Installation of SATSmartDriver from DriveDx causes failure to boot from external SSD.

Wow, this is amazing. The command did the trick! The MacOS booted just fine after I executed the command. Thank you so so much for sharing your knowledge with the rest of us.

I just wanted to elaborate a little more in case other people might want to know. The kmutil command returned 0 (success). It also said this at the terminal:

Triggering Panic Medic to enable booting into /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD. Panic Medic done. All third party kexts have been unapproved and uninstalled from /Volums/Macintosh\ HD.

I then shut down and powered up. The computer was then able to boot successfully. I logged in and everything worked fine, exactly the way it was before I installed the driver.

As for First Aid failing on the Data volume, I will look into that some more. If you or @BDAqua has any more idea I would appreciate it. Here's the scoop:

1. There has been no symptom of any disk or file corruption. I only used First Aid because I wanted to rule out the external SSD while investigating my other internal hard drive problem.
2. I ran First Aid in Recovery mode and ran it for a total of 4 times with consistent failure.
3. In Details, First Aid showed about 20, 30 lines. At the end it said the exit code is 8, could not verify or repair: -69845.

Should I want to get to the bottom of this?

Thanks again.

I was thinking the HD contains the MacOS and the Data volume contains my files, users settings. If I reinstall / upgrade the MacOS that should clean up the faulty kernel extension SATSmartDriver that prevents the computer from booting. Is it not so?

Thanks. The solution I saw in that thread is to completely wipe the disk. Is that right?

I saw this in my report and I'm thinking - may be I can try this fsck command to see if it will fix the problem. Do you know how to run this command?

Try running fsck against the entire APFS container instead of a volume

I had run First Aid on the Container before with the similar error. When I saw the message about fsck I thought fsck was a different tool that could be more helpful. But if fsck is the underlying command then it was already tried. However, I ran First Aid on the Container again and the results are as follows (somewhat similar).

I went through the report and noticed the following.

1. The Data volume is corrupt because of this error: directory valence check: directory (oid 0xc0043): nchildren (156) does not match drec count (0)
2. The Preboot volume (I only know this from the output of diskutil list, I don't see it in Disk Utility) is corrupt because there are too many "directory valence check: directory (oid 0xc0043): orphan directory record". I don't know what this Preboot volume does, but it's probably unrelated.

I seached the "directory valence check" on this board. Some people ran into this problem as well, but I don't see any good solution from any of those questions. The one suggestion that stood out was to do this Recovery mode but I'm pretty sure I did that already.

Thanks for your suggestion.

I thought I'd like to reinstall the O/S first to see if this fixes the problem. But I'm still confused about something.

I restarted the computer in Recovery Mode (cmd-r) and chose Reinstall Monterey (sorry I realized I have Monterey not Ventura). But it didn't let proceed. I got the error "com.apple.buildinfo.preflight.error error 21". After searching for this error, this means the local Recovery might be damaged.

I did First Aid on Macintosh HD and it was clean. The First Aid on Macintosh HD - Data failed for some reason. But that shouldn't affect the local Recovery should it?

So I tried the internet Recovery (cmd-option-r). However, Apple servers do not offer me Monterey. It offers me Ventura. Should I go with that? And the upgrade will not wipe my Macintosh HD Data volume, it that correct?

Thanks for your help.

First Aid failed on the Data volume with the same error code even prior to my installing the DriveDx smart driver. However, I did not notice any problem while the computer was up and running. All my files worked fine.

As it stands right now I just want to fix the mess the SATSmartDriver is causing me then worry about the First Aid error later.

Thanks for your help again.

First off, thank you!

As I mentioned from the above I just realized that I actually have Monterey, not Ventura as I thought I did. But maybe this bug applies to both versions.

The two folders were removed. I did check that. Some document said in some cases I would have to turn off some security feature in order to be able to remove kernel extensions or they would come back. In my case, I did not have to do that and I confirmed that the two folders are gone for good.

Where is that .plist file? I could check that file if it still has references to the two folders. That's what I don't understand, if the extension is gone how could it have left a lasting effect on the boot process? Somebody said the way MacOS has changed the way kernel extensions work and they now call it system extensions, which according to their literature, are "baked" into the operating system. That was why I thought a reinstall might fix it.

kmutil trigger-panic-medic --volume-root /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/

I will definitely try this when I can get my hands on the machine.

A clean install of macOS is a different story as long as when you go to restore your backup you either restore from a backup made before installing this driver, or by not migrating the apps & system wide settings.

Just in case I have to do a clean install, I do have a backup before installing this driver. From you said above I would have to erase the Macintosh HD - Data volume before restoring from the back up (or the remnants of the driver would somehow be there)?

Thanks again.

Thank you my friend.

I don't quite understand what you suggest, but I'll look into it.

Clone it? Do you mean by another 2tb ssd, clone it to the new ssd and boot from it? If the disk is corrupt wouldn't I get another corrupt disk?

Time Machine. I do a backup every two weeks.

Derasevit the clone back. I don't understand this :)

Setup Assistant. I'll google it.

Thanks once again. Your deep knowledge in the macOS is very much appreciated.

Here's the entire report:

Running First Aid on “Macintosh HD - Data” (disk3s1)

Verifying the startup volume will cause this computer to stop responding.

Verifying file system.

Volume could not be unmounted.

Using live mode.

Performing fsck_apfs -n -l -x /dev/rdisk3s1

Checking the container superblock.

Checking the checkpoint with transaction ID 5814080.

warning: container has been mounted by APFS version 2142.140.9, which is newer than 1934.141.2.701.1

warning: disabling overallocation repairs by default; use -o to override

Checking the EFI jumpstart record.

Checking the space manager.

Checking the space manager free queue trees.

Checking the object map.

Checking the encryption key structures.

Checking volume /dev/rdisk3s1.

Checking the APFS volume superblock.

The volume Macintosh HD - Data was formatted by hfs_convert (1933.61.1) and last modified by apfs_kext (1934.141.2.701.1).

Checking the object map.

Checking the snapshot metadata tree.

Checking the snapshot metadata.

Checking the document ID tree.

Checking the fsroot tree.

error: directory valence check: directory (oid 0xc0043): nchildren (156) does not match drec count (0)

Checking the extent ref tree.

Verifying volume object map space.

The volume /dev/rdisk3s1 was found to be corrupt and needs to be repaired.

Verifying allocated space.

Performing deferred repairs.

error: Unable to perform deferred repairs without full space verification

error: Try running fsck against the entire APFS container instead of a volume

The volume /dev/rdisk3s1 could not be verified completely.

File system check exit code is 8.

Restoring the original state found as mounted.

File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)

Operation successful.

I'm not sure which thread you are referring to. The link you posted is a filter on sequoia.

However, looking around there do you mean the below explanation?

"Problems were found with the partition map, which might prevent booting. Couldn't mount disk.: (-69842)" signifies that Disk Utility was unable to mount the disk due to the partition map issues.

Thanks!