cruisingwithherman
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: How do i repair my hard drive in single user mode when disk is full?

Hi there Apple Community!

 

I have an old Macbook Pro 17" with an upgraded 500GB harddrive and 4GB memory. I'm running Mac OSX Lion.


Was hoping you could help me out.  THis is the situation:

 

Long story short I spilt wine on my macbook and the screen went a bit blobby. Switched it off for a few days, removed the battery etc. etc. Opened it up cleaned out as much of the wine as possible, but unfortunately some of it came in behind the LCD, so now the screen has a nice red stain.  Obviously I'm not going to try to clean that out of the LCD. 

 

My Macbook Pro still worked for a few days after that, but then my harddrive gave up.  I booted in the Recovery HD menu, verified the drive and I got the error "Keys out of order - This disk needs to be repaired, click Repair Disk." I attempted to repair the disk but got the error "Keys out of order - Disk Full Error - The volume could not be repaired".


Unfortnately of this 500GB I only have about 7GB free on it, as I have a huge iPhoto and iTunes library. I did make a TIme Machine backup of my user directory, but not the system files.  I don't really want to do a clean install because:

 

1) I'm paranoid that there's something I did not fully back up

2) I don't want to have to download the whole Mac OSX Lion again. I should have made a USB bootable backup when I had the chance.  I don't have access to a broadband connection.

 

What I feel are my viable options, are as follows:

 

1) I did buy a replacement internal 500GB harddrive, so I can probably try to make an image of the hard drive to this new drive, but not sure how. I believe it's through the Disk Utility with the "New Image" option but not sure how to go from there.

2) Start up in Single User Mode and delete some unnecessary files and re-attempt to run the fschk -fy utility again (I tried this earlier and got the same Disk Full Error).  - the problem with this is, I'm not familiar with the command line and have no clue how to delete files.  I don't know my way around Unix.

3) I can also probably attempt to make a Ghost Image or Acronis Image of the failed drive to this new drive, but not sure if Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image will be able to read this HFS drive - I believe it's possible as it's a simple hard drive clone. 

 

If you can guide me in the best option - probably there is a better solution than my proposed ones above, I appreciate any feedback and comments you might have!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), Mac OSX Lion - Macbook Pro 17" 2007

Posted on Sep 10, 2012 12:23 PM

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cruisingwithherman

Q: How do i repair my hard drive in single user mode when disk is full?

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  • Helpful answers

  • by baltwo,Helpful

    baltwo baltwo Sep 10, 2012 2:57 PM in response to cruisingwithherman
    Level 9 (62,256 points)
    Sep 10, 2012 2:57 PM in response to cruisingwithherman

    IIRC, Disk Utility can't fix keys out of order; however, DiskWarrior and other 3rd-party apps can, so no need to get another HD. Step one would be to transfer as much of your media files: music, photos, and movies off it to another HD. If successful, erase those on the int HD. Then, try DU again, free space should no longer be an issue, and it might repair it. If not, then remove as much other data and other stuff in your home folder, as possible, boot into Recovery HD, launch DU, and erase the HD. Then, reinstall Lion. Since TM has your home folder, you could restore it, but not the media files.

  • by cruisingwithherman,

    cruisingwithherman cruisingwithherman Sep 19, 2012 11:05 AM in response to baltwo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 19, 2012 11:05 AM in response to baltwo

    hi Baltwo,

    So I ended up copying my user folder to another harddrive. I managed to download the whole osx lion again, reinstalled, and recovered my home folder using this discussion:

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1428

    I have managed to get all my files back. My iTunes library works fine, but my iPhoto library when I open it, get the following error:

    iPhoto cannot be opened because of a problem.
    Here's the error log

     

    Process:         iPhoto [1540]

    Path:            /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/MacOS/iPhoto

    Identifier:      com.apple.iPhoto

    Version:         8.1.2 (8.1.2)

    Build Info:      iPhotoProject-4240000~8

    Code Type:       X86 (Native)

    Parent Process:  launchd [209]

     

     

    Date/Time:       2012-09-19 19:56:45.528 +0200

    OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.7.4 (11E53)

    Report Version:  9

    Sleep/Wake UUID: 7948ABE2-5294-4F87-B6E3-777095A2F2EE

     

     

    Interval Since Last Report:          4780 sec

    Crashes Since Last Report:           9

    Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   9

    Anonymous UUID:                      70117D38-03EA-4F9C-B810-50B743864B9E

     

     

    Crashed Thread:  0

     

     

    Exception Type:  EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)

    Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000

     

     

    Application Specific Information:

    dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries

     

     

    Dyld Error Message:

      Library not loaded: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/iLifeSlideshow.framework/Versions/A/iLifeSlid eshow

      Referenced from: /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/MacOS/iPhoto

      Reason: image not found

     

     

    I've done an Apple Software Update but it didn't find an update for iPhoto.

     

    One thing to note is, this library was originally created on iLife 08, upgraded to '09 and it stayed on that version. It hasn't een upgraded to iLife '11.  It worked fine on my previous install of OSX Lion.  How do I recover the library without upgrading to '11 ?

  • by baltwo,

    baltwo baltwo Sep 19, 2012 11:32 AM in response to cruisingwithherman
    Level 9 (62,256 points)
    Sep 19, 2012 11:32 AM in response to cruisingwithherman

    You could try installing iLife '09. I've no such issues, since the executable is still on my machine.