Mac's verify/repair disk is a harsh taskmaster

[repoman]

Ok, after going through my entire system files and finding out where programs don't delete data you actually deleted I decided to check the OS disk for errors. I even went to the extent of doing it in recovery mode (hitting command+R when restaring). It found errors and couldn't fix them. Then the normal boot hung and then the machine turned off.

The only way around it was through by erasing the whole disk and reinstalling OSX. Fuck, Macs are finicky!

It is still installing now. See how it goes.

At any rate, don't verify/repair disk in Mac (especially in recovery mode) unless you have ALL your vital info ready.

Maybe I could have found a way around it, whatever...

At any rate, I plan on getting an SSD to replace it when it goes bad. Order it very soon to have it handy. Maybe the errors were a sign of it being bad. Hopefully not from me deleting hidden cacelhes and log files (I stayed away from anything outside the Livrary folder to delete)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ok, after going through my entire system files and finding out where programs don't delete data you actually deleted I decided to check the OS disk for errors. I even went to the extent of doing it in recovery mode (hitting command+R when restaring). It found errors and couldn't fix them. Then the normal boot hung and then the machine turned off.

The only way around it was through by erasing the whole disk and reinstalling OSX. Fuck, Macs are finicky!

It is still installing now. See how it goes.

At any rate, don't verify/repair disk in Mac (especially in recovery mode) unless you have ALL your vital info ready.

Maybe I could have found a way around it, whatever...

At any rate, I plan on getting an SSD to replace it when it goes bad. Order it very soon to have it handy. Maybe the errors were a sign of it being bad. Hopefully not from me deleting hidden cacelhes and log files (I stayed away from anything outside the Livrary folder to delete)

That's what happens when you get a Mac--no decent ability to fix problems.

 

[Horatio Parker]

I had this happen with my backup drive. Wiping/reinstalling fixed it. So far, so good.

It does seem pointless to "repair disk" only be told it can't be done.

 

[repoman]

I don't care that I had errors, but I was forced to wipe the disk. Again there may have an option around it.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

This is the way of hard disks. In the Linux world, there is bad block checking and there are ways to use a rescue disk to do deep bad block checking that locks out questionable sectors. Not only outright bad sectors but marginal sectors. Its gawdawful slow but in the past I have resurrected otherwise barely usable hard disks doing this. The problem is that one cannot do this with a mounted hard disk so a live CD is necessary. I used Knoppix to achieve that. The problem now is it would be untolerably slow on massive terabyte hard disks.

 

[repoman]

Well, I got a 256 GB SSD drive yesterday and went to the Apple store to get it the newest OS installed. Went pretty well.

So, how does the accumulation of errors go with SSDs generally?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Well, I got a 256 GB SSD drive yesterday and went to the Apple store to get it the newest OS installed. Went pretty well.

So, how does the accumulation of errors go with SSDs generally?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2856052/grueling-endurance-test-blows-away-ssd-durability-fears.html

An oft-discussed drawback to solid state drives was that they were ultimately unreliable. Despite the performance gains for your PC, it was only a matter of time before “poof!” your SSD would just up and die with almost no warning.
But an ongoing project from Tech Report demonstrates what the experts have been saying for some time: fearing an SSD’s untimely death is more about myth than substance.
TR recently reported that after a year of testing the durability of six SSDs, four died after reaching between 728 terabytes and 1.2 petabytes of data writes, all of which is far beyond the specified life span for the drives.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Well, I got a 256 GB SSD drive yesterday and went to the Apple store to get it the newest OS installed. Went pretty well.

So, how does the accumulation of errors go with SSDs generally?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2856052/grueling-endurance-test-blows-away-ssd-durability-fears.html

An oft-discussed drawback to solid state drives was that they were ultimately unreliable. Despite the performance gains for your PC, it was only a matter of time before “poof!” your SSD would just up and die with almost no warning.
But an ongoing project from Tech Report demonstrates what the experts have been saying for some time: fearing an SSD’s untimely death is more about myth than substance.
TR recently reported that after a year of testing the durability of six SSDs, four died after reaching between 728 terabytes and 1.2 petabytes of data writes, all of which is far beyond the specified life span for the drives.

A SSD will die when you burn through it's write life. It's just very hard to do that unless you really abuse the drive. (Say, by using it to cache some larger storage array.)

 

[James Brown]

Steve Gibson's SpinRite is a good utility both for recovering failed drives and as a preventative measure. It scans each sector six ways from Sunday and marks unrecoverable sectors off-limits so that future writes won't be made on them.

 

[repoman]

So, an aside, the new OS (El Capitan) is way better than the previous I was using (Mavericks).

It looks cleaner and is faster. But the most important thing is that it seems to not have a memory leak or similar in Safari. It separates each of the browser tabs on Activity Monitor instead of having them on a combo task of many tabs - and when the tab is closed it falls off AM in a few seconds. What seemed to happen in Mavericks was that even if I closed 10 tabs none of the memory returned to free memory.

So anyway, I was able to avoid jumping my memory up from 4gb to 8 gb.