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by Martin 095 on Tue Aug 07, 2018 9:05 pm
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It's not been a good day for my Macs.  Tonight, my 2010 MBP (MBP 6,1; 17" 10.10.5, yosemite) crashed, so I forced a shutdown and rebooted.  I usually don't have to take such drastic actions but when I have in the past, there weren't any problems on reboot.  However, tonight, Yosemite loads about halfway, then the laptop shuts down.  I booted off my backup and tried to run DU – said it could not repair the drive.  Following this, I booted in single user mode and typed fsck -fy in an attempt to get around DU.  This too said the disk could not be repaired and also added something to the effect there was a full disk error.  I checked my drive and it is a 250 Gb (original HD installed by Apple) drive with about 32 Gb free.

My question is what do I do now?  I can presumably restore the drive from my backup using SuperDuper (though I have never done this), but would this clear the error?  I am thinking there is something seriously wrong with the drive (more than just being almost 85% full) and if true, restoring my data will be a waste of time.  Alternatively, I could just bite the bullet and reformat the disk, reinstall the OS, and transfer data back from my backup ... but again that is a lot of work and I am no more certain this will get the MBP up and running.

Any ideas are greatly appreciated.  Moderators, I realize this is off topic but this website gives me more complete answers faster than just about any other obvious choices.  Feel free to remove it.

TIA!
Best wishes,

Martin
"[i]If there is a sin against life, it consists, perhaps not so much in despairing of life, as hoping for another life and eluding the implacable grandeur of this life[/i]." - Albert Camus


Last edited by Martin 095 on Tue Aug 07, 2018 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Aug 07, 2018 9:32 pm
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Here's an article that might help. Some won't make sense for your situations but some might like PRAM reset. One thing that could be a problem is if you ahve a scratch disk set for an app like Photoshop that is bigger than the remaining space on the drive. Since PS establishes that, it is seen as free space by the OS until you use PS. There could be other apps that you run as part of start-up that is reserving that space and then suddenly there isn't enough room left. It of course is possible that the drive has crashed or some critical file has become corrupt.

https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/m ... n-3423817/
 

by Anthony Medici on Tue Aug 07, 2018 9:51 pm
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I would start by simply booting off the backup to see if the machine will boot prior to doing a restore. The restore could then be done just like you do the regular backup except it would copy from the backup to the main drive. Hopefully, the backup is from the last few days...

Tony
Tony
 

by Martin 095 on Tue Aug 07, 2018 10:05 pm
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Thanks EJ and Tony. I can definitely boot from my backup (which I updated just two days ago), so I guess I will try running SuperDuper in the opposite direction (backup to primary drive). Thanks – will take forever since this will be proceeding through USB 2 but if it works, I should not complain.

Just curious, how full is too full for drives before they start having issues? 90%? 95%
Best wishes,

Martin
"[i]If there is a sin against life, it consists, perhaps not so much in despairing of life, as hoping for another life and eluding the implacable grandeur of this life[/i]." - Albert Camus
 

by E.J. Peiker on Wed Aug 08, 2018 7:41 am
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Martin 095 wrote:Thanks EJ and Tony.  I can definitely boot from my backup (which I updated just two days ago), so I guess I will try running SuperDuper in the opposite direction (backup to primary drive).  Thanks – will take forever since this will be proceeding through USB 2 but if it works, I should not complain.

Just curious, how full is too full for drives before they start having issues? 90%? 95%
Both Apple and Microsoft recommend 15% remaining to be the threshold for going to a bigger disk or significantly reducing the amount of stuff on the disk.  One thing you should look at is the Downloads folder.  OSX places every single PDF and many other things you have ever looked at in the downloads folder.  On a machine that's been around since 2010, that could be 50GB or more.  Similarly, you probably have many many old versions of software package files from versions you don't even use anymore, you can kill all of that as well.  You can basically delete just about everything in your downloads folder.
 

by Anthony Medici on Wed Aug 08, 2018 8:16 am
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I use a program called "Whatsize" to find the folders that are taking up the most space.
Tony
 

by Martin 095 on Wed Aug 08, 2018 8:35 am
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Thanks gentlemen, your help is greatly appreciated.
Best wishes,

Martin
"[i]If there is a sin against life, it consists, perhaps not so much in despairing of life, as hoping for another life and eluding the implacable grandeur of this life[/i]." - Albert Camus
 

by Andrew_5488 on Wed Aug 08, 2018 8:43 am
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You said you run fsck in single user mode. Since directory tree is damaged that probably took few minutes in which case if there're problems with HD you'd see I/O errors. Since you didn't most likely HD is OK. Disk Warrior will fix most of the problems with Directory Tree (unless you have OS 10.13). so you can try that. Otherwise boot to external OS and copy data. After that reformat drive and restore.
 

by Martin 095 on Wed Aug 08, 2018 2:16 pm
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Thanks Andrew. Tried a whole bunch of other "fixes", most of which were on the webpage EJ provided, but none worked. So I removed some extraneous data I no longer needed, then erased my internal drive, and am restoring my data from my backup. USB 2 is SLLLLLOOOOOWWWW but it appears to be working – no permission issues at all. Thanks for all your help and suggestions.

I didn't lose a single piece of data fortunately – for those of you out there that have toyed with the idea of fixing your backup strategies but haven't yet done so, please do so now. You don't want to live with the regret of lost data.
Best wishes,

Martin
"[i]If there is a sin against life, it consists, perhaps not so much in despairing of life, as hoping for another life and eluding the implacable grandeur of this life[/i]." - Albert Camus
 

by Andrew_5488 on Wed Aug 08, 2018 4:33 pm
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I didn't see that you mentioned that your OS is 10.10.
Doesn't really change much. If fsck can't fix it,only Disk Warrior will fix those problems (in most cases).
In OS 10.13 nothing will fix Directory Tree problems (thanks Apple).

If any of you people out there are using OS 10.13 you MUST HAVE backup or you will be very sorry some day.
 

by Martin 095 on Thu Aug 09, 2018 8:55 am
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Thanks, I am up and running. At some point I will purchase a copy of Disk Warrior – heard a lot of really good things about, I just can't do it right now.

Yeah, I like what Apple does for the most part, but as for what seems par for the course these days (Adobe!), their business model/strategies make it abundantly clear where their priorities lay ...
Best wishes,

Martin
"[i]If there is a sin against life, it consists, perhaps not so much in despairing of life, as hoping for another life and eluding the implacable grandeur of this life[/i]." - Albert Camus
 

by signgrap on Fri Aug 10, 2018 1:52 pm
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Martin 095 wrote:Thanks, I am up and running.  At some point I will purchase a copy of Disk Warrior – heard a lot of really good things about, I just can't do it right now.

Yeah, I like what Apple does for the most part, but as for what seems par for the course these days (Adobe!), their business model/strategies make it abundantly clear where their priorities lay ...
And it sure "ain't" with the customer!
Dick Ludwig
 

by kiwijohn on Fri Aug 10, 2018 2:32 pm
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I can recommend DiskWarrior.

Looks like you've dodged a bullet this time round, since your hard drive is getting a little old now - why not replace it with a SSD (say 500MB or even 1T?) 

Prices are falling all the time, and you will LOVE a boot up time of just 20sec! (maybe even less as mine is now 5 yrs old).

John
 

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