Mavericks Install Failed?

I have the same problem, tried the fixes listed here but nothing is taking me out of the loop of my MacBook trying to install the update. Can't believe that there are so many of us with damaged hard drives!!

Try this...

You've got to get out of the Mavericks loop where you can't repair or erase the disk.

1. Restart your Mac

2. Hold down Command-R during startup and OS X Recovery springs into action. It will take a few minutes, but you should be back in the land of the cats (lion etc) http://www.apple.com/au/osx/recovery/

3. Once the recovery partition has loaded, open Disk Utility and use it to run a disk repair routine on your main boot drive.

4. After any found errors have been fixed, you can then reboot normally and try the Mavericks installation again

Thanks for the reply, have tried everything and getting message saying that disk can't be repaired after going through all the steps above.

Apple want £35 for "helping" me with a problem their update caused, I don't think so. Would be nice if Apple could actually acknowledge the problems that this has caused!

I call Apple UK last night as my 6 month old MBA would not load Mavericks.

They couldnt do anything until I got a USB storage device and something about creating a partition because the HD has a problem.

OK,

I did the following (I did not purchase DiskWarrior or any other 3rd Party software)

• Backed up to an Time Machine Drive
• Reset the EPROM (zapped it or whatever they kids these days are calling it)
• Booted off a Mavericks USB stick.
• Ran Repair Disk & Repair Permissions
• Installed Mavericks

Worked fine, took a while but up and running.

Not sure what the HD damage error was but it's working away on my old work horse (17" Late 2007 MacBook Pro).

Eoin

I had the same issue on my daughter's computer. Booting into the recovery console and attempting a repair did not solve the issue. We took her MacBook Pro to the Apple store and they could not recover it either and recommended starting from scratch. Unfortunately, my daughter did not have a backup (lesson learned) and had a critical file (a school project) that we needed to recover. I even tried Safe Mode and Single-user mode, but was unable to solve the problem. I did stumble on a solution, however, using an external HDD and another MAC. Here's what worked for me:

1. Using the external USB HDD on a good MAC, I first erased the external HDD, selecting MAC OS extended journaled as the file format, creating two partitions, and checking GUID partition table under options. Note that in my case, my bad MAC had a 750G internal HDD, and the external drive was 2T, and I had set up 2 partitions of 1T each.

2. There's a link on apple (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433) that has a utility, called the OSX Disk Recovery Assistant that installs a recovery partition on an external drive. Run this utility on the good MAC, and install the recovery partition on the second partition that you created on the external HDD.

3. Move the external HDD over to the bad MAC and power it up. Hit the option key during boot and select the boot disk as the recovery partition on the external HDD.

4. From here, I was able to use the recovery utility running on the external HDD to re-install the OS on the first partiiton on the external HDD. Please note that it will ask you to log into your apple account so make sure the laptop is connected wired or wireless (by clicking on the wireless icon in the upper right and connecting it to you router - recovery will not remember your router settings from the corrupted OS). After the OS recovery was done, I used the startup screens during the initial OS boot to re-load an old backup that I had on my time machine at home for my daughter's MAC. It was a late-August backup but at least got some of the applications and older data recovered. Note that those project files were not part of that backup, and in your case, you might not have a backup at all.

5. Finally, at this step, I was able to boot into the OS from the external HDD. The OS was Mavericks, and once booted it gave me access to the corrupted internal HDD! Note I tried a ton of other methods and this was the only one that gave me access to the corrupted internal disk. I was able to navigate over to her files under documents, and moved them over to the desktop (which, keep in mind, at this point exists on the *external HDD*). Here you need to grab all the files you need, because the next step will erase the internal HDD.

6. I booted again into recovery on the external HDD, and brought up the disk utility. I selected the external drive, then clicked on the restore tab. From here, you can select the source as the external drive and destination as the internal drive, and hit restore. This will copy all of the external HDD contents back to your internal drive. After this step, you can power down, remove the external HDD, and power back up. My internal drive now had the boot image that was on the external drive, and I was back in business, with the recovered files still sitting on the desktop. Make sure you get the source and destination right - you wouldn't want to erase your external HDD and go back to step #1.

Hope this might help some people who are having difficulty with the upgrade and might have critical files that otherwise would have been lost. If you have an up-to-date backup, then the process would be a lot simpler. Hopefully my daughter will make sure her laptop always has a current time machine backup in the future.

