My hardrive is failing on my iMac8,1.

My iMac's hardrive is warming up up to the point that I get the blank screen with question mark. I let it cool off and it runs.
I am looking for a 1-2TB hard drive but I am not sure on what brand to go with.
I keep hearing Hitachi, Samsung, or Seagate.
Any thoughts, suggstions, or ideas?

I just put a WD 1tb in my 2007 iMac. So far it is working great. I used a video from uTube to see how to install it and I had it in less that a half hour. I reloaded ML and then used Migration Assistant ot put my system back to where I had it from my TimeMachine.

Similar Messages

My mac keeps freezing, the disk utility states the hardrive is failing

Hi. My desktop was upgraded to the snow leopard and has had increasing problems with freezing. Now it wont start up at all, so I have to open it with the Disk 1 OS.. then I went to the disk utility to try and repair it. But it says the hard drive is failing. When I did the hard drive test, it passed without any issues. I am confused and cannot restart my computer.

If by the "hard drive test" you mean the Apple Hardware Test (AHT) that you run by starting up the Mac into it, it is possible (but not very likely) that reformatting the HD using Disk Utility while booted from the installer DVD & then reinstalling the OS from the same source will set things right.
To do the reformat, select the entire HD & use the "Partition" tab to choose a new, single partition scheme from the popup.
But if you cannot even get that far, or the process fails, then your drive is dying, even if AHT can't detect it.

Computer harddrive failed- getting contents from ipod onto new harddrive?

Itunes says that my ipod is synced with "another computer"- well, yes, it is synced with the hardrive that failed and no longer works.
But Itunes does not seem to give the option of transfering the ipods contents onto the new hardrive (and os).
I think I have 5 computers my purchased songs can be used on- I think I have used up 3 simply by reinstalling my OS over the last couple of years. But really, my songs are only on ONE computer. How do I delete the old accounts?
And how do I transfer the contents onto my new harddrive- not just purchased songs but my entire mp3 collection that is on my ipod.?
I did not back up my hardrive for about a year so I have about 100 songs that I never backed up- right now they exist only on my ipod.
Thanx

Be very careful when connecting an iPod full of music to an empty iTunes library.There is very real risk of permanently losing all the music.
To prevent auto sync, before you connect the iPod go to the iTunes preferences and select "devices", then select "disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods".
An alternative method is to connect the iPod whilst holding down the 'control+shift' keys and do not let them go until your iPod appears in iTunes.
If you see a message that your iPod is associated with a different library and asks if you want to link to a new one, make sure you press "Cancel".
If you should click on "Erase and Sync" will erase all the content currently on your iPod and it will be replaced with the content of the iTunes library you just connected to.
When you've pressed cancel your iPod should appear in the iTunes source list under "devices" and allow you to change the update setting to manage the iPod content manually, and that will let you use your iPod for the time being without the risk of accidentally erasing the contents.
Then do any of the following to transfer your music from iPod back to the computer/iTunes.
For iTunes version 7 or later, then you can transfer purchased iTunes store music from the iPod to an authorized computer by using the "file/transfer purchases from iPod" menu. Note that the maximum of 5 authorized computers applies here.
Find out how to do that here.
How to copy iTunes purchases from an iPod or iPhone to a computer.
For all other non purchased content (your own CDs etc), check out the instructions/suggestions here.
Music from iPod to computer (using option 2). This a manual method using "hidden folders" and although it works, it is a little more involved than other methods.
Much easier ways are to use one of the many 3rd party programs that copy music from the iPod to the computer.
One of the most recommended is Yamipod. This is a free program that transfers music from iPod back to the computer. However, it does not transfer playcounts/ratings etc.
Other free programs are Pod Player, SharePod and Floola and iDump and iPodRobot.
If you want to recover just the structure of playlists from the iPod (and not the actual song files themselves), there's iRepo for Windows. which I understand has this feature along with all the standard features for these programs.
iPodRip also has the feature enabling you to reconstruct playlists.
There is also CopyTrans. This does preserve ratings/playcounts etc if those are important to you but this program is not free. It also supports video transfer.
More information is contained here.
Copying content from your iPod to your computer - The Definitive Guide.

CAUTION : DO NOT USE LIVE UPDATE OR WINFLASH TO UPGRADE THE BIOS!

