Bad Blocks on iMac (9,1) - Should I replace the drive?

My wife's early 2009 iMac (9,1) started hangs and crashes. DiskWarrior reported hardware problems, TechTool Pro 7.0.4 found thousands of bad blocks on the factory 1TB hard drive.
After reformatting, there were still hundreds of bad blocks, so I zeroed the drive (one pass only). Now I am left with 98 bad blocks in a range in mid-drive. I can partition the drive and install OS 10.9.3.
Should this drive be replaced?

Yes.

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Should I replace the HD?

as mentioned in a former topic, I had a severe crash after installing SL.
Everybody advised me to change the HD, although every tool I took proved it to be o.k....
Since I reinstalled Leopard (not SL), everything seems to be fine, except using the migration assistant, which does not seem to work, so I could not prove if my usual stuff (i.e. Logic studio/CS4) runs properly.
Should I replace the HD? Does the HD still cause problems?
Any help?

I don't disagree with most of what you say but a few things might be worth considering.
AFAIK, all modern ATA drives use some form of low level error correction & detection, typically CRC, & automatically map out blocks that fail that test after some number of retries. This occurs on all normal reads of physical blocks & is independent of the host computer.
Utilities like TTP at one point (& possibly still today) supplemented this by performing tests that in effect artificially reduce the number of retries to a very low number on the theory that the drive will allow "weak" blocks (those that take several retries to pass error correction tests) to continue to be used until they fail, causing data loss. These "weak" blocks would then be mapped out in some way by the utility. IMO, the value of this is debatable because in effect it assumes that a third party vendor knows more about preventing data loss than the manufacturer of the drive. It also can map out blocks that have no real problems since this kind of "soft" error (failed CRC on a single read) occurs routinely in modern very high density drives.
Absent this kind of utility overruling the disks own checks & mapping out what might be perfectly good blocks, it is sometimes useful to check how many spare blocks have been mapped in & just as importantly how many remain because this tells you something about a suspect drive's continuing reliability. This is where I see vendor utilities and/or SMART Utility for the Mac being of some value. However, since most drives' built-in SMART systems monitor the same thing, I don't think most users need to worry about this … at least for internal drives for which SMART monitoring is supported by the OS.
BTW, by "increasing frequency" of bad blocks, what I meant was something I have observed in the past: when the bad block count suddenly starts growing, it is usually a sign of impending drive failure. Usually this is because the drive's platter has shed magnetic media, perhaps because of a head crash, & the debris are getting trapped between the head & platter & gouging out still more media. Again, if SMART monitoring is available for the drive, it should detect this.

My iMac doesn't see my replacement hard drive

Hi there. I started having problems with the spinning beach ball and then the computer would not boot up. The Apple store said it was my hard drive. Since they wanted almost $400 to replace the drive, I decided to replace it myself. I bought a 500 GB Seagate SATA II drive to replace the original 250 GB drive. I don't have the entire HD backed up but I did copy a lot of important files to CDs and DVDs before the HD failed.
I installed the new HD and inserted the original install disk 1 as I started the computer with the intention of installing the original operating system on the new HD, and then updating the software and copying my files later. When I got to the "select destination" for the software, it was blank--no hard drive appeared. So I ejected the install disk and restarted the computer (without holding down C key)and all I got was a folder with the blinking qestion mark.
I took the HD out and put it back in again, making sure I had good connections with the three snap in plugs. I got the same results. Do you think the drive is bad or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks for any help.

