Filesystem Verify or Repair Failed: How to Put It Right

March 12th, 2010

So I tried to install Boot Camp but the 32GB partition took ages and when I thought it had finished a grey tint came over the screen and it told me to shut down. I nervously booted back up and everything seemed fine; until I went to copy across some videos from my external hard drive and it failed because there wasn’t enough space. 32GB of Macintosh HD had gone. I did a disk verify and it couldn’t complete so I’m gonna show you how to get out of this sticky mess. Before you do anything hard drive related, BACK UP YOUR DATA!

Posted in Category Data Recovery

25 Responses to “Filesystem Verify or Repair Failed: How to Put It Right”

  1. 09130621 on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    awesome,? thanks.

  2. GoldenHeartedTV on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    nope. you can go into disk utility and repair. but if that doesn’t work, go into the apple store and they will repair it for you.

  3. GoldenHeartedTV on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    by the way its button not butten

  4. RonjaMiin on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    Don’t HOLD DOWN THE POWER BUTTEN!! IT can kill you motherboard!

  5. ImprezaFreak on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    Excellent video. That helped me tremendously!

  6. SorathAizenji on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    you are so awesome, thanks.

  7. andymahood on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    Thank you very useful.

  8. bllymcgvrn123 on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    thank you sooo much, it wouldnt let me partion my disk

  9. dfoggin on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    That doesn’t sound too healthy… You may want to consider trying some more advanced software to either diagnose the problem or fix it so you know where to go from there. I highly recommend Drive Genius 2 and TechTool Pro 5 - both available for around $100.

  10. missomira on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    I did this and even when mounted from the CD, I get a red “filesystem verify failed” when repairing… I did back up everything already - is my HD doomed…?

  11. magicianspirit on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    Actually I got that message because the internal HD in my iMac died. I had to take it in to an Apple Store to get it replaced. Fortunately I had Applecare…and a Time Machine backup.

  12. dfoggin on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    You get that message if you run Disk Utility from your hard drive. i show you how to boot from the install DVD so that you can do it successfully

  13. magicianspirit on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    I thought this video was about “System Verify or Repair Failed.” That’s the message you get when the steps in your video DON’T work. Instead of getting the green text in Disk Utility saying the operation succeeded, you get the message in red, “Filesystem Verify or Repair Failed.”

  14. VoteForRonPaul2012 on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    BEST. YOUTUBER. EVER.

  15. solasea on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    Awesome! You’re awesome! Thank you!!!

  16. CymruamI3yth on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    thanks i sorted my boot problem :D it just wouldnt boot up os x without holding alt firstly :3

  17. FeceMcGee on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    thanks! my MBP was taking forever to boot up.. i almost reformatted but I’m glad I tried this first. My comp is fast again!

  18. JonkoB20 on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    thanks for the vid man helped alot…
    i got another big ass problem tho
    i got my bootcamp working and stuff, so i downloaded macdrive to share files with the osx side.
    now macrive fucked up my osx and when i start osx it gives osx stopped have to restart thingie.
    is there a way to get my osx back to normal?
    i already deleted macdrive cus it SUCKS ASS!
    plz help me save my files.
    i deleted the backup cus bootcamp was working properly
    help plz

  19. javymel on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    Thank you very much for this very educational video. I installed Leopard from a friend’s disk, so don’t have it, but I’m going to try with Tech Tool Deluxe. Please let me know if you think I should try anything else. Thank you again!

  20. dfoggin on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    Read my reply to the other question. When you write a file to the hard drive, like saving a Word Document, it just drops it wherever the arm is on the vinyl record. This means that all of the free space (the zeros) are scattered everywhere. Defragging (short for defragmenting) puts all of the zeros together. You need the free space together in order to partition because it needs to slice a bit off to give to Windows. I’ve been a bit restricted by the 400 character limit on comments so PM me.

  21. dfoggin on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    The way a hard drive works is all in 0s and 1s. Imagine an old vinyl record and on that the read arm etches zeros and ones. When you delete a file, it scribbles out the ones and writes in its place a zero. When you erase the empty space, it makes sure it has deleted everything properly by going over those zeros again. A bit like when you’re writing in ink and you make a mistake, you scribble it out and go over it. Erasing free space won’t do anything to your files but it makes a healthier HD.

  22. c1lg1nturk on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    And one more question, i went to google and asked for help in the forums, they said it would help if i Erase empty space, but im not sure what that does, i’ve browsed through forums for 8 hours last night and still haven’t gotten anywhere:(

  23. c1lg1nturk on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    Thank you so much, we’ll i clicked partition but it never got to the part where it succefully partioned, And on the desktop there is only one Macintosh HD, Im really confused, and im not good with computers that much, What do you mean by DeFrag?

  24. dfoggin on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    Have you partitioned before? Is there more than just the one Macintosh HD on the desktop? It needs to be one drive before it can be partitioned for Windows. If it still fails, try defragging your hard drive, iDefrag and Drive Genius 2 both do it from a bootable disc or pendrive. You can also use 3rd party partitioning software like iPartition and, again, drive genius. You may also want to try repairing the drive like I said in this video.

  25. c1lg1nturk on March 12th, 2010 6:11 am

    Hey, Thank’s for posting up the video. i have a quesiton, I tried running Bootcamp Assistant, i have a iMac Leopard, and im trying to get to use windows on it but when i run boot camp assistant and i click Partition and

    I keep getting an error message telling me that some of my data cannot be partitioned and that I need to go to the disk utility and set up a single Mac OS X Journal (Extended). I really want to Instal it desperately for 4 days :( I’d be very Happy if you can help
    Thank u so mch

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