Solved: Mac Can’t Repair External Hard Drive

Written By Vishal
Approved By Rohit Arora
Updated on 15 Feb, 2024
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Summary: It could be nightmarish if you have got the below message through Disk Utility while repairing an external hard drive formatted with APFS or HFS. The purpose of this blog is to help you repair corrupt external hard drive on Mac. The blog shares three do-it-yourself methods to fix the drive and recover the data. Data recovery from corrupt external drive is feasible. Free download the software to self-evaluate.

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Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk and restore your backed-up files.

The above message doesn’t show up in normal circumstances of external hard disk errors. In most cases, the Disk Utility is vigorous enough to repair an external drive and even your start-up disk. But if the external hard drive is beyond the repair scope of the Disk Utility, then it could be possible that the directory structure of the drive is corrupt severely.

Don’t panic, the below 3 activities could be performed when Disk Utility fails to repair an external hard drive. Further, try Mac external hard drive recovery software as a last resort.

1) Backup External Hard Drive Data

You can try copy and paste all files from the corrupt external or internal hard drive to another destination. But doing this may also result in copying errors to another location. Moreover, the corruption may not allow you to copy & paste all the files from the disk.

2) Fix Mac hard drive using FSCK

You might have luck with FSCK command line.

To run fsck command you have to restart Mac and log in as ADMIN. Launch Terminal, enter df -h1 and press Return. Use of df-h1 will let you know the path of the internal disk drive.

Use below line

sudo fsck_hfs -r -d /dev/disk1s1

The command (-r) in the above code will recreate Catalog B – Tree. It will help you fix Invalid B-tree node problem occurred on the disk drive. It will further resolve errors like –

Invalid count
Invalid key length
Invalid volume file count
Invalid volume directory count
Invalid volume free block count, and likewise.

3) Recover External Drive using Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac

Though helpful, FSCK isn’t the sure shot method to repair the corrupt external/internal hard drive. You might need the help of a professional external hard drive recovery software for Mac. Stellar Data Recovery Professional is a sophisticated application to scan and recover your APFS or HFS drive.

Step 1) Connect your external drive and launch Stellar Data Recovery Professional on your Mac. Customize your scan as shown below.

Step 2) Select your external hard drive and toggle on Deep Scan feature. The deep scan feature scans all the sectors of the external hard drive to bring back lost data. Otherwise, stick with Quick Scan to recover the file-structure. Press the Scan button.

Step 3) After the external hard drive scans complete, navigate through the Classic list, File or Deleted List to view and preview your files.

Step 4) If you have activated the Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac then you will be able to recover or save your files conveniently.

Video Tutorial – Mac External Hard Drive Recovery

Conclusion

Not just the corrupt HFS drive or volume but you can leverage & activate Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac to image an APFS external hard drive for the purpose of data recovery.

The process to do the job will be the same as mentioned in the sequential steps and the video tutorial.

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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.

57 comments

James M. Acosta says:

September 8, 2016 at 4:33 am

Can Stellar Volume Repair speed up my MacBook Pro 2012?

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  September 9, 2016 at 5:55 am
  
  Hi James,
  
  Thanks for writing to us!!!
  
  Definitely, if your Mac startup disk is slowing down due to corruption, bad disk permissions or damaged directory structure then Stellar Volume Repair will repair the damages and re-create the directory structure. This will surely optimize and improve the performance of your MacBook Pro. I also recommend you run Stellar Speedup Mac utility to clean up your Mac hard drive and maintain at-most 15% of free spaces. Here, you can avail both the software at discounted price – Register Stellar Drive ToolBox.
  Hope this helps!!
  Vishal
  
  Reply
Atul Khanna says:

August 13, 2016 at 3:02 pm

the fsck -r -d worked great! Thanks for a really helpful article.

Reply
Gillock says:

July 14, 2016 at 9:00 am

I am writing in the midst of a blunder where I have accidentally restored OS X Yosemite DMG file to my WD external hard drive formatted with HFS+ partition scheme. Now my WD hard drive partitions aren’t mounting on Disk Utility. Is there any way to get back partitions and fix the file structure that got damaged?

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  July 15, 2016 at 8:41 am
  
  Hi Gillock, not just the hard drive needs to get repaired but your data also requires recovery. I recommend you register Stellar Mac Data Recovery Platinum Edition to recover files from the hard drive and then repair it with Volume Optmizer application which is included in the Edition.
  
  Reply
Kathy T. Chandler says:

June 8, 2016 at 3:16 am

I am trying to create a USB disk to boot my old iMac whose drive is bad but the USB is freezing and not taking me beyond loading so that I can access my iMac hard drive. Any recommendations?

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  June 8, 2016 at 6:16 am
  
  Kathy, may be because the bootable USB isn’t prepared correctly. You may order Stellar Volume Repair with a bootable USB support which will boot up your Mac OS X and repair the corruption on the Macintosh HDD.
  
  Reply
Charles Mercer says:

May 23, 2016 at 3:34 am

Hi,
My 2-years old Mac crashed suddenly and only window I can be able to see in my Mac is OS X Utilities with 4 different options. I already know that I have to pick “Disk Utility”. So I did. I select “Macintosh HD” (it’s grey) from left side and hit “Repair Disk” (“Verify Disk Permissions” and “Repair Disk Permissions” are grey) and got the error: “Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the drive, and restore your backed-up files.” How can I back up my files? Please help me!
Mac OS X Yosemite

Reply
1. vishal says:
  
  May 25, 2016 at 3:27 am
  
  I recommend you to take the backup of your hard drive and then fix your hard drive using the help of FSCK command. If the FSCK command is unable to correct it, then fix the drive with the help of Stellar Volume Repair Software. It will rebuild the corrupt directory structure and also bring your data back.
  
  Reply
Damien says:

December 2, 2015 at 3:18 am

Can Volume Repair rebuild NTFS drive?

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  December 2, 2015 at 8:37 am
  
  No. Stellar Volume Repair software supports HFS, HFS+ formatted hard disk drives.
  
  Reply
Craig Velasco says:

November 23, 2015 at 6:03 am

Do you have this software available for Windows? I have Toshiba NTFS formatted drive which is not showing up on my Windows 10 machine. How should I repair it?

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  November 23, 2015 at 8:53 am
  
  Hello Craig,
  
  Unfortunately, Stellar Volume Repair works only for Mac OS X (HFS). We recommend you do some search for a similar product that can repair your NTFS formatted drive.
  
  Reply
Paul M. Johnson says:

September 21, 2015 at 11:15 am

Hi Vishal,

My disk utility is failing to repair disk permissions on my Mac Pro. Will Stellar Volume Repair fix this issue without registration?

Regards Paul.

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  September 22, 2015 at 2:43 am
  
  Hello Mr. Paul,
  
  Yes, Stellar Volume Repair will fix your bad disk permissions without registration. However, in order to repair damaged directory structure or Invalid B tree node error you need to activate it.
  
  Regards
  Vishal
  
  Reply
Vishal says:

September 10, 2015 at 4:56 am

Hi Josh, Sorry for the late reply.

Stellar Partition Manager isn’t a repair software. It creates, resizes, deleted, hide & reveal partitions on Macintosh HD. In order to repair your hard drive you need to download Stellar Volume Repair.

Hope this helps!!!

Reply
Josh says:

August 17, 2015 at 3:37 am

I have downloaded Stellar Partition Manager on my MacBook Pro system but how should I repair my partition with this tool?

Reply