disk utility | Scott's Computing Adventures

Mac showing you the Gray Screen of Death

I woke up on a business trip only to realize that my MacBook Pro was now showing me the gray screen of death (GSOD). I saw a gray screen with a progress bar that would start loading then shut down my computer. After reading on the web how to fix this there are a few ways to do it.

Mac KB support article about resolving startup issues.

Disk Utilities on Snow Leopard Book Disk
This is an easy GUI driven way to attempt to fix your disk. It didn’t work in my case but it is a great place to start.

Insert Snow Leopard Disk
Boot and hold “C”
Select “Utilities” from menu bar and then click “Disk Utility”
Select your Macintosh HD and run “Verify Disk”
That will show you some errors
Run “Repair Disk”

FSCK in Single User Mode
This will give you a prompt to run commands on. You can try to fix the disk using fsck. This didn’t fix my disk either.

Boot and hold Command + “S” keys
To attempt to fix the disk type “/sbin/fsck -fy”
If it fixes something but still errors then run the command again

Disk Warrior
This program will attempt to fix your disk but it costs $99.95. I would use this as a last resort since it is expensive. It also modifies your disk so I would still recommend cloning the hard drive before attempting this incase if messes it up even further.

Carbon Copy Cloner
This is a great program to make copies/backups of your disk. You are going to need 2 USB to SATA cables that will set you back about $20 each for this method. You are also going to need to buy a new hard drive that is equal or greater size than your current disk. Next you need to find a friend or co-worker that has a mac and can help you.

Remove your Mac’s hard drive
Hook up the broken hard drive and new hard drive to friends Mac using USB to SATA cables
Open Disk Utility on Mac and create a new “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” partition on new hard drive
Open Carbon Copy Cloner and set Source Disk to broken hard drive and set Target Disk to new hard drive. Click Clone.
This will take several hours depending on how large your hard drive is.
Once it is complete install your new hard drive back in your mac. Hopefully it will boot and you can retrieve your data off the drive. I would recommend doing a clean install on your new hard drive after you have recovered your data.