G5 Hard Drive Spins out of control

Every so often (like today) since the day I brought this G5 home, the Hard Drive starts to spin out of control (whether in use or asleep). I then have to force it down. When I re-start, it's just fine. This probably happens once every three months. I could never get an answer from Mac - any ideas why this happens?

Have to say I have zero idea what an out of control spin would be (off the race track of course).
But with any system or hard drive issue, how about repairing the drive directory with Disk Warrior.
Force shutdowns generally cause directory problems. A Safe Boot helps, some. Not enough.
I would not say it is fine, though, and Apple First Aid doesn't do enough.
See this other thread with LOTS of good tips on troubleshooting:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2661574

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Time capsule hard disk spinning out of control

My TC's hard disk out of of the blue yesterday started spinning louder than it usually does and cuasing it to emit a whirring, grinding like sound which acclerated to the point I thought the tc was either going to become airborn and/or explode or both.
The tc was not living in unusal condions both enviroment, configuration or extreme temperature variations. It was on a seperate return portion of my desk with nothing around it to crowd or adversly affect. Configuration is ethernet to comcast smc business gateway over the wan port and a direct ethernet to thunderbolt conx to my macbook pro retina and finally a sonos bridge was connected as well.
At the time this occured I had not been putting the tc through anything more unusal than providing DHCPservices for my local area network in my house.
When I plug it back in its spits and tries to spin but gives up and the status light remains solid amber. it will not reset either as far as changing from solid amber to blinking to open airport utility.
its a first generation 500gb tc, however it is the third device genius bar has replaced since i purchased originally in Apr 2009? each time genius bar has replaced it through apple care on my mac as a peripheral device covered by applecare they have strangly had three! of the original (same 2008/9 model to replace the failed one which none to date has ever had any of the sympotons i describe here. just trouble accessing files. Now my fear is I no longer have the imac w/apple care the tc was covered by but I have a new macbook pro retina which I bought in December and is still under warranty so i wanted to try and economize and wait to by apple care later this spring.
all my backups are on the tc 500 gigs worth plus I need the router support as i have comcast business class and they dont offer a wifi cable modem. I'm frantic that I will get nothing from apple care or genius bar but the same bland, robotic like detatchment all apple employees seem to be secretly instructed to treat its custromers with these days as they maddeningly tell me to buy a newer tc for $299 or $399 that i simply dont have the money to do so and dont antcipate having it at all in the next 6 months especially snce I just shelled out 2 grand in Decemeber for the new macbook pro retina. Especially saddened I coud have potentially lost all of my photos and my 60 or so gigs of itunes media purchased entirely from itunes fair and square for the past decade to the tune of twenty thousand dollars!
Appreciative of all your expertise,
Desperately mistrustful of Apple in the post Steve culture
San Francisco, Calif

I am reading through the boards here and it sounds as though there was a small fraction of those who purchased the orignal tc in the spring of 2008 who have experinced the same issues exactly. It also sounds as though Apple ackowledged this to those who complained with a replacement of a later generation tc AND conceeded to those affected that there was indeed a design flaw. Astonishingly, Apple did not issue a press release nor a product recall!
As I said Genius Bar here in San Francisco did replace the device three times but with the exact same model. The most recent swap was in Jan of 2012.
I am sick to death of being disregarded and abused by Apple everytime I experience a valid hardware issue or reuire tech support period. Since 2004 I have faithfully purchased Apple Care agreements with nearly every device I've purchased and this one time when I try to save a little money by waiting untill the 90 day warranty on my macbook pro I purchased in Dec 2012 is close to expiring AS advised "off the record" by more than one Apple Care advisor.
An abbriviated list of the hardware I have purchaded directly from Apple retail and online:
2 ipod classics 2004
3 ipod nanos 2006, 2007, 2009
macbook white unibody 2007
macbook black special edition 2008
macbook aluminum 2009
imac 20" 2008
imac 24" 2009
imac 27" 2010
time capsule 2008
airport expresss 4 purchased between 2008-2012
the last airport express I bought less than one week before the new model hit the shelves but do you think Apple felt compelled to tell me or even let me trade up?
iphone frst gen 2007
iphone 3g 2008
iphone 3gs (4 devices of this model purchased between 2008-2010
iphone 4 (2 devices)
iphone 4s "
iphone 5 purchased in oct 2012
Macbook pro retina purchased Dec 2012
Do you think maybe I've just been a little too loyal? Or am I just stupid???

