File System Errors in Mac OSX - Disk Utility not enough

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Level 1

0 points

File System Errors in Mac OSX - Disk Utility not enough

Hello,

I transferred to Mac from a PC and one big problem I see is no ability to scan the HD for bad sectors or permission errors. Many times when I am copying a large amount of files I get an error code -50 or something similar related to the drive permissions.

I have tried cloning the drive to a new one that is fresh, running disk utility, but there is nothing as easy as just hooking it up to my PC and running "Chkdsk".

Why is there not an option to ensure your HD data integrity?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Nov 22, 2013 9:29 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,015 points

Nov 22, 2013 11:25 AM in response to enunn48

Applications folder/Utilities/Disk Utility will allow you to repair permissions and verify your hard drive. To repair some permissions and to attempt to repair the hard drive, you will need to boot into the Recovery Volume (command - R on a restart or hold down the option/alt key during restart and select it) and run Disk Utility there.

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Answer 2

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,660 points

Nov 22, 2013 7:28 PM in response to enunn48

The OS will automatically assign bad sectors as unusable (in fact I think HD firmware manage it).

Disk Utility in recovery mode will do a better job than chkdsk on a PC which won't understand HFS or the automatic 'adaptive hotfile clustering' that in effect defrags & stores the most important files in the fasted disk regions. Files over 20mb are also defragged by the OS automatically.

This old document covers the basic concepts

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375

There are 3rd party tools to defrag Mac disks, but Disk Utility is safer. Run the verify/ repair tasks on the boot disk & also run the repair permissions task too. Picking the wrong tool will make performance worse.

If the error persists post more info, like where the file was, what app was copying etc.

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Answer 3

enunn48 Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 23, 2013 5:11 PM in response to Drew Reece

Ok, I have run disk utilitiy from a recovery partition but no complete luck. When I am still transferring files i get (error code -50).

Let me start by saying I started with this drive formatted as ExFAT so that my files could be viewed by both Operating Systems. Then converted it to HFS after I read, and experienced many problems with Mac OSX corrupting the drive somehow. But now I am still getting (error code -50) when copying files to an external HD on my music files.

So I am thinking that there are some type of permission error on those specific files, or sectors that somehow corrupted from the ExFAT partition?

To copy any large batch of files I usually have more success when I transfer it to my main SSD boot drive, then to where ever else

*This especially happens when transferring files to my Windows 8.1 computer shared drive on my network*

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