Hard Disk Damaged during Mavericks Installation

Exept that the Mavericks installer repartitions your drive in order to have a separate partition for the installer files... and my wild guess is that there things tend to go wrong....

Same here.. Diskutility says 'disk needs to be repaired' but the button is greyed out...

I had the very same problems. The repair button wasn't greyed out, but when I tried to repair the hard disk a window popped up telling me the disk was severely damaged and couldn't be fixed. There was no other option left than to erase the hard disk and restore my old system. While this took a few hours, the restoration went smoothly. But the thing is: after formatting it, the hard disk turned out to be fine. It probably has been fine all the time, but somehow Mavericks - sometimes - creates a problem causing your computer to think it has a broken hard disk. So don't despair just yet. Try erasing your hard drive and restoring your system (provided, of course, you have a backup). In the meantime, I'm sticking with Mountain Lion, maybe in a couple of months things will have been sorted out and I'll give it another try.

A lot of people in this thread are erasing their drive as the only means of exiting the Infinite Loop the Mavericks installer creates. But as I have said, you may NOT need to do that. Remember that Apple's Disk Utility is doesn't fix all drive problems, which is one of the main reasons 3rd party utilities exist. I was surprised to see that Alsoft's Disk Warrior fixed the problem completely in my case, such that the computer could be restarted, Mavericks installed, and no problems resulted thereafter. If you don't have DiskWarrior, give TechTool Pro or another 3rd party app a try. But just be sure you create a New Directory, as that is DiskWarrior's claim to fame.

All said, don't go to the trouble of erasing your drive until you've give a third party utility a chance.

I tried the same way but after verification the repair button was greyed out. When I hover it, it says not allowed to write to. I am supe worried about my data. 😠

So chaps, I've read a number of threads like this. I have a 2011 iMac. What are the chances it wil upgrade without issue? Is this a software issue with the Mavericks image? Bottom line: iis it safe to go for it or, based on experience, better to wait? Thanks.

If repairing the disk doesn't work there are two work arounds to at least save your data before wiping and doing a reinstall.

(Make sure to have tried to repair the disk from recovery mode. Cmd+R during boot and from there use the disk utility to try to repair it. It shouldn't be greyed out. If it still fails, read on.)

1. Hook up another mac to yours with a firewire cable. This is what Apple support told me to do. Instructions here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661

2. If you don't have another mac you can install OSX on an external hard drive. This is what I did. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5911

From there you can access your file system and backup your files. Then you can proceed to wipe the drive and do a fresh install.

I can't believe Apple actually rolled out a release that could get stuck in an infinite loop for no good reason. The partition may have been corrupt but there was no reason not to let us cancel and boot back into Mountain Lion and troubleshoot our way from there...

I too wondered if it was "safe" to install Mavericks on my late 2009 iMac, after my company president experienced the frightening Infinite Loop problem with the Mavericks Installer. But as I have said twice already in this thread (which you who have posted thereafter apparently did not read), I was comforted in knowing that a third-party utility could possibly fix the problem that Apple's disk utility could not. Furthermore, I exercised wisdom in the matter by using Carbon Copy Cloner to make a full backup of my iMac's internal HD to an external drive prior to the install. And lastly, I copied the Mavericks installer to an 8 GB flash drive, as per the instructions given here:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2056561/how-to-make-a-bootable-mavericks-install -drive.html

(I used the "Disk Utility" method because that has always worked for me and making bootable flash drive installers in the past.)

With the Mavericks installer placed outside my iMacs internal hard drive, I didn't see any danger that I was going to be caught in an infinite loop.

So in summary what I did was the following:

1) Even though running Apples Disk Utility prior to the Mavericks install didn't help my company president, I ran it anyway and I also did a repair permissions, first and foremost. And since I already had ALsoft's DiskWarrior on a bootable a gigabyte flash drive, I went ahead and ran that as well.

2) Made a bootable clone of my iMac's internal drive to an external drive via Carbon Copy Cloner.

