Hi Alan, If you don’t have DiskWarrior on another Mac that you could boot from and try to Repair the iMac’s Hard Drive.
First: Disconnect all devices connected to your iMac - only leave connected Keyboard & Mouse. Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows. When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Reinstall Mavericks: Select Reinstall Mavericks and click on the Continue button. Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless. > On 23 Nov 2014, at 3:46 pm, Alan Smith <sma...@iinet.net.au> wrote: > > Update on issue - - -. > > Booted from a 4-week old SuperDuper backup (on a Firewire drive). Held > Option key while powering on. Operations are very slow and I don’t know if > I’m responding to the SuperDuper or iMac messages. Got boot disk options - > Macintosh HD; recovery disk and SuperDuper disk. Selected SuperDuper and > logged in. > > Got information message: “OSX can’t repair the disk Macintosh HD … you can > still open or copy files … backup and repair a.s.a.p." > > Started Disk Utility and Verified disk Macintosh HD. After step “check > catalog file” got messages in red: Invalid key length. The volume Macintosh > HD could not be verified completely. Error: this disk needs to be repaired. > Click Repair Disk. > > Did Repair Disk and got message “Error: Disk Utility can’t repair the disk - > - - reformat - - - and restore files from backup.” > > Sounds rather serious. I did not reformat disk. Any advice (apart from > having a strong coffee - - -)? > > Cheers (sort of) > Alan > > > > On 23 Nov 2014, at 1:40 pm, Alan Smith <sma...@iinet.net.au> wrote: > >> Help please! >> >> My late 2009 iMac 21.5" Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz 12G RAM with OSX 10.9.5 >> Mavericks fails to complete the start-up sequence. >> >> Mac was powered off via Apple - Shut Down. Power-up sequence starts >> normally: chime and grey screen, then the Apple logo and daisy wheel. Then >> I get a progress bar as if it is loading something (I don’t recall if this >> is normal). After about 5 percent progress the bar disappears, the daisy >> wheel continues for a second or so and then the screen goes black plus >> silence from the internal hard drive. >> >> The only wired peripherals are two WD My Book Studio Firewire external hard >> drives in tandem (one cable from Mac). Tried powering up with the Firewire >> cable plugged in (normal) and then unplugged. No joy. >> >> I tried starting in Safe Mode but could not do so. There was no change, but >> possibly a slightly longer time interval between chime and daisy wheel. >> >> Other observations, but may be red herrings. I used AirDrop to move EyeTV >> recordings to the iMac this morning. Came back 30 minutes later to move the >> videos to a WD My Book Studio for iTunes. Noticed that one of the two >> external drives did not show in Finder. I powered off the iMac so I could >> access the drives, power cords, etc. Then a few minutes later I attempted >> to start up the iMac - - -. >> >> Regards, >> Alan >>
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