Hello,
I've been having trouble with my MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard a few weeks now.
My system configuration is not heavy at all and consists of
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum nForce3 Ultra
AMD64 Venice (E6) 3200+
2 x 512Mb DDR400 Geil RAM 2.5-2-2-5 in dual channel configuration
VGA ASUS 9600XT/128/TVD
SB Audigy Value
1 x HDD Maxtor 200GB 7200rpm
1 x DVD-RW Pioneer 107D
PSU Addtronics 420W (12V 18A)
2 case fans 12cm
2 USB devices (Joysticks)
Here are the facts:
1. The system was working great from mid-July until mid-September.
2. I always close down the PSU power when turning off the computer at night (when I turn it off) in order to have come protection over our crappy power service.
3. One morning, when trying to turn the PC on, I followed the normal procedure I did each time. PSU ON, waiting a few secs, Power button ON.
That morning, the PC did not boot. The monitor still displayed 'No Signal' but I could hear the fans working. I was ready to leave for work so I just shut it down to
investigate after work in the afternoon.
4. To my surpice, and without doing anything at all, when I tried to turn it on that evening it fired up just fine!!!!
5. A couple of days later, same thing. No boot, no post, no video signal. This time I had the time so I started investigating:
Checking the D-Bracket at the back it was Red-Red-Red-Green, which I found out from the manual meant 'Initilization of VGA'... I thought my VGA just died,
so I shut down the PC, removed the power, took out the 9600XT and put in an older nVidia Ti4200 VGA I had spare.
6. The system fired up normally!!! Ok, I say... The VGA must be the problem. Let's test it. I installed the 9600XT on another PC and it worked fine!
Oh... So it's not the VGA at fault!
7. Once again I replaced the Ti4200 back to my prefered 9600XT. Pushed the power... No good... No post, no boot, no video...
8 Replaced 9600XT with the Ti4200... Everything worked!.... I started to get worried. WHY doen't the ATI card works and the nVidia does ?
Consiracy theory immediately crossed my mind.
9. I have spend more than a month to find the cause of this. I posted to this forum for help, but best suggestion was to replace my PSU as not enough.
420W not enough for a bare minimum PC? I mean.. Come on!?!?!?... I calculated with the proposed PSU calulator what I needed and I would be fine
even with a 350W PSU and 12A on the 12V rail!. I had 18A... And some recommended to get a PSU with 30A on 12V !!!!!
That means that I had to spend another 150Euros to get a new PSU while it was not needed!??! In brief.. yes.
The problem was elsewhere as I found out.
Searching and reading in this forum I found out that a lot of people have the same problem as I did. Most of them indeed had weak PSUs and needed
more power. But there were a few that should be fine.
What I found common to all those cases was that there was either an ATI Radeon VGA or an nVidia 6800 involved!
And in almost all the cases the user did a bios upgrade just before the problem started.
Well, that it!... the BIOS upgrade. I tried to remember and finally did, that I started having these problems after I used the LiveUpdate function to update
the BIOS of the motherboard to 1.9 and once again to 1.b. But both times I did it from within windows using the winflash utility and the default options.
It seems that the default options did not flash the whole bios. They left out the boot section. As a result the system booted ok with the nVidia Ti4200,
an older generation card, but NOT with the ATI 9600XT which was newer generation.
What I did is to reflash the bios using a startup floppy and following the instructions found here : https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=86257.0
After the setup boots etc, I powered down the PC, replaced once again the Ti4200 with the required 9600XT and the system power up and booted fine!
It's running rock stable since then (48hrs already), but I have yet to see if the problem will appear again, as it only happened from a cold boot and not
during a restart or anything. I hope it will be ok.
So, I'm writting this as a warning.
Take caution and do not upgrade your BIOS from within windows. It's better to spend a couple more minutes to prepare a start up floppy and upgrade
from there, that to have problems later.
Regards,
George D.
Athens, Hellas

Quote from: Deeez on 07-November-05, 20:05:41
Load your bios off the hardrive. <-------FAIL SAFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not true.
File read operation can fail mid-flash. I agree this is safer that running the exe off a floppy, but it is not as safe as flashing from a RAMDrive (as per JayBee), which doesn't rely on a read from any media across any kind of BUS. Plus the RAMDrive needs no such partition on the HD so why bother with the hassle?
Flash from RAMDrive is not fail safe either of course but when run on a PC with a UPS that's about as safe as anyone can get.

