Hard Drive crawling along

Started up my computer this morning and my startup hard drive has slowed down whenever you try to access it clicking on the icon on the desktop or in a desktop window. I get the spinning beach ball of death and finder does not respond. I can still work on most other programs.
I can access any folder on the desktop or window without any problem.
Some programs, DVDSP for one, take several minutes to open the save or open window. Even having to wait to build. Happened with mail once or twice when I click on a mailbox.
I have repaired disk and permissions using Disk Utility, ran Disk warrior, and even activated root privileges.
I cannot even get info from the disk icon.
Have installed the latest software updates from apple. Cannot remember installing any software from yesterday to today.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks

Yes, use Applejack 1.4.3 at the first sign or before updating your system.
Why are you using Virus Barrier? Also, ClamXav use to make my system sluggish.
Tiger Cache Cleaner comes with Memtest and ClamXav now and does a great job of tuning and optimizing for broadband, Safari, and some of those maintenance things like launch services, update prebinding.
When in doubt, backup-erase-restore.
And keep your boot drive with lots of free space. 40% or more. And move your home folder even to another drive. Try booting from a single 10K Raptor for dedicated OS/apps (only).
Seeing that you ran Disk Warrior and there weren't any problems, I'm not sure what would cause it to be sluggish, but does that happen with a Safe Boot? some background tasks?
I had some folders that I was letting get big (in the past there was some kind of 1024 files limit to a single folder, wanted to see if 2048 or something was a "glass ceiling"). It took a lot of work to prune and move files out of those huge folders down into smaller manageable size of 500-ish folders, but it helped a lot. ClamXav was choking, as was Graphic Converter.

Similar Messages

Could I have damaged my hard drive?

Yesterday I was moving my router and cable modem around my desk, and, to make a long story short, some cables were tangled and a small desk lamp took a four-foot swan dive onto my MacBook Pro. The point of impact was about two inches below the keyboard and one half inch from the left side of the computer (it was open), resulting in a maybe 1/8" dent in the top case.
I didn't think much of it (other than "I'm an idiot" and "I wonder ho much top cases go for on eBay) until about an hour later when my computer froze up. After a minute or so of rainbow pinwheel, it went to the blank blue screen. After staring at this for a minute or two, I went for a manual power down. Unfortunately, when I tried to boot up again, I couldn't get past the gray screen with the apple logo and the spinning wheel graphic. I tried running Disk Utility and repaired my permissions to no avail. Then I tried archiving and reinstalling to try to fix the issue, but each time it would hang up in the "Copying Base Files" (or something like that) stage at a given percent and go no further. It was at this point that one of my roommates pointed out some strange noises, and they were estrange indeed: Clicking and popping sounds coming from the hard drive area, along with intermittent spooling up and slowing back down.
Starting to fear the worst, I picked up a FireWire cable this morning (I can't believe how hard it so to find those things) and ran Target Disk on a Mac Pro in a nearby computer lab to try to rescue some of the essentials (I am lazy and have not backed up in about a month). I noticed as many partial installs as times I had attempted to install OS X, and a corresponding number of archived files. While most of my files copied fine, a few gave me an error that read like this:
"The Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in "Lightroom 2 Catalog Previews.lrdata" could not be read or written. (Error code -36)"
I tried running Hardware Test from my install DVD, and both the regular and extended tests came back with "No trouble found."
Based on the facts that the computer took a sudden impact directly above the hard drive, the drive itself seems to be hanging up when being written to at certain points, and some of the data seems to have been damaged (not to mention the "click pop" soundtrack when the drive hangs up), my guess is that the hard drive might need replacing. I have a fair idea of what I'm doing and have no problem doing a little open-Mac surgery (not to mention the fact that 7200rpm 200GB+ drives are now under $100- when did that happen), but Id really like to be able to confirm that this is the problem. I have never actually had to troubleshoot hardware issues like this. Is there something else that I can run, or is it a pretty safe bet that the drive is trashed?
Later this afternoon I'm going to drag the 300GB external down to the lab, restart target Disk, and copy as much as I can, but i think with the errors I've been seeing it's a safe bet that much of it is trashed. After that ,I'm going to make a last-ditch effort to reformat the drive and do a clean install, but I'm betting that it will either hang up partway through the erasing process, or get stuck on the writing side like it did with the archive and reinstall.
Any advice you can offer will be greatly appreciated. As a student, I'm sure you can imagine the urgency here.
Message was edited by: anthonyhemming

Yes, I too fear the bluing and tattooing to be the case.
If it helps, I just remembered that I also reset my PRAM and SMC somewhere along the way.

