Repairing Disk Errors on 2021 M1 Monterey Macbook Pro

Tech Support
1

I was having some odd issues with my new MacBook Pro, so I decided to boot into recovery partition and run first aid from disc utility.

On the data volume it showed Errors and was not able to repair.

oops

In the old days I would run disc warrior but that is not available on Monterey and the only program that seems to be possible is tech tool pro version 15 but I do not own that.

So I tried many things including Time Machine backups etc. But the following is what worked for me:

I used the latest Chronosync to make a FULL BOOTABLE BACKUP - NICE!

  • then I was able to boot into the external backup

  • when I tried to run disk utility first aid from here - it showed that they were many local time machine snapshots with Errors. (I had not seen this before)

  • so I booted back into the main machine and deleted all the faulty local snapshots like this:

  • then I booted back into the external Drive and re-ran disc first aid on the main drive.

!!! SUCCESS NO ERRORS - YEA!!!

  • so to double check - I booted back into the recovery partition of the main Drive and re ran disk utility first aid where the errors first appeared.

!!! SUCCESS NO ERRORS AGAIN - YEA!!!

So lucky me – using the processes above I was able to avoid the dreaded reformat and recovery my main Mac!

Just passing along this info for anyone who might be interested.

3 Likes
2

Would you be willing to describe your “odd issues”? I have a permissions-related issue (cannot edit and save certain older files accessed over a local network share) with my M1 MBP running macOS Monterey and wondered if this was similar to your problem.

Thank you for the detailed description of your Time Machine snapshots solution.

3

Hi Arthur - well my issue started with the inability to click on some system related dialog windows. That turned out to be a setting in this app that has a bug = myPoint Light S.app

I will be contacting the developer and try to get it resolved.

How did I find it? Well I booted in safe mode - and the problem vanished. So then I checked each one of the possible menu bar apps and eventually found it.

Hope this helps - Dave

4

Great post!. Potentially very helpful if my Mac develops problems in the future. By coincidence, I had just read this article which paints modern file systems as being rather fragile! Efficient resilient storage – The Eclectic Light Company

1 Like
5

Good article with some excellent advice. “the best answer for most Mac users may lie with safety in numbers.”

Multiple backups have saved the day for me multiple times.

2 Likes