Disk needs to be repaired

I'm not sure if this is the right place to be posting this, as this I have just joined this forum.

My mac has needed its disc repaired twice in the past two weeks. I am wondering if that is a normal occurrence? I read somewhere that the disc can become corrupt if there is a power outage or it has crashed, but neither of these things have happened. I only found out it needed to be repaired the second time when my computer slowed down whilst playing a game.

So is this normal, well as normal as it can get being as its corrupted. Is there anything I should do apart from repairing it from the installation disc?

Thanks so much

Welcome to Mac Forums,
As far as normal goes, there is no normal when it comes to mechanical devices with moving parts, that get used differently by different people, and this is what your HD is.
How old is your HD?
How big is your HD and how much free space is there?
What sort of maintenance have you done on it, if any?

Sorry for taking so long to reply.
My HD is 250gb with 122gb free and it is about 4 years old. As for maintenance, I have never done any, mainly because I don't know what I should be doing.

Thanks

"the disk needs to be repaired" is a warning/advisory that there is something wrong with the HD volume. It may be minor, it may be serious.

Using your original Install disk, boot the Mac by holding down the C key immediately after startup chime. In Disk Utility > First Aid, verify the HD, and then repair if necessary.

If DU cannot repair the disk, then it's time to consider bringing in the heavy artillery, namely Disk Warrior.

Post back with any progress.

xxchamaraxx said:

Sorry for taking so long to reply.
My HD is 250gb with 122gb free and it is about 4 years old. As for maintenance, I have never done any, mainly because I don't know what I should be doing. Thanks

Click to expand...

First, follow the advice given you by hughvane. And before doing anything else, make a backup of your hard drive. As it's 4 years old and reporting errors, it could be on the verge of failing. Make a backup as soon as possible and be prepared to replace the drive if necessary.

Regards.

Okay thanks! I will definitely back it up and then repair disc from the installation disc.

Okay so I backed up and then repaired the disc. It said it needed to be repaired and repaired it and said it was all good. I clicked verify disc to double check and it said it passed. Then this morning after I turned the computer on again, I decided to verify disc, just to double check again, and now it's saying volume header needs minor repair and to repair disc from installation disc.

It appears that you may be approaching the need to reformat the hard drive, as some bad blocks can cause the volume header problem.

Disk Warrior does a more thorough job of repairing hard drives, but it's expensive @ ~US$100, unless you can find a Mac Tech who can use the utility on your behalf, which may be a cheaper option.

You say you've backed everything up - good. If you decide to reformat the HD, it will wipe everything from the drive, so be doubly-sure you have everything from it that you need/want.

xxchamaraxx said:

Okay so I backed up and then repaired the disc. It said it needed to be repaired and repaired it and said it was all good. I clicked verify disc to double check and it said it passed. Then this morning after I turned the computer on again, I decided to verify disc, just to double check again, and now it's saying volume header needs minor repair and to repair disc from installation disc.

Click to expand...

Try reformatting the hard drive as "hughvane" suggests. If that doesn't fix things...given that you've done some diagnostic work to repair this hard drive without 100% success...maybe it's time to purchase a new hard drive.

You haven't told us what sort of computer this is (desktop or laptop, and model)...but you can get a brand new hard drive of similar capacity to your current drive for under $50...or get a 1 terabyte drive for like $75 (if it's a desktop).

- Nick

As Nick suggests purchase another hard drive. This ongoing maintenance is a sign from above it is about to go to hard drive heaven, sooner rather than later!

harryb2448 said:

This ongoing maintenance is a sign from above it is about to go to hard drive heaven, sooner rather than later!

Click to expand...

Excellent point Harry!

"xxchamaraxx"...your hard drive may be entering the "flakey" stage of it's life...where it's reliability is in a gray area. One week or month it may seem fine...and the next week or month problems!

Unless you're doing some really good day to day backups...where you are super confident that if this internal hard drive was to completely fail you would have no risk of lost data...it might be best to get a new HD for peace of mind.

- Nick

Thank you so much for answering!

So it seems I have to buy a new hard drive.. A couple of questions:
- Where do you suggest I get a new hard drive from? Or should I take it somewhere and get them to do it? Even if it was an easy thing to do (which it doesn't sound like anyway), I wouldn't trust myself to replace it. Someone at work reckons its easy and showed me a youtube video where they replaced the hard drive in the same model mac as mine, but still.
- What happens then to my ipod and iphone? Do I lose all the info on them when I go to sync with new hard drive?

You should go to OWC~MacSales then click the *MyOWC* tab and follow the directions putting in your Mac specs and it will show you ALL compatible HD's. I highly recommend this company as they test all there hardware on Macs so they know all is good

If you have done a Backup with either CCC~CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper you can clone the Backup to your New Hd and all will be as you left the old one. Setting, and all .....

Have you done a backup with either of those ?? As these both make a bootable copy/clone of your HD as where TimeMachine doesnt

Cheers

xxchamaraxx said:

Thank you so much for answering!

So it seems I have to buy a new hard drive.. A couple of questions:
- Where do you suggest I get a new hard drive from? Or should I take it somewhere and get them to do it? Even if it was an easy thing to do (which it doesn't sound like anyway), I wouldn't trust myself to replace it.

Click to expand...

You still haven't told us what sort of Macintosh computer you have! Some models are easier than others to replace the hard drive.

Thanks,

- Nick

Sorry, I have an iMac5,1 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 20inch
(is that that right information that I'm supposed to be giving??)

Thankyou TattooedMac for those websites, I have just downloaded Carbon Copy Cloner and I'll use that instead because I did use Time machine to make my original backup.

A guy at work suggested that I clone my hard drive to an external drive, then reformat my internal hard drive.. will that work / achieve anything? If so, how do I do that?

That will probably only buy you some time, but it is worth trying.

My guess is you'll need a new hard drive.

Cheers ... McBie