[Hi I'm Ben]

So here's the deal. Please read this too because i'll include the things i've already tried. So don't tell me to do things I've tried over again without reading this first.

I had a friend of mine who's computer was acting up. Some guy told him to do a PRAM reset. Which is fine, I guess. Although the problem he was having wasn't related to this at all.

Meanwhile, after the reset the screen would just go to a Grey nothing. No boot, no apple logo, no spinning. So he gives it to me.
I reset the PRAM Again and hit the PMU switch. I also logged in open firmware and did an nvram-reset and reset-all. Not sure if that was just overkill of resets. Meanwhile, no go.

So I boot onto a CD. Try and run Disk utility and i'm confronted with this error:
Repairing Disk failed with error could not unmount disk. I can't even verify the disk. It's visible and that's about it.

So that's basically where i'm left off.

[Hi I'm Ben]

another reboot let me try to run repair on it..i get:
"Invalid Node structure
Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
The volume could not be repaired

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
"

[hyperb0le]

I had a similar problem about a week ago, and it turned out that the SATA connector on the motherboard was failing. If he has a spare hard drive, try swapping out the drives. If the spare drive works fine, then the drive itself may be failing... Otherwise, you (or he) may want to call Apple.

[CanadaRAM]

At the least, the catalog of the drive seems to be borked. DiskWarrior may be able to repair it. Or if the root cause is the drive failing physically, maybe not. Hyperb0le's suggestion is good (although your machine doesn't have a SATA connector, so it won't be identical) It is more likely a problem with the drive than the motherboard. You can also try removing and reseating every cable in the machine, and the RAM, just to rule that out.
Do you need to get the data off the drive for the friend?

[bowwowman]

Get DiskWarrior, NOW.....

It is THE app for Catalog B-tree & Node structure repairs

[Hi I'm Ben]

Originally Posted by CanadaRAM

At the least, the catalog of the drive seems to be borked. DiskWarrior may be able to repair it. Or if the root cause is the drive failing physically, maybe not. Hyperb0le's suggestion is good (although your machine doesn't have a SATA connector, so it won't be identical) It is more likely a problem with the drive than the motherboard. You can also try removing and reseating every cable in the machine, and the RAM, just to rule that out.
Do you need to get the data off the drive for the friend?

Yeah, I considered it was the ATA failing. But out of nowhere? That doesn't make a lot of sense. So I reseated all the cables and I did reseat the RAM as well. I'm going to try DiskWarrior next because it sounds like the answer to my problem. My only real question about that is if it actually does repair this data should I look into replacing the HD or once it's fixed from being corrupted is it good again?

[reader50]

If DW repairs it without issue, the HD is most likely good. Use the Hardware test in DW to see the drive's SMART status, any reported issue there indicates the drive needs to be replaced.

Note, you didn't tell us what model of system you have, how large/old the HD is, or what OS version you are running. It's hard to guess if the HD has gotten too old based on so little info.

[JMII]

Originally Posted by bowwowman

Get DiskWarrior, NOW

X2

We had a PowerMac G5 at work do the same thing, directory went bad and none of Apple's tools would even see the disk, much less repair the darn thing. Since the machine was only a few weeks old I knew the hard drive itself had not failed.