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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Problem With Disk Utility
John Sawyer - May 21, 2005 - 3:55 am
I'm having a problem with Disk Utility that I've had before, which I've usually had to reinstall OS X to fix, but I thought I'd ask if you have a less drastic solution.
When I launch Disk Utility, it doesn't display any disk or volume icons on the left side of the Disk Utility window, and instead displays the message "Gathering disk information" forever, no matter how long I let it run. This most recent occurrence of the problem started a couple days after I updated OS X from 10.4 to 10.4.1.
My hardware configuration:
Blue & White G3, 350 mhz, one gigabyte of RAM
Hard drives: two 80 gigabyte hard drives (one a Maxtor, one a Western Digital), connected to separate channels on a Sonnet Tempo ATA133 PCI slot hard drive controller card (though I don't think this configuration has anything to do with this problem). Each drive is partitioned into three equally-sized volumes of about 25 gigabytes each. One drive has OS 10.4.1 installed on its first volume, and OS 10.3.9 on its second volume. The other drive has OS 10.3.8 installed on its first volume.
The problem with Disk Utility occurs no matter which of these volumes/OS X versions I start up from, and even occurs if I unplug one drive from the Sonnet Tempo card. I'm running the proper version of Disk Utility for each of these versions of OS X (Disk Utility 10.4.2 for OS 10.3.8, Disk Utility 10.4.4 for OS 10.3.9, and Disk Utility 10.5 for OS 10.4.1).
I've reset the Mac's PRAM, NVRAM, and Open Firmware, and pressed the logic board's reset button, but this didn't help. I've also installed Applejack on each of these three startup volumes, and run it successfully, with no errors reported, but this hasn't fixed the Disk Utility problem.
I'm wondering if the problem might have something to do with Spotlight's additions to the HFS directory structure. However, I've successfully run Diskwarrior 3.0.3 on all of these volumes, which is the newest version that's supposed to be able to properly diagnose volumes that have been exposed to Spotlight, and it didn't find any directory damage. All these volumes are otherwise working fine, and though there are other utilities that do what Disk Utility does (permissions and directory repair, etc.), I'd prefer to have Disk Utility working properly so I can use it every now and then to cross-check the work done by these other utilities.
Any ideas would be appreciated!
When I launch Disk Utility, it doesn't display any disk or volume icons on the left side of the Disk Utility window, and instead displays the message "Gathering disk information" forever, no matter how long I let it run. This most recent occurrence of the problem started a couple days after I updated OS X from 10.4 to 10.4.1.
My hardware configuration:
Blue & White G3, 350 mhz, one gigabyte of RAM
Hard drives: two 80 gigabyte hard drives (one a Maxtor, one a Western Digital), connected to separate channels on a Sonnet Tempo ATA133 PCI slot hard drive controller card (though I don't think this configuration has anything to do with this problem). Each drive is partitioned into three equally-sized volumes of about 25 gigabytes each. One drive has OS 10.4.1 installed on its first volume, and OS 10.3.9 on its second volume. The other drive has OS 10.3.8 installed on its first volume.
The problem with Disk Utility occurs no matter which of these volumes/OS X versions I start up from, and even occurs if I unplug one drive from the Sonnet Tempo card. I'm running the proper version of Disk Utility for each of these versions of OS X (Disk Utility 10.4.2 for OS 10.3.8, Disk Utility 10.4.4 for OS 10.3.9, and Disk Utility 10.5 for OS 10.4.1).
I've reset the Mac's PRAM, NVRAM, and Open Firmware, and pressed the logic board's reset button, but this didn't help. I've also installed Applejack on each of these three startup volumes, and run it successfully, with no errors reported, but this hasn't fixed the Disk Utility problem.
I'm wondering if the problem might have something to do with Spotlight's additions to the HFS directory structure. However, I've successfully run Diskwarrior 3.0.3 on all of these volumes, which is the newest version that's supposed to be able to properly diagnose volumes that have been exposed to Spotlight, and it didn't find any directory damage. All these volumes are otherwise working fine, and though there are other utilities that do what Disk Utility does (permissions and directory repair, etc.), I'd prefer to have Disk Utility working properly so I can use it every now and then to cross-check the work done by these other utilities.
Any ideas would be appreciated!
Cheryl - May 22, 2005 - 7:47 am
John,
You have done a good amount of troubleshooting for this problem. There is one more that just might do the trick.
Restart the computer, and immediately hold down the S key. This will start up in single user mode - aka terminal.
At the command-line prompt, type: /sbin/fsck -fy
Press Return.
The fsck utility will go through five "phases" then return information about the disk's utilization and fragmentation. Once the check is finished, if no issue is found, you should see "** The volume (name of volume) appears to be OK."
If fsck alters, repairs, or fixes anything, it will display the message:
***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
Important: If this message appears, repeat the fsck command until it no longer appears. It's OK if you need to do several "passes" of fsck, because first-pass repairs may uncover additional issues.