Sorry to hear that. Before you throw in the towel, you might want to run the Hardware Test just to see if it finds a culprit and what that culprit might be. I think you'll find it on the Additional Software Disk that came with the Mac, not the Install Disk. Run it in extended with all peripherals except the keyboard and mouse disconnected.
+Using Apple Hardware Test+
+Before using Apple Hardware Test, disconnect all external devices with the exception of keyboard, mouse, display, and speakers. You should also disconnect the Ethernet network cable. If you are using the MacBook Air, you may need to connect the MacBook Air SuperDrive. Print out these instructions before proceeding with the following steps.+
+1. Restart your computer, holding down the “D” key while the computer restarts.+
+2. When the Apple Hardware Test language chooser screen appears, select the language appropriate for your locale, and press the Return key or click on the right arrow button.+
+3. If your computer is not supported by this version of Apple Hardware Test, an error dialog will be displayed. You should Shut Down the computer, locate the correct DVD containing Apple Hardware Test for this computer, and repeat the above steps.+
+4. If your computer does not restart to Apple Hardware Test:+
+a) Restart your computer with the DVD containing Apple Hardware Test. This should be the same DVD this document resides on. Hold down the “D” key while the computer restarts.+
+b) If your Mac has a Firmware Password enabled you need to disable it first using the Firmware Password Utility when booted from the Mac OS X installation DVD.+
+5. When the Apple Hardware Test main screen appears, follow the onscreen instructions.+

HT1423 I am adding more memory, should I replace the top two slots with the 4g memory modules, then place 2g memory modules on bottom slots. Does it even matter?

I am adding more memory, should I replace the top two slots with the 4g memory modules, then place 2g memory modules on bottom slots. Does it even matter?

I am adding more memory, should I replace the top two slots with the 4g memory modules, then place 2g memory modules on bottom slots. Does it even matter?

My MacBook Pro 13" won't turn on 90% of the time I try to get it running, and when it does turn on, even on a charger, it shuts down if I stop using it for 2 seconds and it won't turn back on. Should I replace the battery?

My MacBook Pro 13" won't turn on 90% of the time I try to get it running, and when it does turn on, even on a charger, it shuts down if I stop using it for 2+ seconds and it won't turn back on. Should I replace the battery? It doesn't hold a charge either...

EmadJamal,
the battery won’t melt because of long connection to the AC charger, although that has the potential of reducing the battery’s life.
Do you have access to a second 60 W AC charger to test with your MacBook Pro, or access to a second 13-inch MacBook Pro against which your AC charger could be tested?

My iphone 5 gets hot while using it and while charging too.... Please help me what should i do?? Should i replace the battery....?? Because it gets hot even within 5 minutes also.... And it is happening from 2 weeks daily.

My iphone 5 gets hot while using it and while charging too.... Please help me what should i do?? Should i replace the battery....?? Because it gets hot even within 5 minutes also.... And it is happening from 2 weeks daily.

The Basic Troubleshooting Steps are:
Restart... Reset... Restore from Backup... Restore as New...
Restart / Reset > http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1430
Backing up, Updating and Restoring > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414
If you try all these steps and you still have issues... Then a Visit to an Apple Store or AASP (Authorized Apple Service Provider) is the Next Step...
Be sure to make an appointment first...

HT1349 should i replace the battery if my laptop is 3 years old and wont start up or recieve power ... took it to apple and the guy readjusted my battery and it was fine for two days and same thing happened? thinking of buying a new battery

should i replace the battery if my laptop is 3 years old and wont start up or recieve power ... took it to apple and the guy readjusted my battery and it was fine for two days and same thing happened? thinking of buying a new battery

I am bemused and have to ask how one "readjusts" a battery?

Do I need to back up my iMac to an external HD? if so should I partion the drive and use it for storage as well

At a loss...

