What is ailing my mac?

May 25, 2007 9:51 AM

Macfilter: is it on it's last legs? My dual-1.25 ghz G4 running 10.3.9 with 768 MB RAM and 14 gigs of empty space on it's hard drive is acting strange. What should I do? How serious is this?

My computer hung up on start-up today - got past the log-in page to the point where it *should* have been building the desktop, but it seemed to hit a brick wall at that point. I repeatedly restarted, and eventually it got past that stage, but then I was unable to connect to the internet (this a mere 12 hours after it had been working just fine). Same deal - after repeated tries, it eventually worked - but this is not at all the behavior I am accustomed to - usually my mac starts up like it's disappointed that I turned it off in the first place!

Here's the other thing - all of this happened once before, about a month ago. At the time, I did lots of diagnotics - ran fsck in single-user mode, cleared the desktop, reset safari, ditched a lot of unused files, repaired permissions, etc. These are all precautions that I did NOT take for the first 18 months I owned this machine. Was I just lucky that I didn't have problems earlier? Is this a sign of age? Is my hard-drive failing?

Thanks very, very much, everybody.

posted by fingers_of_fire to computers & internet (14 comments total)

Yeah, that sounds MOST likely to be failing hard drive. I'd strongly suggest taking a backup ASAP; that's never a bad idea anyway.

I don't have my Mac handy so I can't tell you how, but look in your system logs for 'read errors' or 'sense errors'... that's usually a failing drive.

A secondary possibility is failing memory, but hard drive is a lot more likely.
posted by Malor at 10:04 AM on May 25, 2007

PS - I just tried running Disk Utility from the start-up disk, and got an error message that the connection was lost... in case that sheds any light.
posted by fingers_of_fire at 10:18 AM on May 25, 2007

My iBook was doing similar things and it turned out to be the drive. I just kept rebooting over and over till it finally started up, but very slowly. This guide has somethings you can do to try to help it start up.

What is the SMART status of the drive? (in Disk Utility) I don't think it's 100% reliable, but mine said something like Warning in red.
posted by JulianDay at 10:25 AM on May 25, 2007

Yeah I think your HD is failing. It's a lot more likely that the drive is going, than the memory is failing (although you can't rule that out as a possibility so far, I'd replace the drive first and see if that fixes it).

As Malor suggested, backup right now, you have no idea how long it's going to last. And then just get yourself a new hard drive, pop it in, and either reinstall the system, or use Carbon Copy Cloner to move the old drive's contents over (if the old drive is still good enough to let you do a block-by-block copy). Then tell the computer to boot from the new drive, verify that everything works, then disconnect the old one and chuck it. (Might want to wipe it, maybe smash it good with a hammer first.) But if the drive has failed too far to let you copy it completely, you'll need to just put in a bare drive, reinstall OS X (using the CDs from the latest major release of OS X you want to run, i.e. 10.3 'Panther'), and then restore your data from backups and your applications from install CDs. Major PITA.

An aside: There are some Mac users who believe in performing a clean reinstall of the OS periodically, but personally I don't think this is necessary. I've basically had a continuous system for the past six years, and just moved it to new hardware...as long as you're careful about what you install, an OS X system shouldn't just "get flaky" on you over time.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:29 AM on May 25, 2007

A clarification: When I said "pop [the new drive] in," I mean you'll have to put it onto an unused spot on the IDE bus, as a slave device ... if you only have one HD installed, there should be a position open for an extra drive. You might need to move a jumper on the drive in order to let it work as a slave while you do this.

But this all depends on the old HD working long enough for a complete copy, and that may be asking a lot of it right now. Also, you need to have Carbon Copy Cloner installed on the old HD, which may be a bit of a trick if it won't connect to the internet. You may be stuck doing a full reinstall+restore.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:36 AM on May 25, 2007

I've found SMART status to be quite flakey. Not long ago, a clearly failing drive (even the Apple techs couldn't get it to mount) checked out fine.

If the drive is really on it's last legs, I'd avoid a complete archive - just copy your irreplaceable files. Applications can always be reinstalled and email can be pulled from the server (the best reason to go with IMAP rather than POP, but that's another post).

Good luck!
posted by aladfar at 10:55 AM on May 25, 2007

SMART doesn't catch everything; it will detect many kinds of physical media errors, but if you've something wrong in the actual electronics, it won't necessarily work. Green status, therefore, isn't proof of a good drive, but red status is an incredibly strong indicator of one that will fail soon.

If you're on a drive that develops SMART errors, drop everything and backup right away. Even though it may appear all right, it won't last much longer.
posted by Malor at 1:36 PM on May 25, 2007

Just in case anyone is still chiming in - I'm just back from the local Mac repair shop (Tekserve, for you NYCers), who tell me that it's most likely a software-related issue - they recommend a clean install of the OS. The hard drive scans fine, they tell me. (They also want to charge me $60 to install the OS). Does this make any sense? I suppose a clean install, while time-consuming, is an easy first step...

According to Disk Utility, my SMART condition is fine. Er, make that, the SMART condition of my hard-drive.
posted by fingers_of_fire at 2:37 PM on May 25, 2007

Do you have this problem with other users of the computer? (If you don't have any other users, create one and see if you're able to login successfully, connect to the internet, etc.) If you don't have problems with the new user, then you know it's a user-space problem, not one that requires re-installing the OS.
posted by SomePerlGeek at 2:44 PM on May 25, 2007

You know, I also had my computer hang on startup this morning (only once, but it really freaked me out). I got a security update last night and figured that was the cause. My HD has been a bit wonky too (noisy more than anything) but checks out fine with Disk Utility. It's like we're twins!

So, if my hypothesis is correct and it was the new security update in my case, maybe the software wipe-and-reinstall is a good first step.
posted by crinklebat at 3:22 PM on May 25, 2007

For what it's worth, it's incredibly simple to add an extra internal drive to your G4. I'd buy a new drive and use either Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to clone everything over. It's a cheap upgrade and will ensure a few more years out of a perfectly usable machine.
posted by nathan_teske at 3:42 PM on May 25, 2007

I know it's been said already, but seriously
BACK UP YOUR DATA NOW
posted by itheearl at 3:54 PM on May 25, 2007

Thanks for the advice, everyone - fear not, the data is backed up!

As for Carbon Copy Cloner - if the Tekserve theory is correct, that it's a software issue, then I'll simply be copying fucked up files onto a new drive, and duplicating the problem, right?
posted by fingers_of_fire at 9:19 PM on May 25, 2007

did you let your hard drive get close to its capacity?

that happened on my powerbook and it just got all kinds of sluggish, and stayed that way even after deleting 50% of the stuff on the drive. i performed every kind of diagnostic, disk repair, defrag etc etc that i could find or think of, but to no avail.

nothing helped except backing up my files, reformat and reinstall the OS. much much faster afterwards! presumably there was something wrong with the filesystem but i dont, honestly, understand what.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 3:39 AM on May 26, 2007