Disk Utility and Disk Repair

With 10.4.9, I thought I could repair the disk right from Disk Utility
instead of using the installation CD. Now the repair button is grayed
out and I can only verify it. Has it always been so and I'm just senile?

Most grateful.

 

You can't repair the Startup disk with Disk Utility, you have to startup
with from the OS disk. Has been that way always.

 

How do you boot from "another Mac"?


Regards,

John Byrns

 

Its probably possible to boot into terminal mode and do most of it..but
the safest thing is to boot the startup disk, go into termional mode
from that, and use fsck to check and repair any anomalies on the system
disk..but that is often a boot time option anyway..

 

Pretty unanimous: I am senile. Thanks, loads, everybody! Really, not
being sarcastic. Glad to know the computer is doing exactly what it
should be doing. Guess I just forgot.

 

Is it true the iPhone cannot accept voice dialing?

 

Is it true the iPhone cannot accept voice dialing?[/QUOTE]

What does that have to do with Disk Utility and Disk Repair?

 

Jolly Roger:

Yes, but can you boot from that disk?

 

I don't think booting from the install disk allows you to go multiuser ;-)

When I tried it, there wasn't much of an OS running at all..

Actually it isnt too bad to run fsck on a read only mounted partition.

 

My Disk Utility always allows me to repair permissions on the boot
volume. I do that every time I install sw. Is this not what's being
referred to in this thread?

Thanks,
Eric


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I don't think so. Yes you can both verify and repair *permissions*
on the boot volume. You can also "Verify Disk" (which is a totally
different thing) but the option to "Repair Disk" will be greyed out.
You can not repair the boot volume while you are booted from it -
the normal thing to do is repair it using the copy of Disk Utility
on your installation media.

Ian

 

What does that have to do with Disk Utility and Disk Repair?[/QUOTE]


oops, sorry, I was replying to the wrong post.

 

You boot from a system that doesn't need repairing, in order to have an
operating system that CAN repair the disks that you are NOT using to boot.

Changing disks under the feet of a live system is almost guaranteed to
get you into deeper water than you are already.

Its very simple. Stuff the installation DVD into the computer DVD slot,
boot it, and instead of using any of the graphics options, select
'terminal' from the menu at the top.

You now have a computer running off a read only DVD ROM, a RAMdisk, with
the actual hard drives mounted in /Volumes/something..can't remember.
And a root permissions terminal session that can run Fsck on whatever
you like. Except the DVD of course

 

Confirmed. I just looked at that a moment ago. Makes sense to me that
one would need to boot from a different volume in order to repair
another volume in such a way. That's how it is under OS 9.x as well.

Thanks,
Eric


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Hogwasher: You don't have to sacrifice friendliness for power
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By the way, for those of you who haven't used ZFS yet, ZFS doesn't
need to be fsck'd!

And no that wasn't a geeky curse word, do "man fsck" in a terminal if
you want to know basically what disk utility GUI does for disk repair.

Granted, ZFS won't likely yet be bootable in Leopard, but having used
ZFS with Solaris for a few years, I'll be certain to format all of my
remaining disks with ZFS once it's available.

For those totally in the dark on what ZFS is:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/whatis/

 

Easier still, IMHO, to boot from the bootable back-up and run Disk
Utility on the "normal" startup volume...well, except that I tried this,
and got a message that said something to the effect that the volume I
wanted to repair couldn't be unmounted. Another stumper for me.

- E

 

I'll check it out.

Thanks,
Eric