Ipod Classic 160 GB not syncing my music

I bought a 160 GB Ipod Classic about 6 months ago. About 2 weeks ago I plugged in my Ipod and it erased everything and when I try to sync music it syncs about 150 songs (I have about 4,000) and then stays syncing that one song for about 2 hours. Then it gives me an error message like (-50) or (-120) or says the required folder could not be found. I have tried everything like updating iTunes and re-formatting it and restoring it but every time it gives me the same thing. I was wondering if the hardrive is failing or if theres something wrong with the computer?

Problem fixed itself. Unknown resolution.

IPod Classic 160 GB not syncing

I bought a 160 GB Ipod Classic about 6 months ago. About 2 weeks ago I plugged in my Ipod and it erased everything and when I try to sync music it syncs about 150 songs (I have about 4,000) and then stays syncing that one song for about 2 hours. Then it gives me an error message like (-50) or (-120) or says the required folder could not be found. I have tried everything like updating iTunes and re-formatting it and restoring it but every time it gives me the same thing. I was wondering if the hardrive is failing or if theres something wrong with the computer?

Problem fixed itself. Unknown resolution.

IPod deleted itself and freezes my computer

yesterday my computer spontaneously deleted all of it's music and everytime i conenct it to my pc it freezes windows and im forced to restart. If i try restarting the computer into windows with the iPod still attached, windows refuses to load, and my computer will continuously restart on it's own untill i remove the iPod. All attempts to reformat the hardrive have failed. All of the above have occured in both 32-bit and x64 edition of windows pro.
Other than that, there seems to be nothing wrong with the iPod

Hey Dakotes,
I would take a look at the troubleshooting steps in the following article to resolve the issue:
iTunes for Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8: Fix unexpected quits or launch issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1717
All the best,
Delgadoh

HT4858 iPhoto back up

What is the best way to back up my 26,000 photo's in iPhoto? My last hardrive just failed´as it was not compatiable with Mavericks and I wondered if there is an affordable cloud based option..

The easiest method is to drag the library to an external HD that is formatted OS X Extended (journaled) with ownership set to be ignored.
Next would be to do the following and then use a backup application that can do incremental backups, i.e. copying only those new or modified files. Two that come to mind are Synk Pro and ChronoSync.
A possibly better solution is to use the EHD with Time Machine to backjup your boot drive with the library on it. That way every hour there's an incremental backup of all files that have been added or modified in the last hour. You'll always have a current backup. However, when you're away from the EHD the backups will cease if you turn off Time Machine or be made to your boot drive which can cause it to fill up fast. I'd turn it off when you're away from the EHD.
OT

Macbook pro shuts down randomly (sometimes it beeps)

My computer has been having issues randomly freezing and then shutting down. Sometimes it beeps 3 times and then repeats those beeps until I force it to shut down. I took it to an apple authorized dealer and they found that my hardrive was failing, but not any other problems. After I got it back I download the OS X mavericks upgrade (This computer is an early 2011, 15" macbook pro, unibody).
From searching it seems from the beeping that it is a RAM issue. I have tried reseating the RAM and using only one card at a time. After a few days it continues to its hold habits.
It works best when it is on a solid table top and it is not moving. When I move it, sometimes with even the most gentle touch, it continues these issues.
I ran an apple hardware test and it did not detect any issues, however the problem still prosits.

Hey! I tried re-installing the OS but it didn't fix it. I called Apple Support and they sent me an OS update and that didn't work either. I went to a friend who knows a lot about computers, and he suggested that it could be a problem with the RAM memory. He downloaded memtest for me (http://www.memtest.org/), ran it and indeed, the test caught some problems with at least one of the memories. I then took it to the Genius Bar in the Apple Store to get it fixed. They had to take it away, though, because they need to run some more thorough tests to see what exactly is wrong with it, since changing the memory might not solve the problem. I'm waiting for them to return my computer, so until then I won't be able to tell you if this worked. It seems too much of a coincidence that this happened right after I upgraded to Mountain Lion (especially if other people are also having this issue after an upgrade...). Good luck!

