Q: Mavericks install failed - damaged HD hard drive, all other options failing

Which OS X is currently installed on the Mac ?

Have you tried OS X Recovery >  OS X Recovery

Make sure the Mac can run Mavericks > OS X Mavericks: System Requirements

Are you trying to create a disk image of the same drive you are currently booted from? If yes, that’s preventing Disk Utility from unmounting the volume.

While booted into the Mavericks installer you can copy off certain files/folders using Utilities → Terminal.

To copy all Applications to an external drive type:

ditto -V /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Applications/ /Volumes/EXTERNALDRIVENAME/Applications/

To copy all User data type:

ditto -V /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/ /Volumes/EXTERNALDRIVENAME/Users/

Once you have a backup continue with the OS X Mavericks install, it should just upgrade your OS to Mavericks and migrate your previous application and user data.

If it really is a dying HD you will need to replace it. Replacing the hard drive is a straight forward process and 1TB will cost you under AU$100 today.

You can find instructions on replacing your MacBooks drive on iFixit.

Once you have a new drive installed follow this guide to do a clean install of OS X Mavericks.

If all you want to do is erase the disk and reinstall Mavericks.

Follow this guide using another Mac.

Insert your newly created Mavericks USB into the laptop, press the power button and then hold down 'option,' until it gives you an option to boot from the USB. You will then be able to erase the laptops internal disk with Disk Utility and reinstall Mavericks straight after.

I FIGURED OUT HOW TO FIX THIS! Mavericks royally messed up my HD and I was freaking out because I didn't have a back-up. After much research online and going back and forth from different forums here is how to fix your "damaged" HD.

So basically to save your data (if your disk is cannot be repaired in Disk Utility or you can't access it or if you keep getting stuck in the loop), you have use an external hard drive as the start up disk and install Lion or Mavericks on that then transfer your files from the HD to the external. Then shut down the computer, remove the external (so it tries to boot up on its own), go into Recovery Mode then to Disk Utility and do a level 7 erase (it will be in your security options under erase. It's the Most Secure one that the US Department of Defense uses. This will take about 12 hours and once that is done, restart your computer in Recovery Mode then reinstall Lion. To transfer your data back on your computer, plug in the external and use it as a hard drive, your data will be under the User folder and whatever username you use. TAKE THAT APPLE.

taramason, you're a star!

Thanks so much for this. Salvaged the data on my 'dead' hard drive which failed duing a mavericks re-install, using your suggestion to use external hard drive. Decided to upgrade to a sdd rather than wipe old hard drive clean and use again. But I'm sure this would have worked too.

Thanks again, saved 100's of hours of work since hadn't backed up for 3 months...

Taramason thank you so much for this posting, would really appreciate your help as i'm in the exact same situation:

How did you transfer your files from the HD to the external? I'm trying to do that through disk utility but the only option is 'burn'. I'm not in recovery mode, does that make a difference? Did you install Lion back on your external through another computer?

Once you make the start up HD your external, it will give you the option to transfer files on the old HD to new HD.

No prob! So glad I could help.

Hi taramason how did you get the OSX Install on your external drive? I got it through disk utility with InstallESD.dmg. I reformatted the usb to mac osx extended (volume format) and used 1 partition. The drive was partitioned to the GUID scheme (partition> options). The usb won't show up as a startup disk though so i can't make the external drive my startup drive.

Hi,

hope you don't mind me jumping in. But just to let you know that i used another mac to get the OSX install on my external hard drive and again on the new sdd since i wanted a clean install. Think perhaps  an apple store would do this for you at the genius bar. Good luck.

Something completely different worked after all the going back and forth. At reboot, I hit the shift button to enter safe mode, I kept pressing the shift button until it brought me to my desktop. I went into the applications folder and deleted the mavericks osx install and emptied the trash.

I had my files backed up on my external hard drive since a week ago, but wanted to try to get the rest so I dragged and dropped to my usb. Time machine worked for me when I bought my macbook in 2011, but after the osx update it would just stall so I never used Time Machine to back up the whole hd.
After reboot, the mavericks install still showed up but the whole process went through. Time machine seems to be running nicely again.