External hard drives spinning up incessantly

I have 4 external drives with about 12 volumes on them and it's literally spinning up a drive every 5 minutes, 24x7 when I am not even using the computer. Nothing weird is running, and it's clear the application is exactly Finder. (and rarely, fseventsd). Here is the output of
sudo fs_usage -f filesys | grep Volumes
01:00:55 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000012   Finder
01:00:55 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000024   Finder
01:02:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000013   Finder
01:13:04 getattrlist
/Volumes/Giant
0.000014   Finder
01:13:15 getattrlist
/Volumes/Giant
0.000013   Finder
01:17:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000012   Finder
01:17:30 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000013   Finder
01:32:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000016   Finder
01:32:30 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000011   Finder
01:47:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000072   Finder
01:47:30 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000014   Finder
01:54:37 getattrlist
/Volumes/6snow
0.000012   Finder
01:54:49 getattrlist
/Volumes/6snow
0.000014   Finder
01:56:56 getattrlist
/Volumes/4tiger
0.000012   Finder
01:56:57 getattrlist
/Volumes/4tiger
0.000023   Finder
01:57:14 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000014   Finder
01:57:23 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000013   Finder
01:57:49 getattrlist
/Volumes/Small
0.000016   Finder
01:57:50 getattrlist
/Volumes/Small
0.000024   Finder
01:58:32 getattrlist
/Volumes/Little
0.000012   Finder
01:58:32 getattrlist
/Volumes/Little
0.000021   Finder
01:59:17 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000009   Finder
01:59:18 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000008   Finder
02:00:10 getattrlist
/Volumes/BABY
0.000014   Finder
02:00:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/BABY
0.000015   Finder
02:00:55 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000019   Finder
02:02:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000015   Finder
02:10:01 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000022   Finder
02:10:01 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000010   Finder
02:10:01 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000009   Finder
02:10:01 getattrlist
/Volumes/BABY
0.000013   Finder
02:10:07 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000010   Finder
02:10:11 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000023   Finder
02:10:11 getattrlist
/Volumes/Little
0.000025   Finder
02:10:11 getattrlist
/Volumes/Small
0.000012   Finder
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Giant
0.000015   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/BABY
0.000010   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Big
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/U3 System
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Medium
0.000011   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/4tiger
0.000010   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Little
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/Small
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/6snow
0.000009   Preview
02:10:12 getattrlist
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000008   Preview
Note the 02:10:12 "all drives spin up" event. That was opening a PDF in Preview. The PDF was in my home directory/Downloads on "Macintosh HD". The rest is entirely Finder; I was doing nothing at all.
I'm hearing a spool-up literally every 4-5 minutes.
I have essentially given up, and dismounted all the drives until I have need for something on one of them. Of course that kills Time Machine.
Since there is no rime or reason for these accesses, I am NOT impressed with the argument that "drives should spin 24x7, it's better for them". This is a home system, not a server. I know how often I actually need data off these drives - several times a day and many days not at all. So I should use a program to force them to spin 24x7 (by doing more unnecessary accesses)? That's like leaving a hot water faucet open 24x7 to deal with a glitch in an on-demand water heater.
I want the drives to spin down. And stay spun down. And then, when I choose to access something on one of the drives, or an application has something it's going to actually use the drive for (e.g. midnight backups) -- I want it to spin up. Simple enough?
I am running 10.5 but my searches tell me Snow Leopard is worse, and Lion is worse yet.