Highly recommended you have at lesat the incremental backups automated by Time Machine (the software). Time Machine makes backups so easy to setup and after that you ‘forget’ about backups as all tasks occur in the background, hourly by default.
If you use Time Capsule (the hardware) for your backups, you should not partition that drive. If you use a conventional external drive, you can consider partitioning it so that one volume is dedicated to Time Machine and one volume for example for other data purposes. When you have an external drive, you need to drag it to the Trash icon on the dock to eject the drive before you shutdown (or restart) the computer; this will ensure all data is physically written to the drive and buffers cleared. When you partition the external drive, ensure that both partitions are ejected before you shutdown.
The first time Time Machine runs, it does a full backup and can take quite a long time depending upon how much you are backing up. After that, it only backs up data that has changed and is usually very quick. At anytime, you can delete those backups and do a new full backup if you wish. It keeps old versions of everything you backup as long as you have space on the drive. When you are nearly out of space, Time Machine deletes the oldest versions of files until it has made enough room to continue backups. You’ll always have at least one complete image of all your data backed up assuming your backup volume is always larger than the data you wish to backup. If your backup disk is not large enough to hold everything, you can select files you do not wish to be backed up by Time Machine, for instance, you may have large video capture files from HDV tape that you do not need to backup because they are already on tape.

Cannot boot into Windows XP, should I replace hard drive?

THE PROBLEM: I have not been able to boot into or use Windows XP (SP2) for almost 3 years. I have been using Linux instead for 3 years and am using it now. The Windows Recovery process only half works, it works up until you have to boot up the computer from the hard drive. Then it no longer works. The computer will load the files from the TOSHIBA Recovery and Applications/Drivers DVD that came new with the computer onto the hard drive. But when you get to the point of booting off the hard drive, with newly added Windows & Toshiba files, nothing happens. It does not boot up into Windows XP. In fact I can see the newly added Windows & Toshiba fileson the hard drive when I boot into Linux (Live) off the hard drive.
THE HARD DRIVE (Specs below): I ran a SMART Data check using a Linux (Ubuntu) Disk utility on the hard drive and it passed everything except for Reallocated Sector Count. There are 20 bad sectors. I called the Toshiba 800 # on the DVD and they told me that the problem may be the hard drive. A new TOSHIBA Recovery and Applications/Drivers DVD costs $40. Toshiba also said there is no Windows XP Recovery Console on the DVD.
CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM: I think, and TOSHIBA agreed it is either the hard drive or corrupteD files on the TOSHIBA Recovery and Applications/Drivers DVD
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: I have found a couple of sites that seem to have instructions for making a Windows XP Recovery Console CD. And I have thought I might try to run some Windows XP Recovery Console commands from such a CD, such as fixboot, fixmbr, etc. The try to see if I can boot into Windows XP from the hard drive. If I can, then that might suggest he problem is corrupted files on the TOSHIBA Recovery and Applications/Drivers DVD. If I still cannot boot into Windows, then maybe I should replace the hard drive. This should be very easy to do.
QUESTION(S): Does anybody have any comments or suggestions? Does my approach sound good? Do you have any other suggestions?
I have a TOSHIBA Satellite L25 S1216 that I bought new in early 2006. It has a 40 GB (5400 RPM) Enhanced IDE (ATA-6) 9.5 mm height hard disk drive in it. User removable, i.e., it is easy to replace.
Thank you,
Bob
Solved!
Go to Solution.

My plan is to try to use the TOSHIBA Recovery and Applications/Drivers DVD to load the WIndows XP files onto the hard drive, then use the Windows XP Recovery console CD I downloaded from here
http://www.proposedsolution.com/downloads/download-windows-recovery-console/
by using commmands such as fxmbr, fixboot, etc to see if I can get the computer to boot up into Windows XP.
Good plan, Bob!
Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console for advanced users
A backup plan would be to obtain a Windows XP installation CD from eBay or wherever. They are super cheap now. Then you could install Windows clean and add the drivers and utilities from the website here. Or you could use it to repair-install Windows.
How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
You are entitled to activate Home Edition for free. I understand that even after Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP (in April), they will honor activation attempts.
I wouldn't mess with SSDs. And stick with IDE PATA drives. You won't need to worry about advanced-format technology since that didn't come along until the very recent SATA drives. Your BIOS should support 120GB (KB303013). Some here.
-Jerry

IMac 27" (mid 2010): Will replacing the HD cause fan problems?

