Hard Disk Problems

Hey guys how's it going?


I've got a big of an issue here with my MacBook and want to get all your input as to what the problem may be.

So a few days ago I was just surfing the net when suddenly FireFox froze on me. This had been happening for a while fairly recently so I decided that by force quitting it would be my best option. But the whole system froze on me (I had iTunes and Pages on as well).After a while, I simply decided to shut down the computer.


But lord and behold, as I turned the computer back on, it would not go into the log in screen. After a few unsuccessful attempts, I checked the instrutor's manual for feedback. One of the options was restarting with the command key I believe, but all this did was display the mouse cursor with the blue background of the Log In screen. The mouse had full functionality, but the Log In screen was missing.

Then, I installed the Installer Disc 1 to do try and do a "fresh" install (thankfully I had everything saved on a back-up harddrive). The book instructed me to restart holding down the "C" key. I got to the "First Aid" screen, clicked on "Repair Disk," and thought I was home free.

But halfway through the process, I got a message. It said something to the effect of "The disk could not be repaired because there was a failure on exit." Below that window, there was another message that read, "Invalid volume header" or something like that.


So yeah, I'm pretty much stuck here. I have not yet contacted Apple Support, I'm afraid they'll tell me that my drive is dead, but if that's the case, what are my options? Is the hard disk really dead or am I missing something here.


I'd really appreciate any input you guys and gals have on this.

Similar HD problems

I recently had problems with my root directory and got the same error. My user account continues to work just fine. I was on another forum someone offered the following suggestion:

"If you are doing regular maintenance and an Administrator account got corrupted, you may be in trouble and the problem may be hardware.

Check your boot drive. Make sure its S.M.A.R.T. status lists as OK and, when you start up go into Single User Mode and run fsck -yf
Run it at the prompt until you do not get errors.

Back up your drive. Run Mike Bombich's Carbon Copy Cloner on your system and clone your entire hard drive to an external drive. Make sure that you Bless the system folder. Also make sure the drive is bootable (firewire drives are, USB drives are not).

Plan to replace your startup drive."

I recently switched to a Mac and don't quite know how to do all that stuff so I asked for more instructions and am waiting for a reply.

diggertoo Has given some good advice so go with it

Something like an invalid volume header sounds like the whole disk structure has gone wrong.

Check the status of the disk, if it is OK it is just a software problem, and a complete wipe of the disk and re-install will resolve the problem