Good point, just checked, and the answer is no. I had 3 Finder windows open, all viewing the main hard drive.
They did, of course, have the hard drive icons along the left edge.
Edit (from here):
But I wasn't doing anything with Finder during these times.
This activity occurred when I was not using the computer at all.
04:00:41 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000009   ScreenSaverE
04:00:41 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000022   ScreenSaverE
04:02:10 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000015   Finder
04:02:22 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000019   Finder
04:59:17 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000011   Finder
04:59:18 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000005   Finder
05:02:10 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000013   Finder
05:02:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000016   Finder
05:59:17 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000014   Finder
06:02:10 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000013   Finder
06:02:21 getattrlist
/Volumes/Uber
0.000021   Finder
06:59:17 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000006   Finder
06:59:18 statfs
/Volumes/BACKUPUSB
0.000006   Finder

Odd Files in Hard Drive

I performed a clean install of Leopard on two Intel macs today. One of the macs has some odd files named bin, cores, etc, mach_kernel, private, sbin, tmp, usr, var and Volumes in the hard drive window along with application and system folders that would normally be there. Should I trash these files? Should I be seeing these files?

Yep! Don't delete... Back in an earlier version of OS X Iwas logged into my computer through my wife's and those files were visible. I wondered why there was all this garbage on my machine and promptly deleted it all. When I went back to my computer to boot up I got something no Mac user should ever see: a black screen with white text a la DOS. AppleCare was able to deliver the fix over the phone, luckily.

Crashed Hard Drive, how can I sync music from Iphone to new one?

I understand that the iPhone is intended only to sync with only one computer and for that reason it won't allow me to transfer my music from my iPhone to another computer. Problem is my old hard drive died (along with all my music inside).
How can I transfer the files that are on my iPhone to the iTunes on my new hard drive? I do not have any other back ups as I assumed the iPhone would serve as a back up device itself.

I assumed the iPhone would serve as a back up device itself.
That was a pretty bad assumption. The iTunes content sync is one way: Computer to phone. Apple makes no provision to get content off your phone and into your iTunes library, as it's expected that you backup that library, and no, the iPhone is not a backup device, not designed as such and never intended to be such.
For purchased music from the iTunes store, you can File>Transfer Purchases, before syncing and after you've authorized your computer Store>Authorize this Computer. Music ripped on your own or photos synced to your phone will have to be extracted using third-party software before you do anything else:
http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy/index.php

External Firewire hard drive won't mount after 10.4.10 update

I see many posts about USB drives not mounting after 10.4.10 update. Just lending my voice to that issue (my USB drive won't work either) as well as the 10.4.10 update breaking Firewire drives.
Hope a fix is coming. No backups are scaaaary.

How to fix the problem of a missing external Hard Drive (Firewire) after it vanishes from you desktop after installing 10.4.10 update.
I have a iMac PPC (Non intel). Aparently my system upated installed the wrong version of 10.4.10 and thus my external firewire hard drives a 320 GB Westerndigital My Book, and Acomdata 80 GB, and aWestern Digital 160 GB media center all vanished from the desktop.
The instructions below should be credited to several different people. I found various version of these steps in the Discussion. I combines a few of them into this one 10 step fix and it worked for me. I hope it works for you.
1) Shut down you computer
2) Unplug all peripherals (i.e USB and Firewire, I left computer power plug in as well as ethernet and Keyboard+ Mouse) and leave along for 30 Minutes
3) Restart holding down the Command (Apple) + Option + P + R keys for three startup bongs, then release the keys and your computer will start up as usual.
4) Verify and repair disk Permission using Disk Utility. (Several things were repaired here)
5) Instal 10.4.10 Combo PPC
6) Restart Again
7) Again repair Disk permissions (None of mine needed to be repaired fyi this time)
8) Unplug Power cable and Firewire cable from External Hard Drive (leave along for 1 minute)
9) Reconnect power to Firewire External Drive first then the Firewire cable to the drive second, then the firewire cable from the Drive to the computer last.
10) Turn on your Firewire Drive... you will head it spin up and eventually show up on your desktop just like it did before the 10.4.10 update.

Moving LR5 catalog (Irdata & Ircat) to a new hard drive and photos. Lost all meta data - How do I move meta data along with catalog?

I moved LR5 catalog (Irdata & Ircat) to a new hard drive and photos. Lost all meta data - How do I move meta data along with catalog?
The meta data for each image is missing.
I have over 2,000 images. I don't want to go back through each image and add meta data.
Is there some way to move everything?

