Volume error, very often on OSX 10.8.2

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Volume error, very often on OSX 10.8.2

I'm getting volume corruption very often on Mountain Lion. I bought the newest 13" MacBook Pro (non retina) this Christmas with 16gb of ram from OCW and Seagate Momentus XT 750gb hybrid drive. My old OSX installation on my old 2009 13" MacBook Pro didn't displayed any problem.

It starts to get a little slower that usual and then, with no warning some apps start to become unresponsive, like web browsers , etc.

I usually start with an inspection on Onyx to check for SMART report and volume integrity. It states SMART passed ok, but I need to repare the volume on the recovery partion' disk utility. After doing so for the 3rd time, it's getting a little old pretty fast... I'm now recovering to a full installation from within recovery partition to see if I can shake this out.

You guys have any idea on what could be causing this? I do have a lot of apps installed, but it was never a problem before. HD failing (I had my fair share of Seagate failures in the past...)? Problem with ram? I tested all components on TechTool Pro, and everything was ok. I'm really frustrated, I need to work and my Mac is behaving... This was exactly the reason I quited MS products a couple years ago.

OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Feb 11, 2013 6:55 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 11, 2013 7:03 AM in response to Geophis

So your volume and your apps aren't working? how much RAM do you have in your system?

have you looked at Activity monitor? Does your cursor beach ball a lot.

a Reinstall is what I would do too, this usually fixes some issues. You can also choose to back up your installESD.dmg file and put it on a usb stick, which will do an install.

Since your machine is brand new, I would see if a genius could't decipher what is going on.

-MIB

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Answer 2

Geophis Author

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Feb 11, 2013 7:49 AM in response to TheSmokeMonster

Hi, and thanks for replying!

I have 16gb of 1600 ddr3 ram from OCW. The strange this is, there is no beach ball behavior, nor does the CPU peaks under processing pressure, during the non responsive app state that my installation finds itself into from time to time.

I have a backup pen with the installESD, but I figured I could do an reinstall from the recovery partition, hoping that it would fetch installation files, somehow fresher from apple servers (very unlikely, I know...).

Having a genius checkup my Mac, won't be an option, since I'm from Portugal, and there are no official Apple Stores to speak off...

As I write, the installation process it's giving the volume, it's finishing touches. I'll hope for the best. Rebooting now...

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Answer 3

Feb 11, 2013 7:58 AM in response to Geophis

The recovery partition uses the internet and will use the most up to date installer on Apple's servers.

The recovery partition installation is ideal for solving your issue.

Let us know how it turns out.

🙂

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Answer 4

Geophis Author

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Feb 11, 2013 8:29 AM in response to TheSmokeMonster

Well, so far so good. But that was to be expected I guess.

Runned it through mem tests, volume integrity, SMART and a couple of structure and surface scans. All passed.

I also screened it for every known exploits, and malware with ClamXav, but found nothing. I'm really leaning forward the HD failing hypothesis. SMART is known for not being 100% accurate at its predicting capabilities.

The real benchmark is going to be, to let it go through a couple of working/gaming sessions to see how it behaves.

I'll keep you posted. That's for the interest!

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Answer 5

MadMacs0

Level 5

5,221 points

Feb 11, 2013 9:52 AM in response to Geophis

Geophis wrote:

Runned it through mem tests, volume integrity, SMART and a couple of structure and surface scans.

Most of the SMART tests only check look at one factor and are known for their inability to predict failure. A much more thorough test is done by Smart Utility and perhaps a couple of others. The one that saved me was SoftRaid but it requires you to install it's proprietary drivers and you will need to remove them before the 30 day trial is up or purchase it (expensive). I wish they would offer just the diagnostics in a separate package.

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