04-03-2010, 02:15 PM

Ok, I did a run of Onyx the other night for the first time on my iMac. When it was checking the startup volume, it said it needed to be repaired. So obviously I needed to boot from my Snow Leopard install disc and go through disk utility.

Here is where the real problem exists. Apparently I can't boot from my SL disc. It just freezes at the Apple screen after holding down Option and choosing the SL disc. My only option is to shut the machine down. After a lot of thought, I figured maybe it had something to do with my Bootcamp partition. Maybe somehow that is causing the "startup volume needs repaired" message. Since I don't really need the Win7 install I decided to use the BootCamp utility and make it all one Mac OS partition. Still no luck.

A couple of hours later I came up with another idea. I checked the SL disc and noticed a few scratches thinking maybe there is something wrong with it, even though the OS recognizes it fine. I thought about using my older Leopard (10.5) disc and the same thing happened.

I'm beginning to run out of options. I know the computer boots up perfectly fine, but I would like to get the disc repaired. The only other thing I can think of is to get a FireWire 800 cable and connect the iMac to my newly acquired MBP. Boot the iMac up into Target Disc Mode and then use Disk Utility on my MBP to repair the startup disk. I'm hoping that once the startup disk is repaired, that I won't have any more problems booting to the OS X install disc.

Any other ideas? I really don't want to lug a 27" iMac to the nearest Apple store which is hours away.

04-03-2010, 05:22 PM

Did your 27" iMac come with Leopard or Snow Leopard? If it came with Snow Leopard I can understand why the Leopard disk didn't work. But I don't understand why the Snow Leopard disk wouldn't work unless it's for a different machine. Were you ever able to boot the machine with the Snow Leopard disk?

Anyway, try the target mode boot and run repair from your MBP. Let us know what happens.

Regards.

04-03-2010, 05:55 PM

No it came with SL. However I was trying it with the retail disc, not the original that came with it. I'll try that right now. If that fails then I'll go online and buy a FireWire 800 cable.

04-03-2010, 06:16 PM

w00t! It's working again! Well, I guess it never broke but it booted from the disc that came with my iMac. I don't know how I didn't think about using it. Anyways, it repaired the disc and was successful, so everything should be good now!

04-05-2010, 12:27 AM

Glad to hear you were able to repair the drive. Just keep a sharp eye on that drive from now on. And keep making those backups.

Regards.

04-05-2010, 02:04 AM

I would strongly recommend an investment in Disk Warrior. You will thank me for this the next time this sort of thing happens (and it probably will happen again).