Hard drive spin down - good or bad for the drives

Having had a few drives fail recently, I've started to wonder about the whole issue of the energy saver preference for having hard drives spin down. I've always had it disabled because it seems to be generally believed that that's the way to work on a fcp (or avid for that matter) editing system. But now that I've started imagining every drive failing, I'm wondering whether it makes sense to perhaps have another user account that I switch to for nonediting moments in which the spin down option is enabled.
Any opinions out there?

Drive manufacturors report a MTBF (mean time between failures) often in the 200,000 hours range. This works out to something like 22 years. Drives that fail in less time than that are often subjected to three things:
- heat
- voltage irregularities - spikes or brownouts
- physical shocks
oh, and did I mention heat?
As drive RPM increases, so does energy consumption and heat. The best thing you can do for drives is to keep them in a cool, well ventilated location and to put them on a conditioned power supply.
FWIW, I have scsi drives that are over 10 years old running everyday with no issues.
Spindown seems to be an energy saver issue but I wonder about the cycle of powering down and back up over and over and over. It seems like that would put much more stress on bearings, motors and the like.
good luck.
x

I have an imac 20 in. The old hard drive crapped out on me. i put a new harddrive in and am now trying to install linux. But the imac doesnt recognise any keyboards

I have an imac 20 in. The old hard drive crapped out on me. i put a new harddrive in and am now trying to install linux. But the imac doesnt recognise any keyboards

Without a bootable backup/clone or a Time Machine backup of your previous Snow Leopard installation or a saved copy of Lion's install app, you'll have to upgrade your Leopard volume to Snow Leopard (10.6.6+) so you can waste another hour or more DLing the Lion thing again.

I got a Model Number: A1181, My hard drive burned out. I bouhgt a new hard drive Wd Scorpio 500 GB. When i tried to install the MAC OS, it identies a hard drive with 3.6 TB and i'm not able to do the installation.

I got a Model Number: A1181, My hard drive burned out. I bouhgt a new hard drive Wd Blue Scorpio 500 GB. When i tried to install the MAC OS, it identifies a hard drive with 3.6 TB and i'm not able to do the installation. I touhgt the new ard drive was bad but i was able to install windows XP. Any ideas what do i have to do?

Well, let's hope that nothing was jiggled out of place when you were installing the new hard drive. Your optical drive may just be out of alignment or the disc you have is "dirty." Get a lint-free cloth and some rubbing alcohol, then clean the disc as thoroughly as you can starting from the center and working outward in a concentric circlular motion. See if that helps. In particular clean the inner portion well.
If this does not help, then you have a problem. You have opened the computer yourself. That action voids all support from Apple. If you take the computer in for service the store may refuse to service the computer. This is not related to your now expired warranty.

Trying to copy ANY file from my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive spins for 45 minutes then fails. I hate this computer and WISH I never would have wasted my money. Any ideas? WD My Passport 2TB Drive, had to buy a program to make the POS write

Trying to copy ANY file from my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive spins for 45 minutes then fails. I hate this computer and WISH I never would have wasted my money. Any ideas? WD My Passport 2TB Drive, had to buy a program to make the POS read files. Copies that would take seconds from a Windows based machine never complete. I have to close the transfer or shut off the machine half the time. Worst computer I have EVER owned, crashes non-stop, constantly freezes, and seems like EVERY operation is more complicated with this thing. Literally, my 1997 Compaq was FAR MORE reliable and user friendly.

This is one of the messages I keep getting; The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in -- File Whatever -- can’t be read or written.(Error code -36)
I have copied things to the hard drive in the past, but it has always been incredibly slow, and now just seems to freeze and fail

Hard drive spins down and have to do a hard reboot

I have an Intel iMac 3.06 (April 2008). Ever since I upgraded to Snow Leopard especially when I am using itunes (9.02) (downloading) the hard drive spins down for no reason at all.The energy settings are fine. The only option I have is to hold the power button down for 5 sec and reboot when it happens. I know this has been an issue with other intel iMacs but when the "fix" for other machines was available it said my machine did not need it. I beg to differ. This is getting very annoying as I am sure it is not doing the hard drive any good having to hard reboot all the time.
I have tried the power management reset which has not resolved the problem.

