Mavericks halloween scare

I have a MacBook Pro which is a couple of years old, and which, on awakening today, had Mountain Lion. Then, I followed an App Store Update popup about Mavericks. Downloaded it, and clicked on Install. When it was done, I got this scary message: "OS X could not be installed. The OS X upgrade could not be started because the disk HD is damaged and can't be repaired etc etc "

Of course, I panicked. I took the laptop to a neighborhood Apple-authorized facility, where a young fellow told me, after he said he ran diagnostics, that my hard disk is "toast".

At the urging of my wise wife, bless her heart, I trotted the laptop home to "sleep on it". There, I restarted the laptop, the upgrade restarted itself, installed fine, and opened at the desktop. Since then, I have checked email, run a half dozen apps, am now typing this message, and everything seems to be working. At About This Mac, it says I have OS X 10.9, which I believe is Mavericks.

Whew.

Interesting report.

Thx for sharing.

Perhaps you're only delaying the inevitable? Boot your machine to its Recovery partition by holding down the Command and R keys at the same time. Once in Recovery, select Utilities, and then Disk Utility. Verify the hard drive. Also you might want to download the free SmartReporter and run it.

And make backups!

stefanmaine said:

At the urging of my wise wife, bless her heart, I trotted the laptop home to "sleep on it". There, I restarted the laptop, the upgrade restarted itself, installed fine, and opened at the desktop. Since then, I have checked email, run a half dozen apps, am now typing this message, and everything seems to be working. At About This Mac, it says I have OS X 10.9, which I believe is Mavericks.

Whew.

Click to expand...

So the first question that comes to my mind is (after you dodged this bullet)...do you have a backup...or are you right now in the process of making one?

Because if you had a backup all along...there would have been absolutely no reason to:

- panic
- visit the local Apple expert
- told the hard drive was toast
- "bless the wife"
- sleep on it

When you have hard drive backups...there's a lot less to worry about!

- Nick

Go by what SMARTReporter tells you. It makes no mistakes. And backup backup backup!

As Nick said, plus hard drives failures can be intermittent, although less common, and the flex cable connecting the hard drive can become intermittent. After an episode such as you have reported, I would certainly have the hard drive and cable replaced, they are not expensive. If you have a 2012 13" MBP, Apple issued some small black sticky foam pads to protect the cable, ensure that is also fitted. The pads were only for the 2012 13" though.

pigoo3 said:

So the first question that comes to my mind is (after you dodged this bullet)...do you have a backup...or are you right now in the process of making one?

Because if you had a backup all along...there would have been absolutely no reason to:

- panic
- visit the local Apple expert
- told the hard drive was toast
- "bless the wife"
- sleep on it

When you have hard drive backups...there's a lot less to worry about!

- Nick

Click to expand...

Indeed

-- iApprove this message! --

Thanks to all.

First, I do have backups. Even backups of the backups. I learned that lesson a very long time ago through multiple versions of DOS and Windows.

Boot your machine to its Recovery partition by holding down the Command and R keys at the same time. Once in Recovery, select Utilities, and then Disk Utility. Verify the hard drive.

Click to expand...

I did that, and the result is that the hard disk "appears to be OK".

Also you might want to download SmartReporter and run it.

Click to expand...

I purchased it from the App Store, and installed it. It has been running ever since. It reports "Status: OK".

Perhaps you're only delaying the inevitable?

Click to expand...

Yes, that occurred to me, too. But having the hard disk replaced is likely to cost a couple of hundred bucks, which may not be a lot, but it is a chunk. So, I think that for now, I will rely on SmartReporter, keep backing up, and see what evolves.

Go by what SMARTReporter tells you. It makes no mistakes.

Click to expand...

Thank you all again.

stefanmaine said:

Thanks to all.

First, I do have backups. Even backups of the backups. I learned that lesson a very long time ago through multiple versions of DOS and Windows.

Click to expand...

Good deal...glad to hear it! But if you had all of these backups...why was there so much "drama" when you had this "Halloween Scare"?

I mean I totally understand that waking up one day and having this happen can hit you VERY suddenly. But then 5 seconds later when you remember you have all those backups...you should get a BIG comfortable feeling of relief (due to the backups).

In any case...great to hear all is well. We do get a lot of story's where this happens ot folks...and they DON'T have backups. That's why we may sound pretty stern & harsh when it comes to backups.

If someone can afford a Macintosh computer...they can certainly afford to purchase some sort of backup device or "Cloud" storage for backups!

- Nick