Installed Mavericks and now my system partition needs repair

Yeah, I've noticed the 10.9 getting worse when using Disk Utility. After installing a new hd in my MBP 17", I haven't touched it once with DU. Waiting till 10.9.1 is released hoping this has been fixed. So far three days of 10.9 without any OS probs...and NO fixing permissions through DU. But I should try DiskWarrior from bootup DVD.

Also looks like the 13" and the 11" MBAir's are both running fine on 10.9, and neither have been 'fixed permissions' via D.U. and I won't until Apple addresses this.

Hi

I have identified one cause of this issue ..

It arises out of the fact that there are two versions of Mavericks.

One version runs on old hardware.

The other runs on the newest hardware only.

I have replicated the problem on two 15 inch Mbps retina machines.

I tested extensively on the second and all was fine until I tried to boot from the SSD that came from my old hardware Mbps. It had been upgraded to mavericks with no issues whatever since day one of the mavericks release.

I subsequently checked it in disk utility before doing anything else.

Then the problem. I had forgotten to deactivate one piece of software so decided to boot from the old hardware mavericks ssd. It did not work..just came up with a white no go sign with the system hanging.

After that the system is stuffed and needs a complete reimage via internet install.

Obviously, an error message should stop any attempt to boot new hardware from old hardware Mavericks.

Ben

I've had the same problem since yesterday, upgraded to Mavericks one week ago and i've had major problems since, Apple support are a waste of space, according to them there is no problem with Mavericks and "you shouldnt beleive what you read on forums", although it seems it's not only me that has these problems.

My hard drive is now having to be replaced as its now telling me the drive can't be repaired and needs to be replaced in my Macbook Pro.

Will Apple cover the cost for these repairs...will they ****!!!

Disk Warrior 4.4 was able to repair my drive even though Disk Utility could not.

I was getting all of these errors as well, here's what I did and it worked,

As long as you can boot into Mavericks it should work.

1) Download the recovery USB tool from Apple

2) Install it and click create

**NOTE** It will say that it's creating a Lion recovery USB (yes it's that old and in need of an update) but in fact it's cloning the recovery drive from your HDD onto the USB.

3)Reboot your MacBook and hold down the option key to get to the boot menu

4) Use the USB labeled Recovery-10.9

5) Repair using that instead

It can't give you those errors since your not booting off of your computers HDD, your actually on a USB.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for validating my method ! 🙂

Question to you and Macsrulepcsdrule:

I have completed your steps, and while in Disk Utility on the USB recovery drive, everything works without error. Yet when I boot in to recovery mode (holding Option) using my main hard drive and run Disk Utility, I still recieve the live recovery errors, etc. Should I be worried by that or is everything normal?

Thanks in advance!

I worked through this extensively with Apple Support and they have all the info logs etc.

I also took the machine in to my local Apple tech who confirmed the 4 bugs/anomalies that I identified.

He checked my machine from another via Target mode and found all OK. So the "Live system file repair' message is possibly false.

In any event, this Tech also reported the matter to Apple. He suggests that OSX 9.1 is nor far off.

Ben

Thanks Ben! Thanks everyone for your reports and help. 🙂

I noticed the same thing than benziine : Restarting from the Recovery partition always gives the error, but booting from my USB drive shows nothing wrong.

However, the problem that got me here in the first place was found using Disk Utility while booted in my normal partition. And this problem (says Disk Utility) hasn't recurred since I correctly repaired my disk using the solution I outlined a few posts above.

With all the comments in this thread, I wonder : how many partitions do you (all) have on the disk that displayed the problem ? On mine, I have 3.

And this (internal) drive is indeed a Western Digital... however, it never was used with the software the company has warned about recently : back then, I had done a full reformat and repartitioning of that drive.

Hi Pascal, I tried your proposed solution on two Macs and the problem is still there.

I noticed that in your instructions, you boot into the recovery partition by using Command+R. Can you try your method, but instead of using Command+R, use the Option key and select the recovery drive manually? I've found that on my 2010 17" MBP, the problem only happens if I use the Option key.

On my 2008 15" MBP however, I get the error regardless of whether I use Command+R or Option.

I find it strange that I'm getting different behavior on my two Macs. If it matters, both use Hitachi drives. The 2010 MBP has 8GB of RAM and the 2008 one has 4GB of RAM.

I'm not using any special partitioning scheme. Both machines have the default configuration, which is EFI, Macintosh HD, and Recovery (3 partitions).

May I also add that clicking around in the recovery partition's bugged Disk Utility can also break Boot Camp and FileVault 2. Once it attempts to "repair" the EFI partition, you can kiss your data goodbye.

Somewhat silver lining: the partition is still there, so you can still salvage your files. You just can't boot from them.

Super interesting is the fact that you are using Hitachi drives. This means that the problem is not restricted to Western Digital drives.

My hard drive is partitioned in EFI + Recovery + 3 user-accessible partitions : the system partition, the Time Machine partition (earlier version of the OS were not able to do local backups while faraway from the Time Capsule (or equivalents), you may remember) and a leftover partition for all the huge files (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and movies). FileVault is not enabled, so this probably saved my drive since I attempted to repair my drive from my Recovery partition. I have no bootcamp partition either.

On my system, the problem happens even when I restart using Command-R (directly into the recovery partition). I didn't boot into the recovery partition from the "option screen". I don't see why it wouldn't happen. It seems that, like you, I have a 2008 15" MBP with 4 GB of RAM. (continues)

Hi Tyler_Zyco !

I discovered the problem because Disk Utility on my internal normal boot partition found an error. After I finally managed to repair it, as I explained earlier (from an external USB thumb drive), the problem was never found again by the Disk Utility on my internal normal boot partition.

A few days later, I got nervous and after I completed the full backup of my drive, I rebooted from the Recovery partition. To my dismay, the "Recovery" Disk Utility found the same problem ("The partition map needs to be repaired because there's a problem with the EFI system partition's file system").

I decided to create a more permanent external boot partition, using an old firewire drive that sat unused. Once done, I was able to check again my internal drive, but this time it was off-line instead of beng a live file system. The "external" Disk Utility didn't find any error even though I never attempted to repair my internal drive in the meantime. So I rebooted again from the Recovery drive and the "Recovery" Disk Utility found the same problem again. Booting once more from the external drive, the "external" Disk Utility didn't find any error. I finally rebooted from my true booting partition and the "internal" Disk Utility didn't find any error this time.

All this to say that I have the feeling that there is a bug in the "Recovery" Disk Utility, or at least the way the recovery OS allows it to access the drive.

I'm also certain that there was a real problem at first because the "internal" Disk Utility (from the normal boot partition) initially found a problem. However, the problem appears solved as the "internal" Disk Utility doesn't find any problem now (as well as the "external" Disk Utility and Disk Warrior), despite what the "Recovery" Disk Utility says...

I had the same exact errors tonight. I have a 2012 Macbook Air. I installed Mavericks about 3 days ago.

- The system got extremely bogged down while I was running VMWare Fusion (Win XP). Difficult to reboot, but finally was able to reboot into the Recovery Partition.

** "The partition map needs to be repaired because there's a problem with the EFI system partition's file system"

** Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting"

- So I booted in the Recovery Partition, and Disk Utility could still not fix the partition.

- FIX: I then booted from a USB backup hard drive (which was created with SuperDuper) and used Disk Utility to check the internal drive. It showed no errors at all!

- So I reset SMC and PRAM, and booted into Safe Mode (for good measure, to run the automatic maintenance scripts)

- After rebooting into normal mode, everything seems fine now.

I hope this helps.