Please read my most recent post at the bottom!
Didn't want to make a new thread.
Boy do I have a doozy for you!
Some background: I'm employed as a computer technician. Not a professional, exactly, but I do get paid to fix computers, primarily Macs, on a college campus. Most students here have Mac laptops.
So, naturally, I decided to take my own MacBook Pro in to run some preventative maintenance and diagnostics on it. I ran TechTool Pro 6 practically overnight to find out if there's anything wrong with the directory structures or the drive itself.
I don't actually know if it found anything, since the tests were cancelled. Now, the disk won't mount.
This is what happens all the time now:
When I start the machine, it goes to the Apple logo screen with the progress wheel for a minute or so. Then I get a crossed-out circle (with the progress wheel) indefinitely.
Initially, I freaked out, since this usually indicates a serious problem with the drive normally necessitating a complete reinstall.
However, I found a temporary workaround by booting to our external FireWire drive running the exact same Snow Leopard.
Through this, I ran a ton of diagnostics through Disk Utility (which kept saying my hard drive is fine) and Tech Tool Pro 6 (which either says it's fine or does not list it at all).
I then got out our DiskWarrior disk, ran it, and rebuilt the directory entirely through that. Now all of a sudden it mounts. Hooray! It's fixed!
Of course the next thing I do is restart the machine and try to boot normally. Same thing happens with the crossed-out circle.
I won't bore you with repetition. Basically, the only way to get my boot volume to mount is to rebuild it with DiskWarrior EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Oh, and when I dismounted it through Drive Genius to run another test, it gave me this upon completion:
And of course, Drive Genius' own Verify tool subsequently comes back with nothing. It appears to be OK. But I am fairly positive it's not!
Seriously, I'm at a loss. This came out of nowhere and I don't quite know what to make of it.
I have repaired permissions and directory structure ad nauseam, just so you know.
What should I do?
I'm open to any suggestions or thoughts. If there's honestly no way to fix it then I shall obtain an external drive large enough to clone my HD and nuke+pave after that. What a drag.
Thanks in advance for whatever advice you can offer!
Didn't want to make a new thread.
Boy do I have a doozy for you!
Some background: I'm employed as a computer technician. Not a professional, exactly, but I do get paid to fix computers, primarily Macs, on a college campus. Most students here have Mac laptops.
So, naturally, I decided to take my own MacBook Pro in to run some preventative maintenance and diagnostics on it. I ran TechTool Pro 6 practically overnight to find out if there's anything wrong with the directory structures or the drive itself.
I don't actually know if it found anything, since the tests were cancelled. Now, the disk won't mount.
This is what happens all the time now:
When I start the machine, it goes to the Apple logo screen with the progress wheel for a minute or so. Then I get a crossed-out circle (with the progress wheel) indefinitely.
Initially, I freaked out, since this usually indicates a serious problem with the drive normally necessitating a complete reinstall.
However, I found a temporary workaround by booting to our external FireWire drive running the exact same Snow Leopard.
Through this, I ran a ton of diagnostics through Disk Utility (which kept saying my hard drive is fine) and Tech Tool Pro 6 (which either says it's fine or does not list it at all).
I then got out our DiskWarrior disk, ran it, and rebuilt the directory entirely through that. Now all of a sudden it mounts. Hooray! It's fixed!
Of course the next thing I do is restart the machine and try to boot normally. Same thing happens with the crossed-out circle.
I won't bore you with repetition. Basically, the only way to get my boot volume to mount is to rebuild it with DiskWarrior EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Oh, and when I dismounted it through Drive Genius to run another test, it gave me this upon completion:
And of course, Drive Genius' own Verify tool subsequently comes back with nothing. It appears to be OK. But I am fairly positive it's not!
Seriously, I'm at a loss. This came out of nowhere and I don't quite know what to make of it.
I have repaired permissions and directory structure ad nauseam, just so you know.
What should I do?
I'm open to any suggestions or thoughts. If there's honestly no way to fix it then I shall obtain an external drive large enough to clone my HD and nuke+pave after that. What a drag.
Thanks in advance for whatever advice you can offer!
Last edited: