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What does "Invalid leaf record count" mean?

Can anyone explain what the Disk Utiliity error, "Invalid leaf record count (it should be 4 instead of 407)" implies? I can't make this error go away, no matter how many times I run Disk Utility. Disk Warrior 3.03 says all is AOK, yet I still have very frustrating intermittent freezes and failures to start up. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

G5 1.6GHz

Posted on Aug 3, 2006 11:10 AM

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Posted on Aug 3, 2006 11:17 AM

hi - that error means your hard drive is in extremely bad shape.

backup whatever you can get to right now.

are you running Disk Utility/ Disk Warrior while not booted off of this drive? boot off of your Tiger install disk and run Disk Utility from the menu at the top. is it able to fix it?

i think it won't be able to.
Disk Warrior can almost certainly fix it, but you cannot be running Disk Warrior from the same drive that you're trying to fix. is your Disk Warrior disk bootable?

do you have an external firewire drive that you can boot from?

post back w/ any add'l info... cheers
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Aug 3, 2006 11:17 AM in response to CharPatton

hi - that error means your hard drive is in extremely bad shape.

backup whatever you can get to right now.

are you running Disk Utility/ Disk Warrior while not booted off of this drive? boot off of your Tiger install disk and run Disk Utility from the menu at the top. is it able to fix it?

i think it won't be able to.
Disk Warrior can almost certainly fix it, but you cannot be running Disk Warrior from the same drive that you're trying to fix. is your Disk Warrior disk bootable?

do you have an external firewire drive that you can boot from?

post back w/ any add'l info... cheers

Aug 3, 2006 11:32 AM in response to CharPatton

HI, CharPatton. Welcome to the Discussions.

1. Were you running Disk Utility from the Tiger Install DVD?

If you run Disk Utility from a Mac OS X disc prior to 10.3.9 against a Tiger volume, you can get false "Invalid leaf record count" errors. See "Mac OS X 10.3: Disk Utility reports inaccurate "Volume needs to be repaired" message when checking Mac OS X 10.4 volume."

Likewise if you:

• startup from a bootable backup of Mac OS X 10.3.8 or earlier;

• attempt to repair your Mac's hard drive as the target computer in Target Disk Mode from another Mac running Mac OS X 10.3.8 or earlier;

you would see the same issue when attempting to repair a Tiger volume.

Always be sure to use only Tiger-compatible disk utilities with Tiger: see "Only use Mac OS X 10.4-compatible disk utilities with Mac OS X 10.4 volumes."

2. You might want to treat the "freezes and hangs" problem similar to a kernel panic as the basic troubleshooting and hardware testing steps are nearly be the same. See my "Resolving Kernel Panics" FAQ.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

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I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Aug 4, 2006 10:25 PM in response to W.J. Llope

Thanks much for taking the time to share your knowledge!

Very interestingly, when I run Disk Utility (v 10.5.6) from the hard drive that I boot from, it says that all is AOK. However, when I run Disk Utility from my install DVD I get the dreaded. "Invalid leaf record count (it should be 4 instead of ...)" error. Why the discrepancy between diagnostics depending upon where Disk Utility comes from? Is it still a serious error if it only shows up when running from the DVD version of Disk Utility?

Disk Warrior 3.03 CD hasn't fixed it yet, although someone told me to hold down the option key when running Disk Warrior and putting it into "Scavenger" mode; I have no idea what this means, but it is running on my work computer now as we speak so I'll know more on Monday when I return.

Thanks again.

Aug 4, 2006 10:29 PM in response to Dr. Smoke

Thanks much for taking the time to share your expertise!

Please see my response to WJ LLope above, but I only see the leaf error when running DiskUtility from my install DVD, not from my hard drive. Any idea why and/or what this means?

I'm pretty sure it is a Tiger DVD, but I'll double-check that at work on Monday.

I'll take a look at your Kernel panic post, too.

Thanks again!

What does "Invalid leaf record count" mean?

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