Can't install mavericks because apparently my disk is damaged

I had the same problem and I re-installed and it worked.

Boot up holding command-r keys into your Recovery Volume.

Run Disk Utility > Repair Disk, if you get errors run until no errors reported or reports "the disk cannot be fixed".

Then try again.

I tried but it says "this disk is locked'.....

Have a look here...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4138133

Also see...

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3926

Thanks . Have ended up rebooting with command R...and now re installing mountain lion. I presume all the existing info on the hard drive will be gone. But I have all the back up on an external drive so am hoping I can do a restore from the Time machine.

Maybe try agiain to upgrade to Mavericks at later date.......

It's been very time consuming and frustrating, to say the least.

Thanks again.

Does reinstalling delete all your files? Because I have the same problem but I do not have everything backed up.

reinstalled just finished. Did not loose anything !!! Did not have to use the back up to restore anything.

I got the disk is damaged error as well. Disk Utility showed no problems with the disk, however the installer app would not let me restart from my boot disk. I was able to boot into safe mode (hold down the shift key), deleted the Mavericks installer, rebooted and am back to normal.

Hopefully you have a backup. If not, you should star making regular backups. It's likely your disk IS going bad and reformatting "hides" it for a while by mapping out bad sectors. It's highly likely they'll be back.

I cannot get safe mode to start becuase I guess when the disk cannot be repaired then nothing works.

I have the same issue. Says disk is damaged.

Then boots into the installer preventing me from getting back to the OS. I can get into single user mode, fsck finds nothing wrong.

I'm having that same trouble too. And when I try and reboot in Recovery mode, nothing happens. It just goes back to OS X installer. And when I try and reboot in recovery mode, my hard drive isn't even there. Only OS X installer. I can't seem to get off this screen to try and fix the problem.

@PST MD - That's what I had happen. After booting in Safe mode I had to delete the Mavericks installer (its in the applications folder) and everything went back to normal.

@seasterlin- When i tried to reboot in safe mode, my computer just shuts off. Which is v. confusing, because its not supposed to do that and earlier this evening I was able to successfully reboot in safe mode, but now I can't.

I have the same issue. Safe mode causes the machine to just shutdown.