Disk Utility stuck on "updating boot support partitions for the volume as required"

Question

Disk Utility stuck on "updating boot support partitions for the volume as required"

Tonight when I mounted my Time Machine drive (a WD My Passport drive), it failed to mount properly, and I received a warning from Drive Genius that it needed repair. But when I launched Drive Genius, the disk would not show up.

Through a series of mounts, unmounts, and sleeping the computer, I managed to get it to show up in Disk Utility, so I seleted "Time Machine Backups" under the main listing for the drive ("319.37GB WD My Passort..."), and clicked Repair.

The detail window showed "Volume repair complete" almost immediately. But for almost four hours now, it's been stuck on "Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required."

Meanwhile, Activity Monitor has been showing fsku_hfs taking 30%-85% of the CPU the whole time.

Anyone have advice?

Macbook Pro 13, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Aug 19, 2012 6:02 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 19, 2012 7:51 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

It's not doing anything. That message appears after a successful repair but does not go away again. Besides, TM doesn't have any boot support!

The process is finished, just close DU or move on to the next volume.

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Answer 2

Aug 19, 2012 11:48 AM in response to noondaywitch

Apparently not:

Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.

But when I ran Disk Utility again this morning, not on the Time Machine Backup, but up the hierarcy on the level labeled "319.37GB WD My Passort...," I got...

The volume Time Machine Backups appears to be OK.

And now the drive seem to be OK.

I think I'll still offload everything and reformat it.

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Answer 3

Aug 19, 2012 1:36 PM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

If you've had that error message for the volume, it would be as well to do so.

Read Pondini's TM articles for how to transfer the backups;

http://pondini.org/TM/18.html

But don't worry about the 'updating boot partitions' message in Disk Utility.

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Answer 4

Tlll33

Level 1

5 points

Aug 24, 2014 1:39 AM in response to 100 Watt Walrus

I had the same problem.

After some time I always stopped the process, thinking it is not working (was always a few hours).

Then, before contemplating to buy a professional tool, I started the process once more in the morning and left it running for over a day and a half (over 36 hours). Then, when I checked the next morning, disk utility had been terminated and the drive mounted properly.

Looks like all you need is patience, in particular if you have a big drive to fix...

With Process View you can check if the fsck process is running and using cpu capacity to make sure you are not waiting in vain...

Hope that helps

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Answer 5

Dec 21, 2014 3:58 AM in response to Tlll33

I am currently stuck in the "Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required" stage - how do you view the Process View/Activity Monitor whilst in Disk Utility?

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