diskwarrior and mountain lion

You can't create a bootable DVD. You can create a bootable flash drive, however:

Install Lion/Mountain Lion on a New HDD/SDD

Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.

Boot to the Internet Recovery HD:

Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-OPTION- R keys until a globe appears on the screen. Wait patiently - 15-20 minutes - until the Recovery main menu appears.

Partition and Format the hard drive:

1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.

2. After DU loads select your external hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.

3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Quit DU and return to the main menu.

Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Install button. Be sure to select the correct drive to use if you have more than one.

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

You will need a 16 GB or larger USB flash drive. After you install Mountain Lion boot the computer from it to be sure it works. Then install the DW application in the Applications folder of the flash drive system.

The only reason to use Disk Warrior is that you have no backups. If you do have backups, you should erase the volume and restore from one of them. If you don't have backups, you should back up, if possible, before running Disk Warrior.

What has been said, plus the DiskWarrior DVD lags current operating system and hardware support. Their reason is that Apple has not released the code to allow them to remain current. They have been saying this for years and years.

The flash drive solution, as described, is your best bet for bootable Disk Warrior.

I have made what was to be a bootable USB Flash Drive (Kingston DataTraveler 8GB), for my DiskWarrior v4.4. However, when trying to boot from the Flash Drive (with "Option" key held down .... I do get the DiskWarrior Intel Icon to show up on the opening launch screen, along with the Mountain Lion Recovery Icon, and the Mountain Lion HD icon.

However, when I make the DiskWarrior Intel Icon selection, and wait at least fifteen minutes, all I ever get is a blank grey screen. I always have to shut down the 2013 iMac and re-start it, booting on the main Mountain Lion 10.8.4 Hard Dirive.

Even when I go into "System Preferences" and see the DiskWarrior Icon, along with the Main Mountain Lion HD, all I see is the following selection along with my main Mountain Lion OSX 10.8.4 HD:

This obviously is the problem. My DiskWarrior 4.4 DVD version is NOT Mountain Lion compatible .... it is running (or will only run) on OSX 10.6.7. When the above "System Preferences" window selection shows up, I never run the DW OSX 10.6.7 vesrion as the start-up.

So I quess the solution is to somehow get from DiskWarrior, a later version of DW 4.4 that is compatible with Mountain Lion ... although I wonder if Alsoft has developed anthing new to be compatible with the new 10.8.4 update of Mountain Lion.

I think what I'm looking to get is DiskWarrior version "build" 1109, I must have an earlier "build" version ... but how can you find whicvh "build" version of DW you have?

Has DiskWarrior come out with a version that will run on Mountaion Lion 10.8.4? Why do they still continue to keep labeling it DiskWarrior 4.4, and not update the version number so we can distinguish which version is which ... and not have so many trying to run DW version 4.4 thinking it will work with Mountain Lion. The latest DW versions should be v4.5, 4.6, etc., if they are going to be running on something higher than OSX 10.6.7 (which is my current version of DiscWarrior 4.4).

I have been a DiskWarrior user for about ten years now, and find Alsoft's in-ability to straighten out their DiskWarrior from being able to run on Mountain Lion to be disappointing to say the least. Too Bad ... it may have me giving up on using DiskWarrior all together!

Alsoft offers one possible solution ...

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Alternate Startup Disk:

If you have another drive (such as an external FireWire drive, iPod, or USB Flash Drive) you could install Mac OS X (10.3.9 or higher) on that drive and then start from it.

Install DiskWarrior on that drive’s “Utilities” folder, (which is inside the “Applications” folder) and run DiskWarrior from there.

Note: A hard drive in an Intel-based Macintosh computer requires Mac OS X 10.4.6 or newer if utilizing either of the alternate methods outlined above.

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Has anyone tried it this way? Will this work on Mountain Lion 10.8.4 and boot DiskWarrior to fix the main Mac Hard Drive's directory?

So does this mean the USB flash drive would be "partitioned" into four parts (One for Mountain Lion, One for PC Start-Up, one for Intel start-Up, and one for DW DVD)?

This is what I see on Start-Up ...

But, once DiskWarrior Intel Icon is selected .... I get this next ...

and at least for fifteen minutes (I've never had the patience to wait longer), this grey screen is all I ever get, no spinning "beachball", no spinning gears, nothing but the Apple logo on the middel of the screen. At this point, I turn off the iMac, and start-up automatically with the iMac main HD.

So obviously, it must be that the DiskWarrior Intel vesrion, I have, is not Mountain Lion compatible.

Will the DiskWarrior 4.4 update DVD fix this issue ... or will the new Mountain Lion OS 10.8.4 update still cause issues until once again Alsoft offers yet another DW "update" for the newer v10.8.4?

Also forgot to mention that the DiskWarrior version 4.4 I have, WILL run off the desktop .... It just can't repair the main iMac HD "directory" it is running on, in that case (this is normal behavior off the desktop).

