Cannot repair a file vault disk in El Capitan

Question

Cannot repair a file vault disk in El Capitan

I had to force shutdown my Macbook recently and so I opened Disk Utility to see if everything was okay. I'm running up-to-date El Capitan with a FileVault encrypted drive. New Macbook Pro (February 2015).

Running "First Aid" on the outer Apple SSD item appears to be okay. It's when I run "First Aid" with Macintosh HD highlighted tells me that something is wrong and that it needs to be repaired, but there is no repair button. Subsequent runs of "First Aid" keep showing that there's an issue, so it doesn't appear to be repairing during First Aid.

I tried booting with Command + R to repair the disk but it would only let me apply "First Aid" to the Apple SSD, not the Macintosh HD. It said Macintosh HD was not mounted. I imagine that's because it's encrypted with FileVault but I couldn't find how to tell it to decrypt or mount the drive to take a look at it.

How can I run a repair on the disk? Should I even bother?

Thanks!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1), Mid 2014

Posted on Dec 1, 2015 1:20 PM

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Answer 1

Pmintz25

Level 4

2,058 points

Dec 1, 2015 1:28 PM in response to morsalmarzur215

When you attempt to repair a FileVault encrypted disk, it should ask you to type in the FileVault password.

Also, you can not repair a disk while you are booted to that disk. You must use Disk Utility on the Recovery drive to unmount and repair the disk.

Boot to Recovery by restarting the computer, and immediately hold Command-R until you see a progress bar. Once the Recovery window opens, select Disk Utility and then try to repair the disk Macintosh HD with First Aid.

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Answer 2

Dec 1, 2015 4:29 PM in response to Pmintz25

I booted into Recovery mode as per your instructions and tried to repair Macintosh HD as I did before, but the First Aid button is disabled for it.

In Recovery mode, it is not disabled for the Apple SSD (which passes First Aid with no issues) but is disabled for Macintosh HD. In normal operating mode, I can run First Aid on Macintosh HD and it says there are issues but won't do anything past that.

Here are photos of my screen when I'm in Recovery mode:

Note that Macintosh HD is disabled on the sidebar and the First Aid button is disabled for it.

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Answer 3

Pmintz25

Level 4

2,058 points

Dec 17, 2015 5:24 PM in response to morsalmarzur215

It says your Macintosh HD is not mounted either...

I would suggest trying an SMC reset.

Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support

If that doesn't work, try Single User mode (Turn the computer on and hold Command-S) and fsck command line. Follow the steps under "Use fsck if Necessary)

Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck - Apple Support

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Answer 4

Dec 17, 2015 7:58 PM in response to Pmintz25

I am not sure if it's because of the SMC reset or not, but I was clicking around on the menus in Recovery mode after doing the SMC reset, and I found "Unlock" as enabled while I had Macintosh HD highlighted. So I clicked it, it asked me for the disk's password, and I was able to get in and repair it!

Many thanks to all who commented, hope this helps someone in the future.

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Answer 5

Pmintz25

Level 4

2,058 points

Dec 18, 2015 8:24 AM in response to morsalmarzur215

Awesome! I thought Filevault was supposed to ask you for the password as soon as you tried to repair the disk but I guess it's different in El Capitan.

Did it repair successfully? Is everything working? Glad to hear you figured it out.

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