Hi,
I have an iMac 27" (mid 2010). My HD is broken, and I'd like to replace it. I've already installed an SSD, so replacing the HD shouldn't be much of a problem.
However I've read that replacing the HD causes the fan to spin up all the time. Some sites say this started one generation later, but some remain unspecific or say that this problem affects all iMacs. Before I replace my HD, I'd like to know what to expect.
So my question is: in my 2010 iMac, can I replace the HD without causing fan problems (provided I put the temp plug in the right place )?
Best regards,
F

OWC is mistaken. I don't know why they keep saying that. (I'm not even certain the OWC blog linked above related to using the same make drive on the late 2009s was ever correct. I had a long phone conversation with an upper level WD tech some time ago who said that the originals were special ordered by Apple.) Those drives have Apple proprietary firmware which puts the temp sensor output to the jumper block, and you cannot just replace with a drive of the same manufacturer. A non-Apple WD drive will not have that connection at the jumper block.
Two possibilities: Get an external stick-on temp sensor that will work with your model or use SSD Fan Control.
http://exirion.net/ssdfanctrl/
If I'm mistaken and you do get it to work directly with a replacement WD drive I will be pleasantly surprised, since I have a Late 2009 which will need a new drive sooner or later. Please post back with your results.

We are puzzled as to why we are having hard drive memory leakage. Tends to shrink with usage.Should we replace the hard drive? rive lea

According to the get info on the imac hd icon we have used 249.7 out of a possible 250 gb of hardrive. We have deleted some file, caches, but still face the shrinkage which occurs with usage. It may rise to 320 MB but with use fall to 10mb. Is there anything we can do or replace the hard drive?

The 'shrinkage' is due to the system using HD space as virtual memory. That is the reason why you should always leave a good chunk of disk space available for the system to use (depending on how much RAM you have and what sort of work you're using it for, that could be anything from 5 - 20GB or more).
Nothing wrong with the drive itself, you just need to offload some stuff to an external drive to free up enough space for the system to work.
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
How to free up my disk space:
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html

IMac won't boot after replacing hard drive and restoring from Time Machine

I was having problems with my iMac but upgraded to Lion when it came out. Had a few good days and then my hard drive died.
I had the drive replaced and the repair people put Snow Leopard on the new drive.
I then tried to restore everything from my Time Machine backup. At first when I tried to log on the computer wouldn't accept my password (i know it was right).
I decided to reinstall again using the snow leopard dvd i had. This time, the computer booted up (didn't ask me for a passord) and looked like it was in the process of setting things up. But Mail kept saying it was going to import messages but then quit and restarted a few seconds later. When i quit it it just came back again and again. I could see Chrome open behind it with my bookmarks in the toolbar and see other restored things, but the overall look was grey and not everything was there.
When i restarted from the HD and not the dvd i could never get past various shades of grey and the circling progress indicator. Never booted up at all.
I read about Lion having some restore hd functionality but it doesn't show up when i restart with option key. Am I in limbo between operating systems?
Any advice as to steps to take? I don't know much about this stuff.
Thanks for any help.

Yes, if you picked a Snow Leopard backup, that's what you got.
You could pick a Lion backup, and it would restore it, but that wouldn't create the Recovery HD, which you will need, sooner or later. See Using the Recovery HD. You'll need to re-download Lion for that to be created.
When you do that, after downloading but before installing Lion again, you might want to do this: Making a Lion Install disc or partition. Then if you need to reinstall Lion again, you can do it from that, instead of having to download it again.

Hard drive failing, what files besides photos/music/etc should I back up before replacing the drive?

