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Bitbucket63 Author

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What is file system check exit code 8?

Disk Utility>First Aid

What is file system check exit code 8?

Thank you.

Mac mini (Late 2009), OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Jul 17, 2016 5:57 PM

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Bitbucket63 Author

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18 points

Posted on Jul 19, 2016 8:08 AM

With all due respect, I've been down that rabbit hole already. There is no end to the advice on how to repair a disk; there is no answer as to what exit code 8 actually means. All those Google searches are why I wasted several hours attempting to repair the disk. The disk has been repaired with a complete reformat. Had exit code 8 been properly documented, or if First Aid gave a more verbose response like "You're screwed, start over." I'd have saved several hours on non-productive activity.

Again, the question is: What does exit code 8 indicate?

The question is not: How do I repair the disk?

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Bitbucket63 Author

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Jul 19, 2016 8:08 AM in response to BobTheFisherman

With all due respect, I've been down that rabbit hole already. There is no end to the advice on how to repair a disk; there is no answer as to what exit code 8 actually means. All those Google searches are why I wasted several hours attempting to repair the disk. The disk has been repaired with a complete reformat. Had exit code 8 been properly documented, or if First Aid gave a more verbose response like "You're screwed, start over." I'd have saved several hours on non-productive activity.

Again, the question is: What does exit code 8 indicate?

The question is not: How do I repair the disk?

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Bitbucket63 Author

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Jul 19, 2016 3:24 PM in response to BobTheFisherman

What I want -- which I know now is impossible to expect -- is that people in user forums and crowd sourced support read the question and answer the question, not give the answer to the question they wanted it to be.

In case I was ambiguous, the disk has been reformatted and is working fine for the moment. It would have been nice to know right from the start if exit code 8 indicates an unrecoverable file system error or not. That is why I was asking. There would have been no need to reboot, or run fsck from a recovery terminal, or run First Aid multiple times -- all advice proffered in other sources.

Thanks for trying though.

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Jul 17, 2016 6:25 PM in response to Bitbucket63

Disk Utility from local SSD and Recovery Partition disagree

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/file-system-check-exit-code-8-disk-wont-repa ir.1819660/

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Bitbucket63 Author

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Jul 19, 2016 7:40 AM in response to leroydouglas

Thanks for the links, but that is not the question. Exit code 8 means something. I wanted to know what the exit code indicated. So far as I can tell, it is not documented anywhere. Knowing more detail could have saved me several hours of going through the usual "First Aid" procedures.

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Jul 19, 2016 7:44 AM in response to Bitbucket63

It is documented in many places. See https://www.google.com/search?q=file+system+check+ecit+code+8&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

It appears to be a corrupted disk which could have many potential causes.

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Jul 19, 2016 8:10 AM in response to Bitbucket63

It means you have a corrupted disk. What else do you want? Disks can become corrupted in many ways. Reformatting your disk apparently did not fix the corruption. Follow the instructions already provided or try a new disk.

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Jul 19, 2016 8:43 AM in response to Bitbucket63

Bitbucket63 wrote:

Again, the question is: What does exit code 8 indicate?

BobTheFisherman has it right.

Exit code 8 is a generic failure where a special character cannot be read, or a character is unexpectedly in the wrong place. Given that code is a series literally 10,000,000x strings of 1 and 0's things do go astray.

My only suggestion would be if re formatting did not fix the disk from DiskUtility's point of view, Format it in to some other partition table—when that is complete—reformat it again back to GPT extended journaled and see if it sorts itself.

All data of course will be lost on a reformatted Disk. How to create a boot clone

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Jul 20, 2016 12:08 PM in response to Bitbucket63

Bitbucket63 wrote:

It would have been nice to know right from the start if exit code 8 indicates an unrecoverable file system error or not.

Mentioned above fsck_hfs indicates "some" status by exit value. 8 indicates a corrupt filesystem was found during a check, or repairs did not succeed. That's it. All you can do is run First Aid multiple times for some resolve. You can boot into single user mode and try from there.

Of course this will only fix logical damages and keep failing if the disk itself is damaged. There is no way to know if your system is recoverable or not.

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What is file system check exit code 8?

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