How long does it take to run Disk Utility First Aid? Can it be hard-stopped?

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How long does it take to run Disk Utility First Aid? Can it be hard-stopped?

I have a 2013 Macbook Pro with a 500 GB SSD. It is up to date with High Sierra 10.13.6. It was having trouble when unlocking the screen after going to sleep while a full screen app was running. Various threads on this site and others suggested the Disk Utility First Aid may help.

I started it up and acknowledged the warning that the utility could take some time to complete and it was normal for the computer to be unresponsive while repairing the boot volume. I kept close tabs on it for a bit, but it didn't get beyond the output line for the fsck_apfs command. Just displaying the 'Details' expand-down section would take 15-30 seconds. Then, sure enough, I walked away and it turned off the screen and locked itself.

That was over three hours ago.

I have occasionally been able to get it to display the login screen, but it does not make the password input editable, nor let me log back in. I have no indication that it's still doing anything.

How long would a typical First Aid utility run take?

How much longer should I let it run before taking action?
Is there a way to safely stop it? Put another way, would turning off the computer by holding the power button for 5 seconds risk damaging the disk?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS High Sierra (10.13.6)

Posted on Sep 26, 2018 9:40 PM

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patrick..m Author

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7 points

Sep 28, 2018 12:05 PM in response to patrick..m

I spoke to Apple support after it ran over night. They did indicated the first thing that would be tried at an Apple repair appointment would be a hard power off by holding the power button for 5 seconds, followed by a reset of the SMC (shift-control-option + power, hold 10 seconds). After performing these steps, the macbook booted up without problems.

I did not get an indication of how long a repair is supposed to take or when one should consider it actually frozen and abort it. I am going to get an external hard drive to back everything up before taking further steps to try and address the original issue.

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