IMac hard drive extremely slow (but not on BootCamp)

My iMac 20" from late 2006 has suddenly become extremely slow, meaning it read/writes from/to the harddisk at a very slow rate, down to 1 MBps according to Disk Speed Bench X. It's impossible to use the computer now and I haven't done anything special lately to make this happen, except downloading a lot of files lately that took a lot of space (down to 3 GB left on my 250 GB drive), until I deleted them again.
Interestingly, my BootCamp partition with XP Professional is working perfectly.
What is the solution? A new drive? I'm trying to restore it from Time Machine now, but it's taking forever... Oh, and I have used Onyx and repaired all rights, and Disk Tools reports that everything is in perfect order.

Ack - sorry. Doing two things at once and I missed that. Still, having gotten down to 2GB and now at 20GB, you may well have developed some fragmentation issues. First, run Disk Utility and make sure there's nothing that needs to be repaired. This might explain the slow down. If it passes, or if you successfully repair the drive, and the disk is still slow, consider defragging the drive. Ordinarily the Mac OS doesn't need it but when your drive becomes very full the Mac's built in defragging methodology doesn't work so well.

Similar Messages

Need to reinstall Photoshop elements on my iMac - hard drive crash and do not have a back-up copy. How do I get another copy?

Need to reinstall Photoshop elements on my iMac - hard drive crash and do not have a back-up copy. How do I get another copy?

Unfortunately, you're in the wrong forum. This is not the Elements forum.
Here's the link to the forum you want:
https://forums.adobe.com/community/photoshop_elements/content

I able to copy and paste files from external hard drive to mac, but not the other way around. Please suggest. Thanks

I m able to copy and paste selected files from external hard drive to my mac but not the other way around. Im not able to copy files from Mac to external hard drive.
The same is working fine with USB flash memory.
Please help.

Vijay Raymond Daniel wrote:
The only thing is we need to buy this software. if there is a free solution to inter change files between NTFS and HFS it would be better,
Don't use NTFS, remove your data off it first and change the format to something the Mac and PC can read, but doens't cost money or require software.
Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's

IPod as hard drive in profiler, but not in iTunes

I am using an 80 gig iPod Classic as a hard drive for my iTunes library. Until recently it worked fine, but yesterday on startup, it would not show on the desktop, or when I tried to launch iTunes. But it is in the system profiler - and the iPod itself shows that it has power from the computer.
The iPod says that it is "connected" and that it is "synchronizing"
Does anyone know how I can shock it into showing on the desktop and in my iTunes???
I have restarted the computer, reset the iPod, tried a new cable, and everything else I could think of.
I do not want to restore the iPod because it has all my songs on it.
Thanks

Have you tried connecting the iPod to a different USB port on the computer? If the iPod reads "connected" I would recommend shutting the computer down prior to disconnecting it. If the iPod continues to display the "connected" screen even while the computer is shut down, or while not connected, try resetting the iPod again.
CG

Have downloaded my library from a portable hard drive to itunes but not showing in library on home site please help windows 8

trying to download music from portable harddrive and wont go to I tunes library saving as I tunes link. working on windows 8..... Please help

I'm not sure if iTunes will like to run those files if they're on an external drive. Honestly I've never tried. Have you tried dragging a few songs, maybe an album, into your 'music' part of your drive, then try to import them into iTunes?
I moved computers a couple of months ago and that's waht I did, saved my music to a portable drive, then dragged it back onto my C drive and into the music folder, then imported it into iTunes.

Ello, I changed my Imac hard drive which no longer worked. I installed a hard drive Western Digital 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA3 WD5002AALX 32M Black. Sometimes I see the hard disk in the utility on the Starter CD, but access seems very slow. By cons when I want

Hello, I changed my Imac hard drive which no longer worked. I installed a hard drive
Western Digital 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA3 WD5002AALX 32M Black. Sometimes I see the hard disk in the utility on the Starter CD, but access seems very slow. By cons when I want
install OS X 10.4.2 on the hard drive, I do not see the disk. What is the problem?

Thanks for the help
I started on the installation CD OS X 10.4.2, I used Disk Utility
to partition the disk according to the document that you have proposed. unfortunately
I have not succeeded. When I partition the disk, even if I called it Macintosh HD, it
does not keep the name and it shows disk0s3 instead. I did an erase on disk.
When I mount the disk it tells me that I must repair. When I tried to repair, I got
the following message:
Volume check failed
The underflying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error.
I also had a message:
Invalid b-tree node size.
Note: The disc is new, but it has already been formatted on a computer Imac 27 inch 2011 OS X Lion.
I used a USB 2.0 to SATA cable to adjust the formatting.
What to do to fix it?

Slow iMac and Time machine won't recognize iMac hard drive

I have an older iMac (2.16GHz Intel) that is upgraded to OSX10.6.7. Recently it has been running very slow (although it did not seem to correlate with any particular install that I know of). I have looked at the Activity Monitor and cannot find anything that is consuming vast amounts of memory (although I can't say that I really know what I'm looking for exactly, just no high numbers). I did a Safe Boot and it is still really slow there (EXAMPLE of slow is taking several minutes to open a program or taking 27 hours to download my pictures (which only took 13 minutes on my MacBook)). I know my iMac could use more memory (1G), but the slow problem is there even if only running one program. I can't find a particular pattern to it, it just hangs up and then comes back most of the time. It did however start shutting itself down recently. I finally got into disk utility (I've been trying to run disk utility and it usually goes into an eternal spin that I can't even force quit - have to hard boot). So from disk utility I ran verify disk in first aid - it says "the volume Macintosh HD appears to be ok." I"m not sure what else I'm supposed to do in here either. So my first question is Does anyone have any other suggestions for the slowness? Second, in the meantime I'm desperately trying to back up my data on the time machine that I stupidly have never set up as a back up. I can manually put files one at a time over there, but if I try to use it as a time capsule (system preferences, time capsule on) my hard drive does not show up as one of the options???? My external drive and the data that is already on the time capsule show up, but not my iMac hard drive. So my second question is How do I get my time machine to see my hard drive or is there another way to get my files to move over there? I realize I'm in trouble, any help would be greatly appreciated. I've tried to provide as much info as possible. Maybe there is something obvious I'm missing.

My own response, or rather an update: I took the computer up to the Genius Bar - my hard drive is bad. They are going to try to rescue my data. For those of you reading this with a similar problem, make an appointment and go to the Apple Store if you can. Mike, my personal "genius" for this encounter, said that stressing the machine when the hard drive is going bad just risks damaging it more. If you potentially have a hardware issue, take it and let them determine what is wrong. They have tools and diagnostics most of us wouldn't know how to use if we read about them here - and they have ways of retrieving data (I hope) that most of us do not have. Please note that disk utility said my hard drive was ok, but the diagnostics they did showed that in fact my hard drive was much less than ok, but it was still "mounting" hence the disk utility reporting it was ok. It is over an hour drive for me to get to the Apple store, and I only wish I had gone sooner.

Now that I saved everything to my LaCie external hard drive, do I need to erase my IMAC hard drive? My computer is still slow. :(

My computer is still slow after uninstalling Macbook pro and buying a LaCie external hard drive and saving everything to it. I repaired disk permissions. Am I supposed to erase original hard drive?
Thanks!

Not yet, get a second hard drive, or a second medium to backup your data. You never want there to be less than two copies of your data at anytime. If for some reason one fails, you'll always want a backup. Clone with Superduper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Note, if you have an early 2008 Mac, it is not PPC, but rather Intel. PPC indicates the chip is G3, G4, or G5. You can double check this by going to Apple menu and selecting About This Mac. Once you verified your Mac, I can ask a moderator to move this thread, so you don't have to crosspost.

IMac hard drive failing; external TM will restore but won't then back up

It appears my early 2009 (OS X 10.9.5) hard drive is failing as it crashed 6 months ago, in November and again this week. SMART Utility says it has re-allocated 6 bad sectors and there has been 1 re-allocated event. Each Time I have successfully restored from an external hard drive with TM on it. Prior to the November fail, CCC reported an odd (unknown to me system file) corrupt file but, instead of replacing the file as perhaps I should, I decided to re-boot which it wouldn't do and hence the November TM restore.
However, despite restoring successfully the external TM will no longer make back ups. I have tried repairing it but it is greyed out and Verify says 'unable to complete.' Eventually I did get the greyed out button to work but Repair reported:
Verifying volume “Time Machine”
Checking file system
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Keys out of order
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect block count for file iNode785919y8
(It should be 13 instead of 4194317)Invalid extent entry
Missing thread record (id = 82)
Incorrect size for file iNode78591999
(It should be 4096 instead of 274877907467)
Invalid extent entry
File record has hard link chain flag (id = 78591999)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 78591999)
(It should be 1 instead of 17)
Missing thread record (id = 18)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect block count for file iNo$e78592002
(It should be 4194317 instead of 13)
Missing thread record (id = 82)
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect size for file iN/de7x592003
(It should be 4096 instead of 274877907467)
Invalid extent entry
File record has hard link chain flag (id = 78592067)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 78592067)
(It should be 1 instead of 17)
Missing thread record (id = 4194322)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
File record has hard link chain flag (id = 78592004)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 78592004)
(It should be 1 instead of 17)
Missing thread record (id = 18)
Incorrect size for file iNode78592005
(It should be 0 instead of 64)I
nvalid extent entry
Invalid extent entryIncorrect size for file iNode78592006
(It should be 0 instead of 4194304)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Missing thread record (id = 4194322)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
File record has hard link chain flag (id = 82786312)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 82786312)
(It should be 1 instead of 17)
Missing thread record (id = 18)
Incorrect block count for file )Nod%78592009
(It should be 65 instead of 1)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect block count for file iNode78592010
(It should be 0 instead of 4194304)
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect size for file iNode78592011
(It should be 0 instead of 274877906944)
Invalid catalog record type
The volume Time Machine could not be verified completely.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Whilst pondering this, the hard drive crashed again this week. Bizarrely I was able to restore from the very same external TM that will not let me do further back ups nor be repaired.
I wonder if there are any further checks I can do to establish if my iMac hard drive is failing? I will then decide whether to replace the hard drive - I see I can fit a WD 6TB with the jumpers set to reduce the speed to 3GB/s - or buy a new iMac.
I wonder also whether there is anything I can do to preserve my TM back ups. I realise I am being guided to re-format this external drive, but can I do that and then add back the actual existing back ups (which I would transfer to another disk before re-formatting) rather than start again from no history newly formatted?

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.

Can I recover data from a reformatted hard drive? I did not do a back up prior to talking to Apple Support and the guy having me delete the hard drive and start anew. My bad but is all lost??

Can I recover data from a reformatted hard drive? I did not complete a back up prior to talking to Apple Support and the guy having me delete the hard drive (10.5.8) and start anew (10.6.3). My bad but is all lost?? Years of very important information....

You will need to purchase reovery sofware such as such as FileSalvage
http://subrosasoft.com/software/filesalvage
You can download a demo copy that will tell you what it can recover
If you want to recover that you must pay for the software then
When you do the recovery, you will need another disk drive to receive the recovered files
Having install a new operating system on the disk after the retformat is going to gradually reduce the amount of data that this software will be able to recover for you
Allan

I just fix my macbook air because it was kernel panic. They changed the hard drive. I could not back up with Time Machine, because it did not work and I had over Adobe creative suite 5 design premium student. But I finished my studies last year and I'd li

I just fix my macbook air because it was kernel panic. They changed the hard drive. I could not back up with Time Machine, because it did not work and I had over Adobe creative suite 5 design premium student. But I finished my studies last year and I'd like to know how to get the serial number for me to reinstall Adobe creative suite 5 design premium when I am no longer study because I would still like the used? It is not fair if I do anymore because I really need.

You can download Creative Suite 5 here:
Other downloads
To deal with the issue of the serial number and using it again, you'll have to use Web Chat. Here's a link:
Adobe ID, sign in, and account help
See the bottom of the page for a link

I just downloaded Yosemite operating system and my computer is extremely slow but also not opening my Adobe applications. Can anyone help? thanks!

I just downloaded Yosemite operating system and my computer is extremely slow but also not opening my Adobe applications. Can anyone help? thanks!

First, tell Apple about your problems... with details... and hope for an update that fixes your slowness
Second, Yosemite sometimes has problems, often related to "default" permissions needing to be changed
-one person's solution https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1689788
-http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/creative-cloud-and-yosemite/
-https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/mac-os-yosemite-compatability.html

Why does my Mac say my hard drive is full, but that's not true?

Why does my Mac say my hard drive is full, but there should be plenty of space on it?

You need to get a program like OmniDiskSweeper, it will check your drive and see what is taking up the space. From there you can decide what to do.

I bought a new external hard drive for backups, but time machine won't do a full back up. I think it is remembering backing up onto previous external hard drives, which I don't own anymore. How do I do a new full backup?

I bought a new external hard drive for backups, but time machine won't do a full back up.
I think it is remembering backing up onto previous external hard drives, which I don't own anymore. How do I do a new full backup?
When I bought the new (used) iMac, I also bought an external hard drive for backups. It worked fine, but my husband stole it.
Then I bought a new external hard drive (Seagate) and it worked fine for three weeks, then died.
So I just got a new external hard drive, which was put together from an internal hard drive and a hard drive enclosure.
Time machine did the first backup today, and it should have taken 9 hours like it did on the previous first time full back up. Instead, it took 30 minutes. That can't be right. I want to start over and do a full backup to make sure everything gets onto my new external hard drive, but I can't figure out how to do that. Please help.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
tmutil compare -E
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
The command will take at least a few minutes to run. Eventually some lines of output will appear below what you entered.
Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.

I upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

i upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

Thank you. I followed the faq#14 (using setup wizard from the osx install disk). Everything went just as planned until I woke up this morning and noticed there was no progress on the "transferring documents" meter. It stopped about 1/4 of the way. I can hear the computer working and the bar is somewhat animated like it is advancing but it's not.
Should I cancel and restart or should I wait it out? It already been about 13 hours since I started the process. Do you think it is my time machine or my iMac? Maybe the time machine file is corrupt or something.
Anyway, any help is appreciated. Thanks.

IMac hard drive extremely slow (but not on BootCamp)

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for