SOLVED: “Error: Dsk utility can’t repair this disk. backup as many of your files as possible”

Beshoy Girgis — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 06:12:15 +0000

My laptop has been having issues going to sleep when I close the clamshell. Hours of research has shown that this is a known problem with OSX and has even been deemed a “feature”. Feature or not, in my attempts to get the laptop to go to sleep, I noticed that when it falls asleep and then wakes back up, it forcefully disconnects my connected drives. By the time I realized it, it was too late and the partitions wouldn’t mount. My jaw dropped as I realized six terabytes of data had just been…. l.o.s.t….. s…i…x……. terabytes!

My focus now went from the lack of going to sleep issue to restoring my lost data. Googling lead to various applications such as DiskWarrior and SpinRite ( Windows only.. ). I tried so many things but nothing seemed to get it working.

Out of my frustration, I decided to hit repair ( which I had done before, to no avail ). It finished and failed, so I did it again… and again… and again.. ( I was determined to make Disk Utility fix the problem )…. and again.. and again.. and…. what???? SUCCESS??!?!?!?!?!! I mounted the partition… looked all around, it’s all there!

I thought “this could be a fluke.” As any software engineer knows, get it to happen twice or it didn’t happen at all — so I moved onto my second “damaged” drive. Several “repairs” later, another success!

I’m not sure if this will always work but out of two attempts, it worked 100% of the time. I hope this helps someone out there! Losing data is one of my worst nightmares. So many photos, videos, backups of so many things. Sheesh — the shear thought of it gives me the heebee jeebees!

partition Archives - Beshoy Girgis

SOLVED: “Error: Dsk utility can’t repair this disk. backup as many of your files as possible”