Can I repair a corrupt disk through an OS Upgrade?

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Can I repair a corrupt disk through an OS Upgrade?

I have a 2009 Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard. It has been booting up and running slower recently and Chrome and Skype (when I start video chat) randomly crash now. I tried verifying the disk through Disk Utility. It said that the disk needs to be repaired and to start up the laptop with another disc and then use Disk Utility to repair the disk. I can't find my installation disc. If I just upgraded to Mountain Lion by downloading it from the App Store would that still fix it?

Posted on Mar 14, 2013 12:11 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 14, 2013 12:18 PM in response to samwapp

Have you upgraded to ML yet or thinking about doing that? If you do move up to ML, the installation may or may not clear up the issues with the startup disk. But, you can do the installation, then reboot holding both the Command and R keys, then choose from the drop down that opens that you want to run disk utility and run that over again on the startup disk.

Since ML is $20, that is the same price as ordering a new Snow Leopard disk.

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Answer 2

Mar 14, 2013 12:21 PM in response to samwapp

One other thought, if your MBp is mid-2009 or newer, the retail version of SL will not work and you must call Apple support for a machine-specific copy of the installation disk. the retail is 10.6.3, and the mid-2009 machines shipped with a later version such that the firmware will not permit booting the 10.6.3 retail disk.

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Answer 3

samwapp Author

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Mar 14, 2013 12:23 PM in response to Ralph Landry1

Good point Ralph. To clarify I am currently running version 10.6.8

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Answer 4

samwapp Author

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Mar 14, 2013 12:33 PM in response to Ralph Landry1

Also, I have not updated to ML yet. Considering it though if it will cost the same as getting an SL disk

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Answer 5

varjak paw

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Mar 14, 2013 1:06 PM in response to samwapp

If the disk is being reported as having errors, just installing Mountain Lion will almost certainly not fix it and the installation may well fail. You really need to get some sort of external boot volume, the original CD set (which you really will want to have anyway), a repair utility such as Disk Warrior, or a bootable hard drive, and repair the disk first. Attempting to install a new version of Mac OS X on a faulty drive could render your system unbootable and require a complete erasure of the drive.

Regards.

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