data off to another Mac, if it does not, then you need more expert help to get that data than I can give.

Once you have the data you can get on with repairing the machine. Yes it may not be easy and you may be better passing it on to Apple or a Apple service provider to help you out.

Sorry not a lot of help but it is all I can think of.

hpr3, I understand your point that maybe my disk might already have a prior issue, but it doesn't seem a coincidence to me that many others have had the same problem upgrading to ML and suddently had their disks crashed.

It's not a coincidence, but neither is it the fault of ML. A drive that is slightly corrupt can, when a major system upgrade writes tens of thousands of files, become very badly damaged, corrupting the system and potentially user data. It happens to some people with every system upgrade and update.

I did not run the disk utility before the upgrade. I would expect the ML installation to do it before permanently compromising my disk.

That's the way it's supposed to work. Many people with problems end up being told that they can't install because the disk can't be repaired. However, some problems manage to persist. No disk repair tool is perfect.

Utlimately, although you say you're not paying to fix a problem you didn't create, you did create the problem by not having backups. Backups are a responsibility every computer user has, regardless of OS. If you had backups, the fix would be simple and cheap.... erase the hard drive and restore from backup. Since you don't, you will end up spending some time and possibly money resolving the problems, and you may not see some of your data again. If the problem is fixable, DiskWarrior can likely fix it. (It doesn't try to repair the directory structures, it simply rebuilds them from scratch.)

It would be wise to try to back up what you can before doing that, but that will be tricky with a damaged drive. You could try connecting to another Mac using Firewire target mode, and copy what you can that way... but you're likely to have some errors interrupt the process. You could also try using Disk Utility's Restore pane to copy the disk to another hard drive, but again, the errors are likely to complicate things. You could also try copying vital files with the Terminal while in recovery mode, if you know how to use Unix commands.

Hi..

This may be a long shot but:

Try doing a PRAM reset (cmd+opt/alt +R+P during boot)

then again try booting from the SL CD.

Had a simmilar issue going from ML to Lion.

Anyways, strange coincidence if your hd and many others should fail at the same time ??

/Dennis

Well this could be a learning opportunity for me. I failed to ask the OP what errors DU found. I was under the impression that error's such a "invalid node structures" could only be corrected temporarily by DW. I have used DW in the past to correct minor problems that DU has not repaired but as you know at least one very experienced helper who I respect and who you know doesn't think that DW is worth the money. Did I give the OP bad advice?

Message was edited by: hpr3

I have very rarely used DiskWarrior, but when I have, the results have been good. I believe that most people who object to using it do so based on the idea that, if the hard drive's directory structures are so badly damaged that Disk Utility cannot repair them, the data on the hard drive may also be corrupt. In such a case, all data should be restored from backup instead of attempting to repair, since you wouldn't want to keep files that had been corrupted.

Let me give a more concrete example... suppose that you have a file named favorite_baby_pic.jpg that you would be heartbroken to lose. Now let's say that you have bad directory corruption, such that DiskWarrior would be necessary for repairs. The problem is, it's possible that part of favorite_baby_pic.jpg has already been overwritten by some other file, due to the corrupt directory. So, if you repair with DiskWarrior and go on about your business, you may find out MUCH later that favorite_baby_pic.jpg is corrupt, and by that point you no longer have a good copy of it in any of your backups. It would have been much better to simply erase the hard drive and restore your data (including a good copy of favorite_baby_pic.jpg) from a backup.

There are a couple problems with that. First, of course, is what to do when there are no backups. In that case, you take what you can get, because that's all that you can do. And, hopefully, you learn a valuable life lesson about backups! Second, though, is that you may not be able to easily define a time before which the corruption did not exist. So you may restore favorite_baby_pic.jpg from a backup and think you're okay, but it got corrupted before that point. For that reason, it's more important to have archival copies of any such files.

Hope I answered the question! 🙂