Just an update on the issues with Maverick, apple can't help. Macbook needs to be sent away to either rebuild the HD or try and remove as much data as possible from the HD, which will be cheaper. So, thanks to Maverick, I have lost my macbook, which was working perfectly until the update and I've had to buy a new laptop as I can't wait to see if my macbook will work again.

@nickpro,

What version of Disk Warrior (DW) did you use?

I have a DW 4.0 licence from 2006 and I've made an updated boot CD of DW 4.4 (but it will only boot via the original 10.4.8 'base OS' that this DW version originally shipped with).

I can order an updated DW disk with a newer 'base OS', but Alsoft's upgrade service will only ship physical disks which could be a couple of weeks away. (Why can't the App Store sell the best *insrt-expiltv* disk catalog recovery tool for Macs? It's very shortsighted Apple).

I think I can run DW and connect via target disk mode on an older Mac that supports 10.4.8 and repair over firewire. It appears the new disk contains the latest DW engine, so it should fix the latest file structures, right?

Did you try booting into the previous OS after running DW? Ideally I'd like to keep the iMac on 10.8.5 until Apple has resolved issues like these. I may restore 10.8.5 if the disk can be fixed, assuming Mavericks has only relieved itself over the file structure and not destroyed critical OS files.

FWIW here are the symptoms…

2012 iMac was on 10.8.5

Mavericks was downloaded & the installer process began and failed, it suggested to retry installing, but that complained the disk was damaged. Disk Utility in recovery partition failed to repair & reported …

"Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk & restore your backed up files".

Needless to say, I am grabbing as much data as possible & hoping DW can fix another Apple mistake (ironically I brought DW 4.0 it to fix the damage a 'Tech Tool Pro - Applecare CD' did to my HD. The disk came with the Applecare plan but wasn't compatible with the OS.

It makes me wonder if Apple's left hand knows what the right one is doing, probably making obscene gestures behind its back.

bgfullerjr wrote:

[snip]

5. Finally, at this step, I was able to boot into the OS from the external HDD. The OS was Mavericks, and once booted it gave me access to the corrupted internal HDD! Note I tried a ton of other methods and this was the only one that gave me access to the corrupted internal disk. I was able to navigate over to her files under documents, and moved them over to the desktop (which, keep in mind, at this point exists on the *external HDD*). Here you need to grab all the files you need, because the next step will erase the internal HDD.

I have done similar thing, however I used an external 10.8.5 full OS. I'm not convinced you need to run Mavericks to read the damaged disk. Disk Utility within the Mavericks install environment wouldn't mount the disk, but the recovery partition 10.8.5 would (it listed in Terminal e.g. `ls /Volumes/`). It seemed easiest to me to use a full OS to copy off the data, hence the 10.8.5 external.

I suspect target disk mode will work if you can access multiple Macs with suitable connectors & cables.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661

Some Macs also support Thunderbolt for TDM.

I used DiskWarrior 4.4. Your best bet is to order that disc man.

I'm running Disk Warrior 4.4 now. It has repaired the damage, it rebooted into 10.8.5. Ill take a look at the logs & the DW repair log to see if there is a simpler solution.

Once again Alsoft fixes Apple mistakes.

Cheers nickpro

Hi drew,

Great that your back up and running, but i wouldn't fully blame Apple for the installation problems since your computer could have has pre-existing directory issues before installing mavericks. With Pre-existing directory issues that can cause a snowball effect while installing any software and especially upgrading an OS. Too bad Apple doesn't force a user to upgrade to Mavericks via USB flash drive so it can run a repair on directory issues. Even apples disk utility can not repair severely corrupted directories and that's where Diskwarrior comes into play.

Anyway for ppl who have MacBook Air 2012 you should check if you are one of the ones with a bad ssd drive since apple will replace it.

Hi was jut wondering, is this method no good if you dont have a back up at all?

Cheers

The method should still work - you would just have to reinstall any applications after the recovery. The critical step is to make sure you retrieve all needed files prior to copying the image on the external drive back to the internal drive.

If you have no backup, and the installer has damaged the disk I'd seriously suggest Disk Warrior.

Obviously try Disk Utility from the recovery partition or another Mac. If it cannot fix it Disk Warrior can usually read the file system & re-create the disk catalog. It has saved my bacon more times than Disk Utility.

It has a preview mode that allows you view the changes, personally I used this mode to make a copy of the important files before I altered the disk.

I know it sound like an advert, but it really is very good. The $100 may seem steep but it will help the next time Apple ruin your disk structure (they have done this twice to me personally). I have also fixed other freinds machines with it too.