Does running first aid put unusual stress on a hard drive? Some apple Genius Bar person told me that it does and could cause hard drive failure but I am skeptical.

(I now simply using a drive risks failure but does this increase chances even more)

@JBis No. What running first Aid does is finalize any damage that was done to repair the file system at the expense of marking bad blocks / orphaned files / unallocated files. The damage to the files was already done and the utility just sacrifices some storage to heal the file system.

The bar needs to prepare people for the two outcomes - data will be lost or data will be preserved.

For HDD specifically - it’s the diagnosis and confirmation. It would be like saying a cancer test causes cancer. It doesn’t cause anything - it reports results at a discrete measurement point. Kind of like if a tree falls in the forest, it still fell and made a racket - we might “notice” it later when we go to look for it.

Hey @ankii - why are you putting answers in the comments here?

Make an answer!

(or edit mine to make it better)

OP clearly needs help with troubleshooting - so telling them to get smart in the comments doesn’t really help anyone

I've never been there, I just linked two questions as you said.

and asked what they've tried.

apple.stackexchange.com/questions/120507/… this has a lot of info!

Perfect. You should edit that into my post :)

That’s a bizarre case where tons of GPU failed so everyone figured how to disbable the driver and mix safe mode with real mode. Super unlikely this op has that defect or solution.

Putting things in answers let people discuss and refine and edit with revision history.