Q: Starting Mac with Cmd R. Getting the OSX Utilities ok. Clicking on 4th.option..Disk Utility
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Jul 11, 2013 5:26 AMby The hatter,What Mac is this for starters? Mac Pro is a tower with 4 or more internal hard drive bays, lots of room for backups and alternate boot drives.
When you click on the 'raw' hard drive name (WDxxxxx or something, not the system volume name) and click Repair it checks the drive partition map.
When you click on the system volume name it repairs the directory.
And in any event you want backup of your data, and another bootable drive media. What if your hard drive goes or needs to be reformatted ?
Clone your system.
I can't tell by your description what "4 options" and just what you tried to do and what "nothing" means though.
On the right side column "More Like This" may be worth reading.
As for running slow. Lots of possible reasons. Low free disk space being only one.
General purpose Mac troubleshooting guide:
Creating a temporary user to isolate user-specific problems:
Isolating an issue by using another user account
Identifying resource hogs and other tips:
Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used
Starting the computer in "safe mode":
Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?
To identify potential hardware problems:
General Mac maintenance:
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Jul 11, 2013 5:43 AMby bernphys39,So many thanks for taking the trouble to reply.
Basically these are the details:
1. Using a 15inch MacBook Pro late 2008 with OSX 10.8.4
2. Capacity 319GB ans available 116GB
3. While verifying the Mackintosh HD via the Disk Utility the process stops.. saying that the Volume bitmap needs minor repair for orphaned blocks. It is corrupted and needs to be repaired.
ERROR: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery....n the OS X Utilities window appears, choose Disk Utility.
4. I therefore shut down and reopen with CMD+R to get to the OSX Utilities.
5. When that appears on screen there are 4 options available i.e. Restore from TM, Reinstall OS, Get Help online & finally Disk Utility.
6. I select the last one and click to continue. At this point the operation stops i.e. I cannot get beyond clicking on the 4th.Option.
End Result: Cannot use the Disk Utility to make a repair.
Hope that clearly states the problem.
Many thanks,
bernphys
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Jul 11, 2013 6:01 AMby The hatter,Okay, anytime you are going to do repairs you need backups.
I never use Verify but yes you used that first while booted from the system.
There could be something wrong with Lion Recovery partition as well. Never seen or heard not being able to but DU tries to mount your volume(s) and cannot because of the errors.
You are on Mountain Lion. Did you save the Mountain Lion installer .ESD package? handy to have.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/os_x_mountain_lion
MacBook Series Forums
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks?view=discussions
TimeMachine 101
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
Recovery Mode
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
Create an OS X Lion Install discHow to create an OS X Lion installation disc MacFixIt
Migration Assistant Update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard
http://www.apple.com/support/lion/installrecovery/
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20080989-263/how-to-create-an-os-x-lion-ins tallation-disc
I need to go out for a couple hours but someone here or on OS X and MBP forums...
You will want to backup and save your data.
Try to boot in Safe Mode, (holding Shift key down at bootup; takes longer to boot this way so be patient)
It will also try to repair your directory.
It sounds like your hard drive though is failed. I would not want to use it and would be prudent to install OS X on an external drive - be ready to swap out your hard drive for a new one. These people sell kits for MacBook Pro - hdd and even SSD, as well as external drive case.
Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107393
What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? (Mac OS X) - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564
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Jul 11, 2013 6:43 AMby Grant Bennet-Alder,HelpfulWith a MacBook, you don't have a lot of other things to try. But DO try Safe Mode.
Hold down the Shift key at Startup. This will take five minutes to do a Disk Utility (Repair Disk), then put up a Login Screen that demands your username and password, even if you normally auto-login. It says Safe Mode in RED. The System will be running with minimal extensions loaded. so some things may not work properly.
If it manages to make the repair, you may be OK going forward. But this should push you into thinking deeply about Backups.
If you use Time Machine under 10.7.4 or later, it will make another copy of your Recovery_HD on the backup Volume.
If your drive does not perk up immediately, you should buy a new drive to have one ready in case the old one continues to decline and dies. An external enclosure, or just a simple USB "non-enclosure" can be tremendous help in making the transition to a new drive.
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Jul 15, 2013 7:17 AMby bernphys39,Got around now to doing what both of you said .....
Using the Disk utility shows no problems but changing from application to application gives me the coloured wheel going round and round for sometimes 30 secs. prior to opening the required application.
Apart from the possibility of the disk begining to fail is there anything else one might do to improve the response??
Thanks,
bernphys
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Jul 15, 2013 8:24 AMby Grant Bennet-Alder,Yes, check to be sure your RAM Memory is adequate and available for your use:
Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used
How much of the pie is Green?
How much is Green + Blue?
How high is the Pageouts counter?
How high is the swap used counter?
If these numbers are nominal, your Hard Drive is very likely to die soon. ¿ Got Backups?
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Jul 15, 2013 10:30 AMby Grant Bennet-Alder,The numbers for Pageouts and Swap used says that at some time since your last power-on, you WERE is a situation where you were desperately short of memory, and may have seen a delay -- especially in moving from one Application to another (that is where Swap generally gets involved).
So to answer your follow-on question, "is there anything else one might do to improve the response?"
You could add more RAM if your computer will accomodate it.
Standard RAM: 4 GB Maximum RAM: 8 GB* Details: By default, 4 GB of RAM was installed as two 2 GB modules, no slots free.
*Apple officially supports a maximum of 4 GB of RAM. Originally, this model was only unofficially capable of stably supporting 6 GB of RAM, but as confirmed by site sponsor OWC, it is capable of supporting 8 GB of RAM if updated to Boot ROM Version MBP51.007E.B05and running MacOS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" or higher..
