Disk Utility was unable to repair external USB2 HDD's Time Machine partition?

Hello.

My client is having problem with his USB2 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent Go
from early 2010. It has 2 partitions: FAT32 and encrypted HFS (mostly
Time Machine's backups). After connecting and entering his valid
password successfully, it takes a minute to mount and then a message
that said "OS X can't repair the '...' You can still open or copy files
on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up
the disk and reformat it as soon as you can." I ran Disk Utility with
their verifications. Both found issues with "Invalid sibling link" and
said to repair option. However, that repair option is greyed out. So,
is it not possible to fix it with free disk softwares except to reformat
it?

I used two different 15" MacBook Pros (mid-2012's Mac OS X v10.8.5/Mt.
Lion and early 2013's v10.10.5/Yosemite) with the same results so it is
not the MacBook Pros. http://imgur.com/a/OW0s6 for a couple screen
(shot/capture)s from Mac OS X v10.10.5/Yosemite. I also tried disk
verifications on its FAT32 partition, and it found minor issues. They
were repairable too unlike the encrypted HFS partition.

Thank you in advance.
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In article , Ant
wrote:

Hello.

My client is having problem with his USB2 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent Go
from early 2010. It has 2 partitions: FAT32 and encrypted HFS (mostly
Time Machine's backups). After connecting and entering his valid
password successfully, it takes a minute to mount and then a message
that said "OS X can't repair the '...' You can still open or copy files
on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up
the disk and reformat it as soon as you can." I ran Disk Utility with
their verifications. Both found issues with "Invalid sibling link" and
said to repair option. However, that repair option is greyed out. So,
is it not possible to fix it with free disk softwares except to reformat
it?

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage nospam wrote:
In article , Ant
wrote:

Hello.

My client is having problem with his USB2 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent Go
from early 2010. It has 2 partitions: FAT32 and encrypted HFS (mostly
Time Machine's backups). After connecting and entering his valid
password successfully, it takes a minute to mount and then a message
that said "OS X can't repair the '...' You can still open or copy files
on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up
the disk and reformat it as soon as you can." I ran Disk Utility with
their verifications. Both found issues with "Invalid sibling link" and
said to repair option. However, that repair option is greyed out. So,
is it not possible to fix it with free disk softwares except to reformat
it?

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

No freeware or trial?
--
Quote of the Week: "I've been on some fairways that are as good as the
greens we putted on back then. We had crab grass. I remember one green
where I putted through ants." --Sam Snead
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org (Personal Web Site)
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| |o o| |
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In article , Ant
wrote:

My client is having problem with his USB2 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent Go
from early 2010. It has 2 partitions: FAT32 and encrypted HFS (mostly
Time Machine's backups). After connecting and entering his valid
password successfully, it takes a minute to mount and then a message
that said "OS X can't repair the '...' You can still open or copy files
on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up
the disk and reformat it as soon as you can." I ran Disk Utility with
their verifications. Both found issues with "Invalid sibling link" and
said to repair option. However, that repair option is greyed out. So,
is it not possible to fix it with free disk softwares except to reformat
it?

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

No freeware or trial?

isn't your client paying you?

if you're going to be fixing people's computers, you need the proper
tools, some of which aren't free.

In message
Ant wrote:
Hello.

My client is having problem with his USB2 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent Go
from early 2010.

Not surprising. It's 6yo and teh FreeAgent series was not especially
good.

It has 2 partitions: FAT32 and encrypted HFS (mostly
Time Machine's backups). After connecting and entering his valid
password successfully, it takes a minute to mount and then a message
that said "OS X can't repair the '...' You can still open or copy files
on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up
the disk and reformat it as soon as you can." I ran Disk Utility with
their verifications. Both found issues with "Invalid sibling link" and
said to repair option. However, that repair option is greyed out. So,
is it not possible to fix it with free disk softwares except to reformat
it?

The disk is so damaged it si being mounted read-only to try to prevent
more damage.

Copy the data off to a new drive and then get a hammer and a heavy nail
and drive the nail through the drive and throw it away.

--
He felt as if he'd been shipwrecked on the Titanic but in the nick of
time had been rescued. By the Lusitania.

On 2016-08-19, Ant wrote:
Hello.

My client is having problem with his USB2 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent Go
from early 2010. It has 2 partitions: FAT32 and encrypted HFS (mostly
Time Machine's backups). After connecting and entering his valid
password successfully, it takes a minute to mount and then a message
that said "OS X can't repair the '...' You can still open or copy files
on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up
the disk and reformat it as soon as you can." I ran Disk Utility with
their verifications. Both found issues with "Invalid sibling link" and
said to repair option. However, that repair option is greyed out. So,
is it not possible to fix it with free disk softwares except to reformat
it?

Disk Utility will refuse to attempt to do repairs that may cause data
loss. So if the volume is damaged that badly, you'll have to either
reformat from scratch or use something like Disk Warrior to rebuild it.

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

On 2016-08-19, Lewis wrote:
In message
Ant wrote:
Hello.

My client is having problem with his USB2 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent Go
from early 2010.

Not surprising. It's 6yo and teh FreeAgent series was not especially
good.

It has 2 partitions: FAT32 and encrypted HFS (mostly
Time Machine's backups). After connecting and entering his valid
password successfully, it takes a minute to mount and then a message
that said "OS X can't repair the '...' You can still open or copy files
on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up
the disk and reformat it as soon as you can." I ran Disk Utility with
their verifications. Both found issues with "Invalid sibling link" and
said to repair option. However, that repair option is greyed out. So,
is it not possible to fix it with free disk softwares except to reformat
it?

The disk is so damaged it si being mounted read-only to try to prevent
more damage.

Copy the data off to a new drive and then get a hammer and a heavy nail
and drive the nail through the drive and throw it away.

Personally I wouldn't throw away the drive. Copying the data off of it
and erasing it will map out any bad blocks so they are not used again.
With that said, replacing it with a drive double the size would be
rather cheap (~$50 on Amazon):

http://preview.tinyurl.com/zdmvz32

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

OK, I think I figured out what caused this. Sometimes unmounting by
dragging both desktop's drive/partition (FAT32 and HFS+) icons seems to
get stuck. Mac OS X say it was having problems ejecting and asked me to
wait or force eject. Before I even saw that message, the desktop's
mounted drive icons did go away, so I quickly physically disconnected
the USB2 cable from the MacBook Pro. Then, Mac OS X tells me that I
didn't eject properly. So I reconnect and manually run Disk Utility app,
and found a few minor corruptions.

Has anyone had this problem before? I see it with this drive and 3.5" WD
Green desktop HDD with its USB3 adapter on 3 different MBPs (Mac OS
v10.8.5 (Mt. Lion), 10.10.5 (Yosemite), and 10.12.1 (Sierra)) so far.


In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Ant wrote:
Hello.

My client is having problem with his USB2 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent Go
from early 2010. It has 2 partitions: FAT32 and encrypted HFS (mostly
Time Machine's backups). After connecting and entering his valid
password successfully, it takes a minute to mount and then a message
that said "OS X can't repair the '...' You can still open or copy files
on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up
the disk and reformat it as soon as you can." I ran Disk Utility with
their verifications. Both found issues with "Invalid sibling link" and
said to repair option. However, that repair option is greyed out. So,
is it not possible to fix it with free disk softwares except to reformat
it?

I used two different 15" MacBook Pros (mid-2012's Mac OS X v10.8.5/Mt.
Lion and early 2013's v10.10.5/Yosemite) with the same results so it is
not the MacBook Pros. http://imgur.com/a/OW0s6 for a couple screen
(shot/capture)s from Mac OS X v10.10.5/Yosemite. I also tried disk
verifications on its FAT32 partition, and it found minor issues. They
were repairable too unlike the encrypted HFS partition.

Thank you in advance.

--
Quote of the Week: "A 'practical joker' deserves applause for his wit
according to its quality. Bastinado is about right. For exceptional wit
one might grant keelhauling. But staking him out on an anthill should be
reserved for the very wittiest." --Lazarus Long
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org (Personal Web Site)
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| |o o| |
\ _ / Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
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