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Disk utility gives "Error: Partition map repair failed while adjusting structures to fit current whole disk size"

I am getting the following error when running Disk Utility (under ML) on an exteral USB hard drive:

Error: Partition map repair failed while adjusting structures to fit current whole disk size.


I get thsi when I ask Disk Utility to "Repair Disk" at the top level of the disk hierarchy (i.e. not on one of the partitions within the disk but on the disk itself). I was not getting this error with Lion on the same disk before I upgraded from Lion to ML.


It seems like a bug in ML. I found websites where they suggest that you just run Lion's Disk Utility and it will show the disk to be fine.


Any thoughts?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Aug 18, 2012 4:31 AM

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Sep 5, 2012 8:16 AM in response to endlessmik

So, I finally seemed to have resolved things with the Seagate 4TB Firewire external drive. If you Google about, you will find a thread on Seagate's own support forum that describes how to disable the sleep function on the drive. You CANNOT ALLOW THE DRIVE TO SLEEP WHILE CONNECTED TO YOUR MAC.


After a lot of reading, here's what I think is happening: the drive goes to sleep, after some period of inactivity, and when you shutdown your Mac, OS X tries to write something to the drive as part of the dismount / disconnect / shutdown process. That fails in some manner, leaving the drive 'corrupted' at the filesystem or partition level.


Then, on the next boot-up, Mountain Lion tells you that it cannot repair the drive and it mounts as read only. Your only fix at that point is to re-partition / re-format and start over (which is big fun with 3TB of data to copy back on to the drive).


If you prevent the drive from sleeping, whenever it's connected to the MacBook, then the above process doesn't occur and voila, the drive just works. So far, I haven't had any problems with about a week of starting / shutting down my MacBook connected to the offending drive (translation: I was going to return the drive, but the problem is clearly with Mac OS X Mountain Lion).

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Jan 24, 2013 8:18 AM in response to Rumboogy22

There is no consistent solution for a user. Apple has to supply it. All you can do is submit a bug report to


http://www.apple.com/feedback


And, there is really no excuse for this bug. It's not as if 3TB and 4TB drives are something new. It reminds of the problems users had when Apple first included USB3 ports on computers. There were a large number of problems interfacing with external drives using a USB3 interface. And again...Apple started including USB3 ports very late into the game. There was no excuse for those problems.


I'm as loyal a Mac user as there is and I owned one of the original 1984 128K Macs. More and more I think that Mac OS X is just an afterthought.


I recently had to replace one of my 2TB external drives used for media storage. I really wanted and needed a 3TB drive but decided on a new 2TB drive specifically because of this bug.

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Jan 26, 2013 10:45 PM in response to Scott Newman

>>

>>There is no consistent solution for a user. Apple has to supply it. All you can do is submit a bug report to


>> http://www.apple.com/feedback


Thanks, Scott. I have made a bug report on this issue. Maybe a few other folks could, too?


I mean, really I've been involved in this thread since AUGUST and nothing has been done. I know people are losing data and work and I have a lovely 2TB Hitatchi Touro doorstop I'd like to use as a backup drive someday.....

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Mar 9, 2013 12:12 PM in response to Rumboogy22

As user "cowtipper" suggested at the bottom of page 5, I submitted a bug report, which I copied below. Maybe if enough users complain, Apple with finally do something about it. Please feel free to copy and paste my report and submit it under your name.


Submit the bug report to: http://www.apple.com/feedback


Here's my report:


I am getting the following error when running Disk Utility (under Mountain Lion 10.8.2) on an external 3TB USB hard drive:


Error: Partition map repair failed while adjusting structures to fit current whole disk size.


As noted in the discussion thread below, this seems to affect external hard drives of various brands 3TB and larger. This problem has persisted for months with no solution. When is Apple going to finally address this problem?


Disk utility gives "Error: Partition map repair failed while adjusting structures to fit current whole disk size"

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4218970?start=0&tstart=0

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Jan 2, 2013 12:45 PM in response to dahmooser

Okay, some more info on the 4TB G Drive 0G02537 part number issue, which produces the same aforementioned error messages.


I formatted my drives via FireWire on a Snow Leopard system.


IF you then take them to a Mountain Lion system,


  • Plug into the USB port.
  • You'll get a "not recognized, do you want to initialize?"
  • Say "NO!" and cancel that.
  • Run the G Drive Firmware updater (which you can only get by CALLING G-TECH, because it's NOT posted as a download on their site)
  • Firmware update successful.
  • Unplug your hard drive.
  • Wait 30 seconds.
  • Plug it back in.
  • DATA IS RETAINED!!


NOTE: I only know that THIS worked on THREE drives. If you've formatted your drives any other way, I am uncertain what the results will be. G-tech said that retaining the data is rare... so, I was lucky I had formatted them via FW on Snow Leopard.


Hope this helps someone out there.

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Aug 18, 2012 6:00 AM in response to Rumboogy22

Is this a hybrid disk with Windows NTFS and Linux partition types which are incompatible with Disk Utility?


