How to Recover Mac Files from Invalid Node Structure?

Symptoms

Your Mac hard drive will begin to show symptoms of invalid node structure errors before Disk Utility confirms through its First-Aid report. Among the noted symptom, one is the slowness of the Mac operating system. Frequent freezing of the macOS and beach balls will follow.

Note: This slowness of the Mac couldn’t be resolved by removing unwanted and useless files from the hard drive. Neither a disk cleaning application will help you fix the Invalid Node Structure problem.

Confirming – Invalid Node Structure

To confirm a logical problem on your Mac hard drive simply go to Applications << Utilities and launch Disk Utility.

1. Select your Apple hard drive
2. Run First Aid report

The Disk Utility will analyze your file system and will report Invalid B Tree Node or Structure issues, further advising you to back up your hard drive immediately.

Alternatively, you can re-confirm the error through Terminal. Launch the Terminal application and type the below commands:

• Type in fsck_hfs -1 or fsck_hfs –yprd
• Press Return
• Terminal will show you the output – Volume was found corrupt and needs to be repaired

Repairing Corrupt Volume – Invalid Node Structure

There exists a couple of methods provided by the Mac that can help you repair logical drive corruption including Invalid B Tree and Invalid Node Structure errors.

• FSCK, and
• Erase

FSCK

1. Restart your Mac
2. Press hold the keys – Command + S simultaneously
3. If you boot into Single User Mode successfully, then type in fsck –fy
4. FSCK command will execute followed by a message ‘File system was modified’
5. Re-run fsck –fy until the message ‘The volume appears to be OK’ shows up
6. Exit single user mode.

Be noted that successfully booting into Single User and further repairing the corrupt Mac disk isn’t guaranteed in all situations. You might have luck in booting into FSCK but no further luck in repairing the corrupt drive. Otherwise, in a low-level corruption scenario of a Mac, it may work like a charm.

Erase

We know that Invalid Node Structure is a file system problem. It could easily get fixed if the affected hard drive is erased through Disk Utility. Disk formatting will replace the older diseased file system with a healthy file format.

A drawback of Mac Disk Formatting

Unplanned formatting of the Mac hard drive will erase all the contained files forever. Though formatting will fix the hard drive affected by the Invalid Node Structure problem, it will make you use the drive at the cost of your important files. Is there a better solution available then? 

Stellar Data Recovery provides professional software that assists you to recover corrupt Mac drive data without disk formatting.

Let’s quickly read about those helpful tools –

How to recover files from the affected drive?

The Stellar Data Recovery Software for Mac can work both ways:

• Recovering from Invalid Node affected Drive

Connect your logically affected hard drive to Mac and launch the software. The software will identify the hard drive suffering from an invalid node structure problem and it will then scan the drive to recover inaccessible files. After recovering the data from the drive you can boldly proceed to format the hard drive to map a new file system for reuse

• Recovering from a Formatted Drive

Suppose you hurryingly formatted the invalid error-affected disk then this tool can recover back files that were lost due to formatting. In short, when you don’t have an updated backup of your hard drive then you can always leverage Stellar Mac Data Recovery to restore lost data.

Note: The trial version of Stellar Data Recovery software previews recoverable files from a storage device. Upgrade to the full version and recover unlimited files easily.

Start a trial run on your Mac today:

Conclusion

Act wisely when you find out that the hard drive is suffering from an Invalid Node Structure problem. Do try FSCK to make the disk work again, however, don’t shy away from using professional tools recommended by Stellar Data Recovery to bring back your drive and the data to life.

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About The Author

Vishal

Vishal is a data recovery expert @Stellar. He addresses data loss scenarios on a Mac. He intends to help people solve their macOS problems. Besides, Vishal prefers to read about astronomy and autobiography, and his favorite is Steve Jobs - The man who thought different written by Karen Bluementhal.