No, do not re-import your images. I assume you can see the thumbnails in the library module, just cannot access the full images, right? If this is the case there should be an exclamation mark in the top right corner of every one of your pictures and you only have to tell LR where the images are now.
Click the exclamation mark of one of the images and a dialog window should pop-up, telling you that LR cannot find the file, but with an option to locate it. Press "Locate" and navigate to the folder on your new HD where the file is. If in the new external HD you kept the same folder structure that you had on the internal disk, LR will be able to find all your images and re-link them to the database without further intervention.

Please help me! My MacBook was stolen along with an external hard drive that had all my photos of my children on them. I hadn't backed to iCloud or backed anywhere else. I am distraught. No find my mac either...help...please...

Please help me! My MacBook was stolen along with an external hard drive that had all my photos of my children on them. I hadn't backed to iCloud or backed anywhere else. I am distraught. No find my mac either...help...please... Some programmes are still running like drop of and Skype... Is it all over?!?

Yes, the Old Master file has a folder for each year where I find all photos from that specific year. I am attaching a screen shot of the file.
In the meantime i have managed to download all photos (it did not download any video files though in mpg, avi, 3gp, m4v,mp4 and mov format) to a new iphoto library. Unfortunately the photos are quite mixed and often doubled up. I ma considering to purchase iphoto library which checks all duplicates in iphoto. this will save me a lot of time. What do you think?

I had all my iTunes music backed up onto a hard drive; but the hard drive was stolen along with all the files I backed up onto it. However, the songs I had in iTunes still show up (I just can't play them.) Would it let me get them back?

I had all my iTunes music backed up onto a hard drive; but the hard drive was stolen along with all the files I backed up onto it. However, the songs I had in iTunes still show up (I just can't play them.) If I were to use iCloud, would it still take those songs and let me listen to them (and maybe re-download them?) Or am I out of luck?

Open iTunes, go to the iTunes Store, and then go to Purchased on the right hand side under Music Quick Links.
You can re-download all the songs, apps, or books you have previously purchased.
I'm not sure if this is a requirement, but just in case, make sure you download the latest version of iTunes (v10.3) too.

Just upgraded my iMac to Yosemite. It is now crawling. I'm planning to reformat the hard drive and installing fresh Yosemite and reloading the hard drive. Do I deactivate my CS 6 Suite and Lightroom and then reinstall. Is anyone else experiencing a sl

I just upgraded My iMac (2009) to Yosemite. It is now crawling. I planning to do a fresh install of the operating system. This requires me to format the hard drive. I have already backed up my data. With regards CS 6 suite and Lightroom is the proper process to deactive the program and then reinstall it from my Adobe account? Any other input would be appreciated.

yes, deactivate before uninstalling.
to reinstall, you only need your serial numbers and the installation files.
the installation files:
Downloads available:
Suites and Programs: CC 2014 | CC | CS6 | CS5.5 | CS5 | CS4 | CS3
Acrobat: XI, X | 9,8 | 9 standard
Premiere Elements: 13 | 12 | 11, 10 | 9, 8, 7 win | 8 mac | 7 mac
Photoshop Elements: 13 |12 | 11, 10 | 9,8,7 win | 8 mac | 7 mac
Lightroom: 5.7| 5 | 4 | 3
Captivate: 8 | 7 | 6 | 5
Contribute: CS5 | CS4, CS3
Download and installation help for Adobe links
Download and installation help for Prodesigntools links are listed on most linked pages. They are critical; especially steps 1, 2 and 3. If you click a link that does not have those steps listed, open a second window using the Lightroom 3 link to see those 'Important Instructions'.

External Hard Drive Died On Me...and my iTunes along with it....

My External hard drive recently died, and I had my "My Music" folder on it with all my music. However, since my "My Music" folder was on the ext. drive, which is now dead, I can't open iTunes in general on my computer. Here's what the error message says:
"The folder 'iTunes' cannot be found or created, and is required. The default location is for this folder inside the 'My Music' folder."
I've already tried redownloading. I've also gone through the run program and used the regedit to help reconnect it, but to no avail. Basically, I'm not looking to get back my iTunes music. At this point, I'm just looking to open up my iTunes so that I can start redownloading what I don't have.
Any suggestions? Thanks!