CDs and DVDs take so long to boot up, and the OS support lags enough, that it's been ages since I did it that way.

What I do is, after creating an updated optical disc with the latest DiskWarrior, I copy DiskWarrior to my hard drive and put the optical disc away. Then I update my bootable backup clone of my hard drive. That means DiskWarrior is now on the clone backup.

When something goes wrong with my main system, I boot into either my second Mac or my clone backup system, then mount the main system, then launch DiskWarrior from either of the non-main systems. Since DiskWarrior launches from a hard drive it launches immediately.

So obviously, it must be that the DiskWarrior Intel version, I have, is not Mountain Lion compatible.

This DW disk needs to support the drivers for the Mac model you have. If this is something you just purchased, you should be able to call Alsoft and get a free replacement disk that will boot to your Mac, if they've developed one yet.. They'll ask you what model you have to make sure you get a working disk.

I do what Network 23 does. I have an external drive I keep a clone of my main drive on, and another with just Mountain Lion and a handful of utilities, such as DW. I boot to the latter to do any disk maintenance so all apps are available at once. So you don't need to do things like boot to the DW disk, then to a Tech Tools Pro disk, etc. They're all on the external, ready to use.

It also then doesn't matter in the least if the CD or DVD itself is bootable.

Network 23's idea sounds like a possible plan ....

I would like to only install Mountain Lion on a USB Flash Drive, and have a few utilities like DiskWarrior, Data Rescue, TechTool Pro, etc. installed on the flash drive.

I have the Mountain Lion 10.8.3 ESD installer, gotten from an Apple download, and it's only about 4.5GB so it would easily install on a 16GB USB Flash Drive .... leaving plenty of room for installing some of the above mentioned third-party repair/tech utilities.

Does this sound like the way to go, that is similar to what "Network 23" is talking about?

DavidMac wrote:

I have the Mountain Lion 10.8.3 ESD installer, gotten from an Apple download, and it's only about 4.5GB so it would easily install on a 16GB USB Flash Drive .... leaving plenty of room for installing some of the above mentioned third-party repair/tech utilities.

Does this sound like the way to go, that is similar to what "Network 23" is talking about?

Actually I had a reason to try this last night. I used this Macworld article to make the USB flash boot drive, it was super easy:

How to make a bootable Mountain Lion install drive

I've just purchased a new 32GB Kingston DataTraveler Flash Drive, and have made it my "maintenance utilities" bootable drive:

These are the easy steps I took ...

1. Formatted the DataTraveler Flash Drive for "OS Extended (Journaled) volume.- GUID Bootable.

2. Next, I installed Mountain Lion 10.8.3 on the drive as (1) partition (Using Apple Disk Utility).

3. Plugged in USB Flash Drive, in to iMac.

4. Holding down the "option" key, selected my 32GB Flash Drive (among start up icons displayed on screen).

5. Waited a few minutes for the Flash Drive Mountain Lion to launch a new desktop.

6. While Mountain Lion 10.8.3 was up and running, I went into "System Preferences" and did an update to Mountain Lion 10.8.4 while I was at it (updated right to the Flash Drive).

6. Then, in the Flash Drive> OSX> Applications Folder> installed both DiskWarrior 4.4, and DataRescue 3.2.2

7. I made an "alias" of each the DiskWarrior 4.4, and DataRescue 3.2.2 icons in the Application Folder.

8. Placing the DiskWarrior 4.4, and DataRescue 3.2.2 "alias" icons in a separate labeled "save" folder on the Flash Drive HD.

9. Then, dragged "copies" of the DiskWarrior 4.4, and DataRescue 3.2.2 "alias" icons on to the dock.

10. I now have ONE easly accessible Flash Drive that I can now plug in, and run all my "maintenance utility" programs for my main iMac HD. It works great, and best of all .... no long loading times for bootable maintenance discs like DiskWarrior, etc.

This is the way to go .... and I can easily update any of the "maintenance utility" programs on the Flash Drive, by simply deleating them, replacing with newer versions, or updating right on the Flash Drive.

NO MORE ISSUES/PROBLEMS WITH BOOTABLE DVD's or CD's TO LOAD !!!!

THIS DEFINATELY IS THE WAY TO GO ....

Here's what the bootable 32GB Kingston DataTraveler looks like on startUp with the "OPTION KEY" held down.

Once selecting the Flash Drive as the StartUp Disk ... it took less than two minutes to boot up Mountain LIon 10.8.4 off the Flash Drive.

Here again, is what the Flash Drive Mountain Lion desktop looks like, with my DiskWarrior 4.4, and DataRescue 3.2.2 icons permanently in the dock for easy access.

NOTE: On the Flash Drive installation of Mountain Lion, I also deleated/trashed a lot of the standard "Application" installed Apple apps that originally came with Mountain Lion. Figuring that since I already have, and use these apps on my main iMac HD .... that I could save space, and loading time for the Flash Drive