Disk Utility Showing Multiple Issues on HD

Question

Level 1

11 points

Disk Utility Showing Multiple Issues on HD

I run Disk Utility every few days. Over the past month when I do a Verify Disk on the volume Macintosh HD I am told about errors that require me to repair the volume from the Recovery Disk. I do so and all is well for a few days. Then corruption reoccurs again. This happens again and again.

What can I do to prevent this corruption? Should I reset the SMC or the PRAM? Should I reinstall Mavericks?

See the screen shot for a representative case.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Dec 28, 2013 10:47 AM

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Answer 1

Melophage

Level 5

7,213 points

Dec 28, 2013 10:22 PM in response to jog2joy

jog2joy,

do you have any data on your Macintosh HD that you would like to preserve? If so, then I’d highly recommend making a backup of that data. Once you have your valuable data backed up, you might want to reformat your Macintosh HD volume, and then reïnstall the OS into the Macintosh HD volume from the recovery partition. If Disk Utility is discovering orphaned blocks every few days, then something is not right with either the OS installation or the SSD itself.

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,739 points

Dec 29, 2013 12:36 PM in response to jog2joy

Either the drive is failing, or the SATA cable is damaged, or there is some other internal hardware fault.

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Answer 3

Dec 29, 2013 12:50 PM in response to jog2joy

If you select the drive rather then the volume the SMART you will see the SMART status for the drive. What does it show?

In any case what you are seeing is not right and you should have the system checked out ASAP. In addition make sure you have a current good working backup of the drive. It's liable to go out at any time.

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Answer 4

jog2joy Author

Level 1

11 points

Dec 30, 2013 2:33 PM in response to jog2joy

Update: I have been backing up to Time Machine. I erased and reformatted my SSD drive and reinstalled OS Mavericks. I then updated from Time Machine and am now back and running. I have used Disk Utility multiple times and in each case am told all is well with Verify Disk.

Now the new part: Each time I am in Disk Utility I select Verify Permissions for the Volume and find many hundreds of permission problems which are them repaired. See a partial snapshot of the details. When I scroll to the bottom of these hundreds of issues I am told that the permission repair has been successfully completed, Then I clear history. Either right then or the next time I return to Disk Utility I get the myriad of permission problems!

Is this a problem with Mavericks, my SSD or what?

Thanks for any help or advice you can give.

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Answer 5

Melophage

Level 5

7,213 points

Dec 30, 2013 7:41 PM in response to jog2joy

jog2joy,

do you have a spare external disk? I wonder if it would be worthwhile to install a bootable Mavericks on an external disk, and then boot from the external disk, and see if Disk Utility still considers your SSD in need of permission repairs as frequently as it does currently.

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Answer 6

jog2joy Author

Level 1

11 points

Dec 31, 2013 3:30 PM in response to Melophage

I rebooted from an external Mavericks 10.9.1 disk and found the MANY permissions problems to be there. DU says they are fixed, I run again and the MANY permission problems reappear.

I also ran Alsoft's Disk Warrior 4.4 and the problems are again there.

Same with Disk Utility in Macintosh HD boot.

I am going to speak to Apple support on Thursday.

I am stumped!

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Answer 7

petermac87

Level 5

7,453 points

Dec 31, 2013 3:50 PM in response to jog2joy

That is normal of Permission Repairs. Just ignore it. As long as it says Permissions Repaired at the end of it, then all is good. It has had the best of Mac users stumped for many versions of the OSX as to why this is the case, but it is. You can repair permissions twenty times a day and still see the list as you are seeing.

Apple once released a list of permissions to ignore (😕)

May give you an insight into why you should just ignore the DiskUtility Permissions Repair report.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Cheers

Pete

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Answer 8

Melophage

Level 5

7,213 points

Dec 31, 2013 10:42 PM in response to jog2joy

jog2joy,

please let us know what Apple support has to say on the matter, so that future readers of this discussion will benefit from your experience.

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Answer 9

jog2joy Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 2, 2014 4:36 PM in response to Melophage

Apple support agreed with the steps suggested above to fix the disk errors; viz. reformat the SDD and reinstall OS Mavericks. Apple support also agreed with ignoring DU Permissions Repair report as long as it says Permissions Repaired at the end of it. A known, low priority problem which as been around since OS 10.4. Just an annoying report but too low a priority to fix - now...

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