You should be able to work round this by pressing the shift key and holding it down while starting iTunes. You should be asked to choose or create a library.
If you have an iTune folder and library file on you c: drive, navigate there and choose iTunes library.itl. Otherwise choose create and pick somewhere conveinient for iTunes to create a new library, which will be empty.
The basic problem appears to be that your Windows registry thinks the My Music folder is on the nonexistant external drive. This Apple article covers setting the location of the My Music folder:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302398
Message was edited by: polydorus

I had to wipe out my hard drive, along with my iTunes music. Now what? : (

I had some sort of virus and had to reinstall my whole operating system on my Dell PC. Obviously I lost everything, including my iTunes files (both purchased from iTunes and from my own CD collection). I have all of my songs on my iPod currently, about 330 songs.
Is there any way to put the songs back into my iTunes library? I am also being prompted to re-purchase the items I've already bought.
Any help would be appreciated.
TIA!
Amy

Hello Amy,
There are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the files from your iPod. This is just a selection.
YamiPod Mac and Windows Versions
PodUtil Mac and Windows Versions
iPodCopy Mac and Windows Versions
PodPlayer Windows Only
PodPlus Windows Only
Have a look at the web pages and documentation for these and pick one you are happy with, they are generally quite straightforward.
There is also a manual method of accessing the iPod's hard drive through Windows posted in this thread: MacMuse - iPod to iTunes
You may already be using the iPod in manual update mode in which case you can ignore the rest of this post. In manual mode, your iPod is safe from being accidentally erased. However if you are getting a message that your iPod is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, click *No*
You can use a keyboard command to prevent your iPod auto-syncing with iTunes. While connecting the iPod to the computer on a Mac hold down the Option and Command (⌥ and ⌘) keys, on Windows, hold down Shift + Ctrl. This will stop the iPod from auto-syncing with iTunes and the iPod will appear in the source list. Wait until you are sure the iPod has mounted, and that it will not auto sync and then you can let the keys go. This may take between 3 and 30 seconds depending on your computer. Then go to Preferences>iPod and check the "Manually manage songs and playlists" box.
Keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync again.

Catalogs,my external hard drive used to show up as its own folder in my folders but for some reason it now showers up as an extension of my internal HD for my Mac . In finder it shows my External drive is a folder called volumes, along with my Mac hard dr

For some reason my external hard drive no longer shows up as its own folder, instead it shares a folder named volumes with my Macs HD, whats the best way to move it.?

I have the same problem. Let me know when you find a fix.

Tips on removing RAID0 along with hard drive replacement (W700)

Hello,
I have a W700 with 2 160G SATA II drives in it configured with RAID0 (striping). I would like to replace the drives with an SSD drive and, at the same time, un-raid the config.
After some surfing,this seemed like a pretty good guideline for imaging the system, swapping the hard drive(s), and then restoring from the image: http://www.pagestart.com/win7bckuprstrnhd072610.html
But before I launch the project, I thought I'd ask for tips on removing the RAID configuration. Change it to non-raid before swapping out the old drives? Or maybe change it to non-raid the first time I turn the system on with the new drive (but before I've done the restore from image).
New to me, so not sure what all to ask-
Thanks for any help!

I would back up the data, disable RAID in BIOS, remove the old drives, insert the new drive and installation media, and turn the computer back on.
W540: i7-4700mq, K2100m, 8 GB DDR3L, 512 GB SSD
T510: i7-620m, NVS 3100m, 8 GB DDR3, 512 GB SSD

New hard drive and itunes not getting along

I purchases a new external hard drive for my i mac dv 400. the hard drive was getting too full. I need to put itunes on the new hard drive but during install it tells me that i tunes needs to be in the start up volume. what does this mean? is it still possible to get the bulk of itunes on the new drive. or am I stuck again

Hopefully someone there can help me with this problem which is related to backing up using external hard drives and two MACs. I back up using my Laptop and G5 by periodically copying the most up to date Itunes library to the other one. I use the external hard drive to copy them back and forth while at the same time, having a 3rd copy. However, everytime I do this, when I go to play a "purchased" song from my purchased songs in the library, I get the message that this is the 2nd and then 3rd and the 4th....computer I am downloading to and I only have 5 allowable downloads. Evidently, Itunes is not recognizing that this is a same computer that I have been using as a back up. Hopefully this problem is clear to those of you reading this. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Skip

Hard Drive crawling along

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