I Found a Bug in Apple's Fsck_hfs
A developer discovered a bug in the macOS Sequoia 'fsck_hfs' tool that causes false corruption reports on large HFS+ volumes when using machines with 8GB of RAM. The issue is a cache exhaustion error rather than actual data corruption, and it does not affect systems with 16GB or more of memory.
Why it matters
This technical finding prevents users from unnecessarily attempting to repair or replace drives that are actually functioning correctly.
TL;DR: fsck_hfs in macOS Sequoia (version hfs-683.x) has a cache exhaustion bug that reports false corruption on large HFS+ volumes. On machines with 8 GB RAM, volumes of 24 TB or larger trigger "Couldn t read node" errors during the extended attributes check. Your data is fine — the bug is in the tool, not the filesystem. Machines with 16 GB+ RAM are unaffected, as are older macOS versions
The article is a technical post-mortem of a software bug, devoid of political or social bias.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in