3) Created a bootable Mavericks installer on a USB 8GB thumb drive.

4) Had a bootable 8GB thumb drive with Alsoft's DiskWarrior on it, just in case anything went wrong during installation.

Best wishes.

Third party utilities are useless if you don't have access to another mac or your desktop. But yes, knowing that this can happen, it's good to use some precautions. Unfortunately most people just install it. Some people are also stupid like me and don't do regular backups.

and they say it only takes an ounce of prevention, too.... versus that pound or two of flesh and cure.

Remember that I too didn't have Disk warrior installed on a bootable thumb drive either. That was borrowed from a Mac using friend.

So although full backups are good, having utility owning Mac using friends is perhaps even better! :-) For truly, if my friend had not allowed me to use his copy of DiskWarrior, I would've been stuck in the same boat as everyone else, and we would have spent additional hours copying off data, reformatting the drive, installing Mavericks, then restoring the data. But with one quick use of that third-party utility, our problem was solved. I would agree that this is not always the case, and backups are always a good idea. But with regard to this particular problem, it would seem that a third-party utility can truly solve the problem, get you out of Infinite Loop, and allow the Mavericks installer to finish without error.

Make friends with other Mac users!

(This is written by Jimmythirteen's wife, not him!!)

I had this problem after installing Mavericks. I took my Macbook to the Apple store and the "Genius" at the bar diaganosed a fatal hard drive failure. He was quite arrogant and condesending, the opposite of my usual experience with Apple employees. He said it was completely coincidental that I had just installed Mavericks and it would have failed no matter what. When I asked how so many hard drives could fail at the same time in the same circumstances, he stated that he hadn't diagnosed those computers, only mine, so he couldn't address that. The fix he offered was under $200, but I went home without the replaced hard drive.

My husband and I searched out the issue online again, here and elsewhere, and read SO many others who were in the same boat. Zardock's solution worked for us! It took a very long time to be able to access the area that we needed to, due to the spinning beachball of death, but once we did, after two attempts, we were able to repair the hard drive error and reinstall Mavericks. It is working great now. THANK YOU, ZARDOCK! I feel like driving back to the Apple store and showing Snobby "Genius" Eustace that he was totally wrong.

To those insisting that a program can not cause the hard drive to fail. you are right. It can, however, trigger erroneous error messages that impair the machine totally. Quit arguing semantics.

i don't know much about anything but here's an account of what worked for me, after being told by apple there was nothing i could do.

my 17" macbook pro (running lion) had this problem; something weird happened in the download of Mavericks (i think; maybe interrupted), told me my hd was damaged and to back up & restart. Had no back up of my files; "repair disk" wasn't working, then later was greyed-out. I thought i was going to have lose all my data and wipe my drive: and while I did end up having to wipe it, I was able to work around and back up all my files first, which applecare told me there was no way to do (take heart!).

I believe this is the same as what Christo G suggested, but after an hour chatting with apple care in which they told me my HD was shot, and that it needed ($) repair, i tried this and it worked:

1) In disk utility, create a new partition on my external HD. Name it something identifiable; not "hd" e.g.

2) Reboot in recovery mode. Select the option to Reinstall Mac OS X. At this point both Macintosh HD and Recovery HD were "locked' (and couldnt be unlocked through disk utility repairs or anything else), so I couldn't reinstall there even if I wanted to. Select the new partition of the external HD as the destination for the install. Install OS X (mountain lion) there.

3) Rebooting & holding down the Option key after the startup noise, select the disk which is the new partition with OS X (mtn lion) on it. Should be able to boot up from here.

4) When it boots up for the first time, it will give you the option to import data (like, from another computer, from an external disk, etc). Here, *even though my (internal) HD was theoretically Damaged, Failing, Locked, Irreperable, Needed to be serviced by apple, Physically Damaged, etc etc etc,* I was able to import all of my user data and applications from my (internal) HD, simply by selecting the option to import from an external disk, then selecting my (internal) HD. should be able to pick and choose what you want to import: which users, what data, etc.