Hi David
Welcome to Apple Discussions
1. In the Energy Saver preference try setting Computer sleep: to "Never" and make sure the the box "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" is unchecked.
2. Try resetting the System Management Controller as described in the article below.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1543
Now then if you are still having a problem you might also:
1. Use the Restore Default button on the Energy Saver preference panel and then reselect your sleep settings.
or
2. Go to: Macintosh HD > Library > Preferences > SystemConfiguration and trash the "com.apple.PowerManagement.plist" which also restore's the Energy Saver preference to default, then go back to the Energy Saver preference and reselect your sleep settings.
Dennis

My hard drive went out one of my Macs and I am trying to install logic studio on another Mac but the serial number is invalid. What are my options?

My hard drive went out one of my Macs and I am trying to install logic studio on another Mac but the serial number is invalid. What are my options?

Check that the serial you are using is the correct one..
Typically the problem is either you are misreading the serial and therefore typing it in wrong. Check you are correctly entering zeros or O.. and so on....
or...
You bought the LP9 upgrade version.... which requires the LP8 full serial as well.
If it is the LP9 upgrade serial.. (and not the LP9 full serial) you must enter your original LP8 full serial first and then the upgrade serial for LP9.. when it asks for it.
Failing that.. you can obtain a replacement serial from Apple.. using this form.....
https://ssl.apple.com/support/proapps/serialnumbers/

How can I completely wipe the hard drive with out the Mac OS X disc? I don't need any of the info on the computer.

How can I completely wipe the hard drive with out the Mac OS X disc? I don't need any of the info on the computer.

You can't unless you have a bootable system on an external drive you can use. Otherwise, you need either the original disc that came with your computer or a retail copy of Snow Leopard DVD. The latter contains 10.6.3, so your model must be capable of booting from that or an earlier version of OS X.
You can purchase replacement discs from Apple:
Apple Store Customer Service at 1-800-676-2775 or visit online Help for more information.
To contact product and tech support: Apple - Support - Contact Apple Support.
You can purchase Snow Leopard through the Apple Store: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple Store (U.S.). The price is $19.99 plus tax. You will be sent physical media by mail after placing your order.
After you install Snow Leopard you will have to download and install the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1 to update Snow Leopard to 10.6.8 and give you access to the App Store. Access to the App Store enables you to download Mountain Lion if your computer meets the requirements.

Safari Spinning Out of Control - Why Doesn't This Get Better?!!

For a very extended period, Safari has been spinnin out of control memory-wise - no other OS I use does this, not does any other browser I use on OSX. This goes on and on and on and on, with no real remidiation coming from Apple. It is maddening and ruiining the usability of using the MAC and OSX. It may be due to Flash, or Flash and Apple's refusal to properly work with Adobe - Flash is out there - it is on a huge number of websites and not just for entertainment - it cannot be avoided - also transactional sites such as StubHub use it. If I have ten or fifteen web pages open, Safari, between Safari Web Content, Safari and Flash, can take three or four gigabytes or even more, and Flash is the least of them. It does not happen with Firefox. With Safari spinning out of control, the entire device slows down. This has been going on for far far far too long. It happen on my MacBook and my iMac. When is this going to get resolved? I am starting to despise using the Mac and OSX.

For a very extended period, Safari has been spinnin out of control memory-wise - no other OS I use does this, not does any other browser I use on OSX. This goes on and on and on and on, with no real remidiation coming from Apple. It is maddening and ruiining the usability of using the MAC and OSX. It may be due to Flash, or Flash and Apple's refusal to properly work with Adobe - Flash is out there - it is on a huge number of websites and not just for entertainment - it cannot be avoided - also transactional sites such as StubHub use it. If I have ten or fifteen web pages open, Safari, between Safari Web Content, Safari and Flash, can take three or four gigabytes or even more, and Flash is the least of them. It does not happen with Firefox. With Safari spinning out of control, the entire device slows down. This has been going on for far far far too long. It happen on my MacBook and my iMac. When is this going to get resolved? I am starting to despise using the Mac and OSX.

Fans & hard drive spin, no start up tone or display... help?

I just sold my old G4 tower on ebay, and the buyer tells me there's no start up tone or anything on his monitor, but the hard drive spins and so do the fans. The CD drawer opens but holding "c" and booting from the software disk doesn't work. He's tried resetting the pram, pressing the cuda switch and removing the battery. I of course made sure the computer ran before I shipped it, and in fact this computer has never given me any problems whatsoever. Does anyone have suggestions for what to do from here? Or even a guess as to what happened... I'm confused because there must have been some damage during shipping, but the box was fine and the computer was fine inside as well. On top of that, I'd expect some kind of an impact to affect moving parts like the hard drive, but that spins with no problems, and if it was just a hard drive problem booting from the software disk should work.

Hi, Alex, and welcome to the Discussions!
Any chance that the new Mac owner might join the Discussions and get an independent review and advice from the Members? We'd be happy to help him try to get up and running, as long as it's kept independent from this particular topic (since this really isn't a place for a potential buyer-seller dispute...)
What model Mac are we referring to here?
As previously referred to, the startup memory settings are commonly lost when one has a weak, dead, or defective battery and the Mac is then disconnected from an AC power source for a period of time. Oftentimes, the Mac can be restarted by removing the battery completely, doing a PMU reset, hooking up the power cord, and restarting with the battery removed. This might confirm that the Mac is indeed okay, perhaps maybe just needing a new battery (which he can test with a voltmeter, per Texas Mac Man's Tutorial).
You didn't mention whether or not the owner is using your original monitor, mouse and keyboard. This could be pertinent information in troubleshooting this, if the PMU reset/battery doesn't correct things.
Gary

I had a hard drive blow out and lost my itunes library. Now when I connect my ipod itunes tells me it is not sync'd. I am not permited to delete or add any songs. I do not want to loose my ipod songs if I reset. Any ideas? Thanks.

I had a hard drive blow out and lost my itunes library. Now when I connect my ipod itunes tells me it is not sync'd. I am not permited to delete or add any songs. I do not want to loose my ipod songs if I reset. Any ideas? Thanks.

See this older post from another forum member Zevoneer covering the different methods and software available to assist you with the task of copying content from your iPod back to your PC and into iTunes.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2452022?start=0&tstart=0
B-rock

Hard drive spins very fast during youtube viewing

My hard drive spins fast every time I watch youtube or any other video streaming sites. Is it normal? or bad. You will know that the HD spins if the fan is on right?
HELP...

Hi dattebayo: If the fan is spinning up while viewing videos or other CPU intensive activities, that is what it is meant to do. Without that the CPU and the computer in general would shut down pretty quickly. The program I mnetioned earlier is available here. http://www.islayer.com/index.php?op=item&id=7
Stedman

Delay on save as external hard drive spins up

I have an issue with Snow Leopard that seems new.
Often when I go to save a document there is a significant delay while the external hard drive spins up. This happens also sometimes when I go to open a file from within an application.
I have spotlight set to not index that drive. How can I stop my computer from thinking that something I may want to save to the external hard drive? I would like to ignore it all together except for when I use Time Machine.

You can try the energy saver settings, telling OS X to not spin down drives. However, for external drives, often they do their own thing.
There's no way to do what you want, unfortunately. The standard file dialog will probe all attached drives, so when you try to save, and the drive is spun down, it will wake and respond. As you've noted, this can take a few seconds.

HT1351 I recently had my hard drive wiped out by a virus and had to reinstall windows and itunes. When i hooked up my ipod it didnt automatically sync my songs on my ipod with the library. How do I do this manually?

I recently had my hard drive wiped out by a virus and had to reinstall windows and itunes. When I hooked up my ipod it did not transfer my songs from my ipod to my itunes library. How do I do this?

iTunes syncing is generally in one direction only, from the computer's iTunes library to the iPod. You cannot use iTunes to transfer song files from iPod to computer (except for songs purchsed from the iTunes Store).
However, there are third-party methods and utilities that can transfer from iPod to computer. If you do an Internet search on something like "ipod transfer," you should get some links. (The CNET article seems to be popular.)
Once the song files are on your computer's drive, you can add them to your new iTunes library. (Going forward, you should use a backup strategy, and include your iTunes data in what gets backed up. Then, you would be able to recover your complete iTunes library, including things like playlists and ratings.)

G5 Hard Drive Spins out of control

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