Horrific slowdown

February 7, 2007 8:29 PM

PowerBook chugging hopelessly

PowerBook G4, 10.4.8, 640 MB RAM is lugging, lugging, lugging. Powered it up last night and twice didn't get past the blue screen. So ran Applejack, which told me it fixed a couple of files; however, now the computer is desperately, unusably slow. It seems to be almost constantly searching the hard drive; I don't think it's indexing, as Spotlight gives me no sign that it is.

Any ideas? TIA.

posted by Wolof to computers & internet (11 comments total)

the hard disk is probably failing... i've had this happen once on my desktop mac. the bad disk manifested itself as long hangs, long boot times, etc.
posted by joeblough at 8:39 PM on February 7, 2007

yep, that's bad blocks multiplying. your damaged files were probably on damaged sectors of the drive.

back up, pal. fast. like now. you're getting a new hard drive.
posted by fourcheesemac at 8:42 PM on February 7, 2007

Starting up in single user mode now gives me the message "panic: we are hanging here ..."

Good times!
posted by Wolof at 8:44 PM on February 7, 2007

Thanks, all, it's as dead as a doornail now.
posted by Wolof at 9:12 PM on February 7, 2007

wow, that was quick!
posted by gergtreble at 10:39 PM on February 7, 2007

We aim to please!
posted by Wolof at 11:01 PM on February 7, 2007

Poor Wolof!
posted by gomichild at 1:50 AM on February 8, 2007

I'm not that poor. I borrowed $5 to join here, didn't I?
posted by Wolof at 3:21 AM on February 8, 2007

Ironically, my Powerbook seems to be doing the same thing lately. I'm worried (and backing up as we speak)... got mine August 20th or so of '05. That CAN'T be "too old", can it?
posted by dmaterialized at 10:11 AM on February 8, 2007

hard drives take a lot of abuse, especially laptop drives. there really isnt any cooling to speak of, so they run pretty hot.

in my tivos, i've had to replace the disks about once every year/ 1.5 years or so. that's probably the harshest non-server environment a disk is going to see though.
posted by joeblough at 10:39 AM on February 8, 2007

I've had apple OEM hard drives (usually Toshiba or Hitachi, sometimes IBM) fail in the first week, and last 7 years. You never know. But ticking is a bad, bad thing.
posted by fourcheesemac at 9:07 AM on February 16, 2007