Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Running sbin/fsck -fy

Apr 10, 2012 5:59AM PDT

I'm running Lion on a 2008 Macbook Pro that has been having random shutdown issues. This had happened before after the sides of the case cracked. I had the motherboard replaced and the problem resolved for a while, but started up again, recently. Now, it gets hung up on startup and nothing seems to be working. I have a thumb drive with Lion on it, from the app store, but it wont seem to boot from that either. I'm now trying the fsck command in single user mode and after running about 20 times in a row, I still get the final line of "FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED".

Just before that I get, Rebuilding catalog B-tree and then, The volume (my HD) could not be repaired.

Should I keep running sbin/fsck -fy or am I screwed?

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
(NT) Why not try another hard drive?
Apr 10, 2012 6:10AM PDT
- Collapse -
Clarify?
Apr 10, 2012 6:44AM PDT

Like, running a firewire from my machine to another HD?

- Collapse -
That's one way.
Apr 10, 2012 6:48AM PDT

Here I put in a new HDD when this happens. Tech time is pretty expensive so we never waste it on a possibly bum HDD.
Bob

- Collapse -
Data recovery?
Apr 10, 2012 6:53AM PDT

The problem is, I really want the data from the HD, so I'm really just scrambling to get it to boot up, so I can transfer all the data over. I guess I should have mentioned that my #1 priority is data recovery.

- Collapse -
Then STOP trying to fix it.
Apr 10, 2012 7:02AM PDT

Pull the drive into some enclosure to see if the contents can be copied out.

Trying to fix it could wipe out the files you need.
Bob