Summary:
Disk Utility is the most used macOS Utilities to repair the Mac drives. Disk Utility failing to repair the disk could be serious problem. This could be due to severe corruption on the drive. The error can be seen on both internal and external drives when the disks get corrupted. Here is a simple guide that helps you fix the error using easy troubleshooting methods. Also, it involves simple methods recovery tips to keep your data safe.
What does Mac Disk Utility do?
It is an inbuilt system feature that manages all the disk on Mac. The main functionality of disk utility is to verify your disk’s integrity and fix if any damage or the corruption is observed. Also, this is the foremost utility used to mount, unmount any disk volumes including both internal and external hard disks.
Whenever the disk isn’t working properly on Mac, the first thing we usually do is running First Aid to repair the errors on the disk. But what if Disk Utility cannot repair the disk and displays the error Disk Utility can’t repair Macintosh HD. This would clearly say Mac disk utility repair failed to fix the issue.
If you are wondering what might be the reason behind the disk utility failure, here are a few main reasons.
What Causes Disk Utility Can’t Repair This Disk Error?
Generally, Disk Utility is most efficient tool to fix corruption on the macOS. If disk utility is failed to fix the drive, the most possible reason is severe corruption on disks. Here are few reasons that leads disk utility to not work:
- A corruption in the firmware might be one of the reasons leading to the disk utility issues.
- Severely corrupted data on the disk or damaged drive.
- Besides all the above reasons, outdated version on macOS, bad sectors on the drive and malware could also be responsible for the problem.
If you are wondering how to repair your Disk without a Disk Utility, the best workarounds explained in the further sections of the article. Before heading to repair, please make sure you have a backup of your important data from the disk.
If your data is already backed up, you can skip the following section and dive into alternative repair methods when Disk Utility can’t repair the disk.
Most likely, any repair technique might involves data loss from the disk repaired. Hence, it is always recommended to recover your data from the disk.
To take back up of data, you could make use of any external drives or on Mac you can make use of Time Machine.
How to Back Up Data using Time Machine on Mac?
Time Machine utility helps you to take a backup from of data from any storage devices including internal drives, network-attached disks, and most commonly used with external disk drives.
To back up your Mac data, use an external storage device with enough storage space and follow the steps given below.
- Firstly, connect the external hard disk to your Mac computer.
- Navigate to the Apple menu, click the Apple icon and select System Preferences.
- Select Time Machine on System Preferences panel. Now, click on the Select Disk and choose the external disk you have, to store your data.
- Now, click on Use Disk. From the Time Machine menu, click on Back Up now option
Wait until the process completes. Later, verify with the data backed up on storage disks.
Time Machine should help you back up your data without any hassle. But, Time Machine does have some limitations. That is, if the data is severely damaged, there might be a problem in backing up it. Also, if you are trying to backup a corrupt data, most likely the data backed up will also be corrupted.
what if your drive becomes inaccessible due to severe corruption? Or Mac Recovery Mode is itself not working. Here is safe tool that can completely recover data even from severely corrupt drives on Mac.
SFWare Mac Data Recovery Software is the most recommended and best suited tool to recover data from the severely corrupted drives on Mac. With its effective search algorithm, the tool scans each sector of the drive to recover data from any inaccessible/ corrupt drives. Therefore, you can easily retrieve data from the drive showing the error Disk Utility can’t repair the disk. Download the software and try it for free now…
How to Recover Data from the Drive displaying error “Disk utility can’t repair this disk”?
To recover data from the corrupt Mac HDD, Download and install the SFWare Mac Data Recovery Tool for Mac on your computer. Launch the tool.
(If you are trying to recover data from the external disks, connect the disk to the PC where software is located)
- First step is to, select Recover Drives from the main screen and next, select Drive/Partition recovery to retrieve a healthy data from the drive Disk Utility failed to repair.
- Now, Select the Disk you need to repair. Once disk is selected, the tool displays the volume.
- Next, select the Volume to continue the process. Scanning is initiated (scanning time depends on the volume of the drive chosen to recover)
- Once the scanning process completes, all the recoverable files on the selected Mac drive will be displayed in Data View or File Type View.
- You can preview the file to be recovered. If you are satisfied with the results, you can save the files in your desirable location on your PC that has enough storage to hold the data.
With the help of SFWare, not only lost or deleted files, you can also recover accidentally deleted Macintosh HD from Disk Utility.
Once the data is recovered from the disk showing Disk Utility cannot repair the disk, go ahead and fix the error using simple yet easy manual methods.
How to Fix the error “Disk Utility can’t repair the disk” issue?
If Disk Utility is not working and showing an error, you can fix Disk Utility can’t repair this drive error using FSCK command or by reformatting the drive.
Fix 1: Use Single User Mode to fix the error
Single user mode fix damage or corruption on the disks using commands. Follow the steps to run the command to repair the corrupt drive.
- First, Restart your Mac. Before the Apple logo appears, press Command + S This command helps you to boot your Mac into Single User Mode.
- Now, Type in the command to repair the Mac drive:
/sbin/fsck -fy
(/sbin/fsck -fy : Command checks for any logical error present on the drive and repairs them and stands for force file system check.)
- If File system was modified displays on the screen, re-type the command /sbin/fsck -fy until The volume _ appears to be OK message appears on screen.
- Lastly, to exit the single user mode, to restart your Mac, type in: reboot
After rebooting the computer, check if the error exists or repaired.
Fix 2: Fix the error Disk Utility can’t repair the disk by reformatting the drive
Note: Reformatting the drive will erase all the data from the drive. Make sure your important files and data is backed up. if you are is secures, follow the steps given below:
- Navigate to Applications. Select Utilities and click on Disk Utility.
- Select the drive (external hard drive) and click Erase displayed on top.
- Give a name to the drive and select a format (File System) to re-format the drive to the new and clean File system without corruption.
Process may take a while to complete. Wait until the process finishes and restart your Mac.
What if your external drive is not recognized on mac? You can still fix the external drive get recognized and repair the drive.
Fix 3. Repair Startup Disk Using macOS Recovery Mode
All Macs come with a recovery mode to help users recover their Macs and get their Macs back into good condition again. You can reinstall macOS and restore data under this mode, also can repair startup disk.
Steps to Repair Disk Utility Using Recovery Mode
- Restart your Mac and boot into Recovery mode.
- press and hold Command+R when restarting the Mac, then enter your Mac password to enter the recovery mode. Or press and hold Power button until you see “Loading startup options”, then select Options and press Return.
- Choose Disk Utility and run First Aid to fix your disk under the recovery mode.
Conclusion:
Corruption or damage on the drive is inevitable. Therefore, always make sure you keep a backup. with the help of above-mentioned methods, you should be able to fix the error Disk Utility cannot repair this disk easily.
If you were able to fix the error and recover data using the steps given in the article, do write to us in the comment section below.