Can't see added internal or external drives?

I have an XPS-8500, Windows 7 / 64bit with a 2TB internal plus 30GB SSD. I have had some signs of the internal hard drive having problems. I have tried to add additional drives, ( internal Seagate 500gb, external WD My Book 3TB ) to do backup up can't get the computer to see either of these. Device manager see's them but can't get a drive letter assigned. Device manager also reports "Other Devices" "unknown device".   With this combo, ( internal plus ssd ), does that mean I cannot add any other drives. I was told on another forum that the drives are only seen on port 0 & 1?? I have tried tools like DISKPART and Disk Manager to format and use the New Volume Wizard but they always time out with an error:
"The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up-to-date"
Any help would be appreciated.
My Bios says RAID
Sata0/Port0       Main drive ( c: )
Sata1/Port5        DVD Samsung 224
Sata2/Port2        My New Drive, 500 gb seagate
Sata3/Port3        DVD Samsung 203b
MSata1/Port1     Samsung SSD 32G

Thanks for all the suggestions, I learned a lot of stuff between various forums but in the end I simply bite the bullet and did a system recovery using the disks I made upon purchase of the machine a few years back. I felt I could not get around that I had some OS system files that were corrupted ( says the output of scannow ). The main hardrive was failing and getting worse on each use. I did not have a system repair disk ..... and the list goes on and on.
After the restore, I reloaded all my software, downloaded hundreds of MS Updates.  Had to re-configure the bios and set the ssd for raid and caching with the new drive accelerated.   The new drive is only 500gb versus the oem 2 TB, but I'll pick up something else soon. The WD 3TB discovers. I have it partitioned into 2, 1.5 TB partitions.
Everything is functioning fine. I created a system repair disk. I have scheduled backups and will be creating a system image. Hard drives do not last forever, but this time I will be prepared ( lesson learned ).
Joemt.

Devices Refuse to Mount

Recently my iPod Shuffle would not mount. I thought it was the latest update of iTunes that had caused this problem, and although its a possibility, I even updated my iPod a few days ago to the latest software which did not change a single thing. Then my keystation 49e piano keyboard failed to power up when connected to both the computer's keyboard and its USB port. Now my external hardrive has failed to mount on top of it all. Is this a preference problem, or maybe a software issue, or is it my eMac? All help is greatly appreciated.

Andy,
Without any firsthand experience using piano keyboards, I doubt they're work reliablly hooked up to the low-powered USB ports on the eMac's keyboard; you'd be better off using a high-powered USB ports, either on the on te ones on the eMac or via a self-powered (has its own power supply) USB hub as opposed to a bus-powered USB hub.
How are you connecting your Shuffle to the eMac? The shuffle's formfactor means it won't plug directly into a USB port on the side of the eMac and the keyboard ports don't provide enough power to run the Shuffle. Are you using a USB extension cable or a USB hub?
Is your external hard drive USB or Firewire?
Check that all cables are fully seated and that there are no visible kinks (suggesting broken wires internally) in any cables.
To reset the ports on the eMac, shut down, remove all peripheral connections from the eMac, and remove the power cord from the side of the eMac to remove the trickle current that's drawn even while off. Wait 30 minutes or more, reattach the power cord and the keyboard/mouse only, and power up. Check Apple System Profiler (in Applications/ Utilities, or via the menu bar's Apple> About This Mac> More Info button) and check the Mac sees the Firewire and USB buses. The attached your peripherals one by one, refreshing ASP between each device added to check it's recognized. If the bus fails after adding a particular device, you know which device or device cable is the suspect.

Is my powerbook dying?

Hi guys,
I have had a reletively uneventful life with my powerbook and thats the way I like to keep it. Until two days ago when after leaving it to charge for an hour or two i returned to find it had powered itself off.
'Starnge' I thought, so I tried to power it back up and walked way and thought nothing of it. I returned about 5 minutes later hoping to have the usual login screen and found it with the Apple logo and the boot up spinning ball still going.
I held the power button to force a shut down and tried again, only this time I got a gray screen and a quiet humming/slight clicking noise(presumably from the hard drive) that sounded different from the norm.
After roughly 15 minutes with the same grey screen I tried to force shut down again when it made a terrible ringing noise that I've never heard a Mac make before. Now I'm scared... I grabbed the hardware test CD and booted it up. Ran the extended test and it stoped on the 'Mass Storage' test noting it as failed with an error code of
'2STF/8/3: ATA-100 ata-6 -Master'
I then shut it down and when I woke in the morning I powered it up again (on the off chance). It restarted itself three times and on the third time it booted as per normnal to the login screen.
I logged on, checked the smart status (all verified) and ran repair permissions three times (as I do on a weekly basis).
So... Does this mean my hardrive is failing? Or is it something else?
I should also mention that I use a FW external drive as per my details below but his was not plugged in whilst I was running the hardware test.
Hoping someone can provide some advise.
Thanks,
Robin
PowerBook G4 1.33GHz 12 Mac OS X (10.3.9) 500Mb RAM, Lacie 60 Gig F/W External Drive
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Robin
As Tom has suggested, you need to backup IMMEDIATELY - whilst you still have the opportunity. Your PowerBook's hard drive is failing. What catches people out is that failing hard drives can seemingly work normally for a period of time after the initial problem symptoms. However the drive will fail terminally at some point. Whether that failure happens in hours, days, weeks or months is down to the individual drive.
15" 1.25GHz/12" 1GHz PBs, PPC Mac minis, 12" iBooks G3/G4, Mac OS X (10.4.5) Cube, TAMs, iPods 2G/4G, iPs, AEBS, AX

Photoshop CS6 keeps crashing. I am using a brand new IMAC, I have 16GB RAM recently updated as it was running slow with 8GB and lots of hardrive space. When it crashes, i lose all my presents and it changes my preferences, it also fails to save or produce

Photoshop CS6 keeps crashing. I am using a brand new IMAC, I have 16GB RAM recently updated as it was running slow with 8GB and lots of hardrive space. When it crashes, i lose all my presents and it changes my preferences, it also fails to save or produce a recovered file despite settings asking it to do so every 5 mins now. When i try to report the problem, it says it has found an issue and gives me a link to a solution....but wont let me click on the link.... PLEASE HELP! It's killing my productivity.

If the crash started right after you added RAM, it could be a bad Ram dimm. You can try this - change the amount of RAM in Photoshop to 4G, this should stop Photoshop from using the higher ram. If it doesn't crash, it's probably the ram. Or run a diagnostic app. You don't say when it crashes, what you're doing when it crashes - it there a pattern? Did it ever work on this computer? Did it work on your previous computer? Without a lot of data, it could be related to the new computer... What OS version? Did you recently update it? Have you updated Photoshop to the most recent update?
Do you have any plug-ins loaded? Try restarting Photoshop, and immediately press & hold the shfit key to turn off plug-ins.

Can you clone a failing hardrive or a hardrive that wont boot up?

My macbook pro gave me the grey screen with the loading cogwheel earlier this week. I tried all of the fixes with the forums but was unsuccessful. I took it in to genius and they told me that the hard drive was failing. I was able to recover the majority of my important items onto my external hardrive. I was wondering if you can clone a hard drive that is failing? Keep in mind that my macbook wont boot up on its own.

It's highly unlikely that a single corrupt file is responsible for a problem with to the drive's hardware. If the file's just causing Mac OS X to fail to boot, cloning the drive and using it as a non-boot volume won't transfer the problem.
(114436)

Failed hardrive in MacBook Air - 18 months old

Hi.
I have a MacBook Air that I have owned from new brought from the apple store 18 months ago.
It just stopped loading up one day a few weeks ago. (Grey screen - question mark in folder) No known reason for this..
Anyway I spoke to a very helpful apple advisor over the phone who went through some procedures and told me it was likely the hardrive had broken. He booked me in for a Genius Bar appointment and told me it was out of warrenty.
He told me it will need replacing but I can claim consumer law..? What does that actually mean? Will I have to part with any money? I don't see why I should when something relatively new has just failed on me!
Any ideas! Thank you!

I'm guessing from your username that you are from the UK (and maybe that you are female & dizzy?). If you are from the EU, the following link gives some details of the EU Consumer Law that was referred to. The fine print in the footnotes at the bottom may be helpful too. It sounds like the advisor thinks it may be covered. http://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/

My hardrive is failing on my iMac8,1.

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