5) Once that data was imported, OS X starts up (from the external HD, still) with all the data that was on my internal HD (so it looks like my computer did before i tried to install mavericks).

6) Now, create a time machine back up. I did this on the old partition of the external HD that, on its new partition, was currently running OS X. when I created that backup in time machine, it asks if you are sure you want to create a time machine back up on the same something (disk? volume? i can't remember) as your current start up disk. Usually probably a bad idea, but, here... it worked fine. So: you back up everything you have as a time machine back up on that other partition. this took about 7 hours.

7) go to sleep, wake up.

8). To sum up: You are now running OS X mtn lion off one partition of your external hd; on the other partition is a time machine back up of your data. your original HD (the one inside your computer) is irrelevant, if you've done everything up to this point; not only did you managed to copy that data to your new install of OS X/ external HD, you now have it backed up as a time machine backup (on the other partition of that external HD).

9). So: when you are absolutely sure you have your time machine backup made on your external HD, use Disk Utility to Erase your INTERNAL, macintosh HD (*not your external HD!*), the one that couldn't be repaired before, where you were trying to install Mavericks. When I first tried, Disk Utility was not able to unmount the disk; when I restarted, it had no problem. Not sure what the deal is there, others might have a different experience, for better or worse. The Erase took up about 5 seconds. I then verified the disk (which had thrown up all kinds of trouble before), it checked up, verified permissions, gave the "repair disk" a good click or two just to make sure, and it was all clean and good.

10). at this point, with the internal hd wiped clean, and a time machine back up on your external HD, reboot in recovery mode and select "Restore from Time Machine Backup". Select the backup from your external drive, and as the destination select the (now-clean) internal backup. had no problems restoring that backup to the internal drive; computer then restarts (mine automatically restarted using the internal HD as the startup disk) and should be running Mtn Lion, with all the files you backed up from that damaged HD, from your internal HD once again. At this point, after trying to feel sure that i was running off the internal hd's os x, i nervously ejected the external HD. no hitches; all my un-backed-up data; my *working* OS x mtn lion; a functional internal hd; and only some 25 abysmal hours poured into an idle attempt to get Mavericks.

good luck. i hope this is more helpful than confusing. i have a feeling it's not the most direct solution by far, and that it's just a more verbose version of what has been suggested, but in my particular situation (no access to other computers to download 3rd party disk utilities, etc) it was the only thing I could figure out that worked.

jimmythirteen

He said it was completely coincidental that I had just installed Mavericks and it would have failed no matter what. When I asked how so many hard drives could fail at the same time in the same circumstances

He was right, it was a coincidental failure.

Anytime you have upteen 1000s of people writing 5gig to their hard drives, and THEN installing more than that......there is going to be a statistical MECHANICAL HD FAILURE on a very small number of drives.

By "so many hard drives" this is a spurious hyperbole, .....less than 1/100th of 1% would still cover more than those who have posted in this thread.

jimmythirteen To those insisting that a program can not cause the hard drive to fail. you are right. It can, however, trigger erroneous error messages that impair the machine totally. Quit arguing semantics.

Writing a large block of data can cause HD failure, owning a 100 hard drives, and having owned many 100s, and seen at least a 1000 fail, this is the nature of a HD.

Writing data doesnt cause erroneous error messages unless the HD is mechanically corrupt or the download itself was faulty/corrupted.

Its not semantics, its statistical hard drive failure as known and established.

Peace 😊

Did you read my post all the way? MY HUSBAND FIXED IT WITHOUT CHANGING OUT THE HARD DRIVE. The hard drive wasn't damaged in the first place. I'm using the same Macbook Pro that the Apple "genius" said was fatally damaged right now. HE WAS WRONG. Mavericks caused an erroneous hard drive failure MESSAGE that shut down my computer even though NOTHING was wrong with it. We fixed the hard drive error and reinstalled Mavericks. The second time it worked with no problem...and all tests show my hard drive to be functioning perfectly normally.