macOS
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False error in Disk Utility
QWhen I run Disk Utility’s First Aid on an APFS volume in Ventura 13.3.1, it returns an error and warns me to back up that volume. How can I repair that volume, or is it really broken beyond repair?
AThis is a long-standing bug in Disk Utility’s First Aid feature that goes right back to the introduction of APFS with High Sierra. Select a volume or APFS container (like a partition), run First Aid, and Disk Utility calls a command tool named fsck_apfs to do all the hard work. That requires the volume or container it’s going to check and repair as necessary is first unmounted, but in macOS prior to Ventura version 13.4 it often fails because Disk Utility is unable to unmount the disk. That returns an error that looks serious, when it’s actually just an error in the app.
This has been fixed in Disk Utility version 22.6, bundled in Ventura 13.4, in most circumstances, although it still can occur occasionally. Update macOS so that it uses this new version, and try that instead. If First Aid still returns this error, as it can when checking a Data volume that’s not part of the current startup system, select the volume or container and manually unmount it using the tool at the top of the window. Then try First Aid again. When that has completed, select the volume or container again and use the tool at the top to mount it back. If that still won’t work properly, start up in Recovery mode and use Disk Utility there instead.