When fsck reports that, "** The volume (name of volume) appears to be OK.", type: reboot
Press Return.
Let me know if this works.
--------
Let me know if you need further assistance and thank you for using MacOSX.com !
Cheryl
You have done a good amount of troubleshooting for this problem. There is one more that just might do the trick.
Restart the computer, and immediately hold down the S key. This will start up in single user mode - aka terminal.
At the command-line prompt, type: /sbin/fsck -fy
Press Return.
The fsck utility will go through five "phases" then return information about the disk's utilization and fragmentation. Once the check is finished, if no issue is found, you should see "** The volume (name of volume) appears to be OK."
If fsck alters, repairs, or fixes anything, it will display the message:
***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
Important: If this message appears, repeat the fsck command until it no longer appears. It's OK if you need to do several "passes" of fsck, because first-pass repairs may uncover additional issues.
When fsck reports that, "** The volume (name of volume) appears to be OK.", type: reboot
Press Return.
Let me know if this works.
--------
Let me know if you need further assistance and thank you for using MacOSX.com !
Cheryl
John Sawyer - May 22, 2005 - 3:51 pm
Thanks for your response, Cheryl. I forgot to mention in my first message that I'd also run Applejack, a utility that you invoke at startup, in single-user mode, which runs fsck, and it didn't find any problems with the directories on the hard drives.
However, I DID find out what the cause of the problem was: I'd recently replaced the Mac's DVD drive with a CD burner, a Plextor PX-W2410TA, and that burner was causing Disk Utility to hang. Once I removed it, Disk Utility worked fine. I replaced the Plextor burner with a Yamaha CD burner, and the Yamaha burner didn't cause Disk Utility to hang. I've run across weird problems with some CD burners before, but I hadn't anticipated that Disk Utility would have a problem with a CD burner, especially when there wasn't a disc in the Plextor burner when I ran Disk Utility, but apparently Disk Utility had a problem reading the Plextor burner's firmware, or some other aspect of the Plextor's hardware that it didn't like. I tried rejumpering the Plextor as master, slave, and cable select, but that didn't help.
While researching this problem, I did find that one of the main reasons for Disk Utility to hang like this, is a hard drive that has problems, either a damaged directory or a hardware problem, so your advice would have worked in many cases where this problem occurs, but now we can add this to the list of causes: a drive of whatever sort, not just hard drives--this could include flash drives, etc, and even drives that don't have a disc installed, like a Zip drive, etc--that might have a hardware problem, or just something about it that Disk Utility doesn't like, for which the only solution is to remove it permanently and replace it with something that's compatible with Disk Utility.
I should mention that your reply to me says to invoke single-user mode by holding down the S key at startup. This will actually invoke Safe Mode. To invoke single-user mode, you hold down Command-S.
Thanks again for your help, and I hope I've added to your body of troubleshooting information too.
However, I DID find out what the cause of the problem was: I'd recently replaced the Mac's DVD drive with a CD burner, a Plextor PX-W2410TA, and that burner was causing Disk Utility to hang. Once I removed it, Disk Utility worked fine. I replaced the Plextor burner with a Yamaha CD burner, and the Yamaha burner didn't cause Disk Utility to hang. I've run across weird problems with some CD burners before, but I hadn't anticipated that Disk Utility would have a problem with a CD burner, especially when there wasn't a disc in the Plextor burner when I ran Disk Utility, but apparently Disk Utility had a problem reading the Plextor burner's firmware, or some other aspect of the Plextor's hardware that it didn't like. I tried rejumpering the Plextor as master, slave, and cable select, but that didn't help.
While researching this problem, I did find that one of the main reasons for Disk Utility to hang like this, is a hard drive that has problems, either a damaged directory or a hardware problem, so your advice would have worked in many cases where this problem occurs, but now we can add this to the list of causes: a drive of whatever sort, not just hard drives--this could include flash drives, etc, and even drives that don't have a disc installed, like a Zip drive, etc--that might have a hardware problem, or just something about it that Disk Utility doesn't like, for which the only solution is to remove it permanently and replace it with something that's compatible with Disk Utility.
I should mention that your reply to me says to invoke single-user mode by holding down the S key at startup. This will actually invoke Safe Mode. To invoke single-user mode, you hold down Command-S.
Thanks again for your help, and I hope I've added to your body of troubleshooting information too.
Cheryl - May 22, 2005 - 5:56 pm
John,
Opps... my typo. Yes I should have said Command, S.
I am glad that you have found the culprit and corrected the problem. OS X is a very temperamental system - this includes Disk Utility.
--------
Thank you for using MacOSX.com !
Cheryl
Opps... my typo. Yes I should have said Command, S.
I am glad that you have found the culprit and corrected the problem. OS X is a very temperamental system - this includes Disk Utility.
--------
Thank you for using MacOSX.com !
Cheryl
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