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  #1  
09-30-2011, 04:55 AM
Sossity Sossity is offline
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Strange behavior from my mid 2010 macbook pro Snowleopard 10.6.8.

I am asking, hoping someone might know a bit about macs, not sure, but I will ask anyway.

A few minutes after starting up my computer, I went to click in finder to view some files, I noticed that the graphic icon options that I have of delete, VLC player & others that are along the top of the screen, were just small crosses, I then tried to click a file documents, but nothing, I tried to click the red button in the top left corner to exit finder, but it did not work, so I clicked to hide finder, then I reopened finder, this worked the first time, but then a second time it did not.

I then went into disk utility to do a permissions repair, & it ran & did a repair, I could not understand the log, but there was a bunch of javascript & core services that had letters saying what they should have been, & what they were.

I then tried to more commands in finder, but now it was totally unresponsive. so it seemed a shut down or restart of the computer was needed. I tried the apple menu, shut down & restart, but nothing. I tried shutting down by pressing the power button, nothing. I then right clicked on finder, to force quit, but the only option was to relaunch, when I chose this option, the computer finally shut down. while it was doing this, I could hear the fans spinning louder before it shut down.

After a couple of minutes to let the computer quiet down, (the fans), I started it up gain, & it was back to normal.

What happened? & do I need to be concerned? did the repair permissions fix it? do I need to do anything else?

what do I do if my mac will not startup or shut down/restart?

I got this response from somebody when I asked;

I can't comment on the symptoms you are seeing but I would answer your last question by saying Backup, Backup, Backup. And by Backup, I don't mean just Time Machine. Look into crashplan (free), CarbonCopyCloner or another third party solution in addition to or even instead of Time Machine.

Sometimes "flaky" things can be the prelude to rotating HDD problems. Our Macs average over 3 years old which is hitting the point where rotating platter drives statistically begin to fail. I decided to replace the HDD on my Macbook with a hybrid SSD (gives me a fresh 3 year lease on life). I also decided to put SSD drives in our other machines (gives possibly unlimited life). You are halfway to the 3 year point where rotating media can become worrisome but I would not assume nothing bad can happen. Get your backup strategy in place and plan ahead for the time when you decide you are ready to replace your internal HDD.


This has me concerned, I have only had my mac for about 15 months, according to an app that looks at my battery status.

I though I could expect to get at least 4 to 5 years out of my laptop.

should I replace my hard drive with a solid state? I have applecare, so I figured if I have any problems, I will just take my laptop in & have them fix it.
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  #2  
09-30-2011, 07:10 AM
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Quote:
do I need to be concerned?
Yes.

This is almost exactly what happened to a friend when his iMac hard drive went bad. Be very sure you're taking regular backups of your work. If this happens again, quiet the room as best as you can, and put your face down by the computer. See what you can hear, if anything. Loud clicking noises would be bad. Many hard drives make noise as a normal part of operation, so what you want to listen for are repetitive patterns -- something that sounds as if the computer is repeating retrying to access files (but failing, hence the infinite loop repeat re-read).

Time Machine is garbage.
Since last year, I've been using Paragon Volume Snapshot for OS X ($40)

The person in green got it right.

Quote:
should I replace my hard drive with a solid state
No. This is still very much a beta-quality technology. There are many flaws to be had, and you mostly trade-off errors with traditional hard drives, as opposed to improving on them. Yes, SSD can be faster, but it's not a miracle replacement for spinning disks.

Not yet, anyway.

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  #3  
09-30-2011, 04:37 PM
Sossity Sossity is offline
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So far, I have not heard any clicking noises, if I do have any strange happenings again, should I just take my mac into an apple store? I do have applecare.

If I replace the hard drive, any suggestions on what I should get?

so what do I do now besides backup?

I got another response from somebody;

Snow Leopard is poor at keeping caches clean. When the various caches are over-full, weird behaviour can result. Lion is much better at both keeping caches clean and at maintaining file permissions, particularly on Java. I would suggest you download the free utility ONXY and run the cache cleaner part of it. You don't need to restart between each cache cleaning operation, just click on "close" and run the next section. Restart when you have cleaned all caches.

SMART reporter is not brilliant as a predictor of HDD problems. You might be better running either Tech Tools or Disk Warrior and checking the disk for surface errors.


I notice when they comment on java, that was one thing I saw alot of when I did a repair permissions, the log had alot about java in it, & I am taking an online class, that I think uses alot of javascript for inputting answers.

If I get paragon snapshot, how do I go about backing up my hard disk? & if I have to replace it, how would I go about placing the backed up content on my new disk so I can use my laptop again like normal?

I really do need it to work, as I am doing online college on it.

The good thing is, I do not keep most of my major data on my internal hard drive, it is on external hard drives. It is like a kitchen, the major data is in the fridge & cupboards, & the laptop has mostly just my apps & a few working documents, it is like the kitchen island sink where the meals are prepared.

but in the event of failure, I would like to swap out the hard drive, & place all my original content on it from the backup & be up & running again.

any recommendations on backup hard drives? or portable ones?
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10-02-2011, 02:52 PM
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This appears to have already been addressed here: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/comp...ptop-hard.html
If you still have questions beyond that post, feel free to repeat them.

The cache and Java issues sound technically accurate to me.

I would note, however, that I suggest not upgrading to Lion at the time -- not unless you have a specific need to do so.

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