If not, try a different USB port, and then verify/repair on individual partitions to see if your error message is reproduced, and if so, which partition?


If the data on the drive is crucial, you should invest in DiskWarrior (alsoft dot com) and run it in recovery mode on this drive. I use DiskWarrior and there have times when it proved invaluable.


If the data is not crucial, try reformatting the drive as a single partition in Mountain Lion, with GUID option and HFS Plus Journaled.

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Aug 18, 2012 2:38 PM in response to VikingOSX

No NTFS or anything else non-Mac. I booted into a old Lion partition and ran Disk Utility and found no problem with this USB drive's partitions.


I then called Apple support and spent an hour on the phone with them. They essentially did not have a clue.


I think this is a bug in ML and there is no problem with my USB drive. But it is an obscure bug so not many people are hitting it. The USB drive that I am seeing this on has had lots of changes over time. I have added and deleted paritions (6 currently). Also when I upgraded to Lion it added hidden recovery partitions. So much has happened to this disk and something along the way is not agreeing with ML.


All the partitions on this USB disk come out clean when running "Repair" in either Lion or ML.

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Aug 25, 2012 3:41 PM in response to JC-Avila

I am having the same issue with the Seagate GoFlex Desk 4TB Firewire 800 in a early 2011 MacBook Pro 17".


I deleted the partition, recreated the partition as GUID Partition Table, HFS+ Journaled and the re-ran the verify from the top-level and see the same error - with no data on the disk (other than what's placed on there by Disk Utility).


If I ignore this warning and copy a bunch of data on the disk, it eventually gets corrupted and I lose everything.


One thing I've noticed is that if I explicitly unmount the drives, prior to shutdown, everything is fine. If I forget and leave the drives mounted (I have a 3TB model and a 4 TB model that are Firewire-chained), on a subsequent reboot the 4TB drive will report that it's unreadable and the fun starts over.


This was all new to Mountain Lion - man, I am sooooo sorry I upgraded to ML - this is one many serious problems I am having with ML (the others being Exchange support and external screen support w/ mission control).


I think Apple has finally released their own version of Vista.

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Sep 1, 2012 10:42 AM in response to Rumboogy22

I am having the identical problem with a 3 TB Seagate GoFlex Desk Media drive. This only occurred after upgrading to ML. What prompted me to use Disk Utility is that I cannot transfer files to the drive any more. Wish I had stayed with Lion -- no problems and every app seemed to run faster, I had more confidence.

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Sep 18, 2012 9:04 AM in response to j0wens

I don't see how this relates to the problem. The issue I am having is with a WD drive with no drivers installed. Just took the bare drive formatted it under SL and have been using it withoug problem. But now with ML, when I run Disk Utility repair at the drive's top level I get an error. But if I switch back to Lion I don't get the error. Clearly this is a bug in ML's version of Disk Utility - a disk which is formatted and is valid under an earlier verssion of Disk Utility starts flagging errors in a later version.


Note also that although I get this error from Disk Utility, the disk does not show any problems at all and has been working flawlessly under SN, Lion and now ML.

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Sep 18, 2012 9:33 AM in response to Rumboogy22

Have you tried checking the disk with another utility? I discovered this error message when trying to repair permissions trying to figure out why Timemachine was telling me the drive was read only. I have been using it as a timemachine back up since March. I have since run Techtool on the drive and it is comming up with bunch of broken or incompatible files on the drive from lion back ups. It still discovering them but they range from various image filetypes to plists.


I ran Techtool on a whim. After restarting the mac it was able to see the drive as writable and did a timemachine back up uniteruppted. If it's corrupted as some clain I ahve yet to see. Iamwaiting to see what Techtool says...

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Sep 20, 2012 2:04 PM in response to Rumboogy22

I have the same problem. I have a couple of WD Ext HDD 1021 drives that were formatted and formerly used with no complaints on Leopard. Just moved everything over to a new 27" iMac with Mtn Lion. On the drive that has a single partition, no complaints from Disk Utility. The other drive has 2 mac partitions and I get the same error as other people. The volumes have no errors so I am leaving it alone until something definitive happens or gets published.

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Sep 21, 2012 7:20 AM in response to Rumboogy22

Have run ML since the end of July and only now has Time Machine reported that it cannot write to my external 2TB Iomega. TechTool Pro reports no errors but neither Disk Utility nor Time Machine want to play with it.


I have reformatted, repartitioned and still get the partition map error.


I wouldn't mind so much Disk Utility flagging an error when there isn't one but as TimeMachine will not write to the disk I'm stuck without my backup.

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Sep 24, 2012 1:19 AM in response to Rumboogy22

The new release of 10.8.2 did not change anything for me - still get the same error message when I run Disk Utility at the top level of my USB drive.


My plan, when I have the time, is to copy all the data off this drive, reformat it under 10.8.x and then put the data back - of course checking with Disk Utility. If I ever get around to doing this I will post the results here.

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Disk utility gives "Error: Partition map repair failed while adjusting structures to fit current whole disk size"

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