I bought my MacBook 5,2 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz 2GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM in 2009, never had any problems with it until now. For a few months now, my macbook will freeze up (usually if I'm doing a lot such as posting a youtube video on facebook, or running a game,etc) and make a clicking sound, to which I can't do anything except hard restart it. It only did it once in a while until now it's happening more frequently at very annoying times. I never thought to look it up because I'm an idiot but now that I did I learned that my hard drive is imminently going to fail. I know I dropped it once, from my bed to hardwood, with no immediate damage but I'm sure that could've done something, other than that I take very good care of it.
So I'm in the process of backing up my stuff, which I figure isn't a lot so I'm probably going to use a USB drive & CDs..but my question is: Is there anything important that I need to back up besides my files (pictures, music, documents)? Like any program files etc? And when I do replace the hard drive, which I may do myself following DIY on here, what will remain on my computer? Will my applications all be there? I've only downloaded a few programs that could be redownloaded anyways (frostwire, tinyumbrella, etc) and my Pages/office are on disk. Sorry if these questions are stupid, this is my first personal computer and I've honestly never had to back anything up before/replace hard drives. I appreciate any help to any of these questions and I can further detail anything needed

Omdineen wrote:
It boots up to where its just my background and the Finder bar but then crashes, so I can't click anything. Anything from here or am I just screwed?
There are a few remaining options.
If you have another Mac with a FireWire port, try FireWire Target Disk Mode: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
You need a FireWire cable to connect the two Macs. This will allow you to mount your failing HD on a working Mac and copy files that way.
Try Safe Mode - read about it first:
Safe Mode or "Safe Boot" is a troubleshooting mode that bypasses all third party system extensions and loads only required system components.
Starting up in Safe Mode
This assumes the Finder is crashing due to a third party system extension or optional system component that Safe Mode will prevent from loading. You should still be able to copy files directly to an external device, but file sharing will be disabled.
Lastly boot from the DVD again, repair the disk again, reinstall OS X, and keep your fingers crossed. You're squeezing the last drops of life from the thing.

What to use for backups? Should I clone the drive?

I have a 100Gb hard drive and would like to know what software i should use to backup/clone. I'm still relatively new to Macs and the idea of a cloned drive isn't as feasible in the PC world. I ordered an external drive (250Gb) and will use part of it for my Mac (Can I use half for my Powerbook and half for my PC laptop?). The external drive will have firewire.
My main concern is backups with the ability to boot as an added feature. What plan should I use? I have no problem cloning the whole drive once or twice a month. Should I buy Carbon Copy, Super Duper or Deja vu? Is there something better out there? HELP!

The main fear I was referring to about the drive partitioning was the possibility of drive failure, which might lose data on both partitions. Whilst loss is a relatively unlikely event, the whole idea of backing up is to give you the re-assurance that your data is safe when that 'unlikely' event happens (which it probably will when you least expect or want it to). Over the years I have learned the hard way that backups should be treated in the most safest and most conservative manner - no shortcuts. That said, the event you described is very unlikely.
You can erase and partition the drive whilst booted into OS X normally, using Disk Utility. Obviously the PC partition needs to be formatted for MS-DOS. Once erased and properly partitioned, the drive will be ready for cloning. There's no need to repeat the erase/partitioning process in the future - unless there's a problem. These tasks do not need to be performed in safe mode.
15" 1.25GHz/12" 1GHz PBs, 2xPPC Mac minis, 12" iBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.6) Cube, 2xTAMs, iPods 2G/4G, iPs, AEBS, AX

The optical drive won't allow me to insert a CD. Thinking there maybe a CD already in and the normal eject did not work I then tried the terminal command "cdutil eject" but no CD is detected. Any suggestions? or should I just replace the drive.

I have a 4 year old Mac Book. I can't insert a CD. When I try the CD goes almost 1/2 way in and then hits something hard. Using Terminal and "cdutil eject" indicated that there was no disk in the drive.
Any sugggestions? Or should I plan on replacing the optical drive?

See if the pevious discussions listed on the right side of this page under the heading More Like This help.

Bad Blocks on iMac (9,1) - Should I replace the drive?

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