Repairing Disk Permissions Freezes on MacBook

CMartucci · Apr 10, 2011

My girlfriend has a white MacBook circa 2007 that's been running extremely slow lately. I tried repairing disk permissions from the OS X CD, but the operation freezes before it can finish. It will say that there are only "2 seconds remaining" for hours, at which point I have to force shutdown.

Any ideas?

Buzzard2010 · Apr 10, 2011

Have you tried doing it from your OSX install DVD instead? Boot up from the dvd by holding down the "c" key just after the startup chime and head to Utilities > Disk Utility, you will also have the option available to Repair Disk.

HTH,
- Simon

CMartucci · Apr 10, 2011

Buzzard2010 said:
Have you tried doing it from your OSX install DVD instead? Boot up from the dvd by holding down the "c" key just after the startup chime and head to Utilities > Disk Utility, you will also have the option available to Repair Disk.

HTH,
- Simon

Sorry, I wasn't clear. That's what I'm doing, and it keeps freezing.

harryb2448 · Apr 10, 2011

How much free space is on the hard drive? Need about 15% for the drive to work anywhere near peak capacity. The fuller it becomes over this level the slower it will get. If all is okay there, run repair Permissions in Disk Utility under Utilities, and download Onyx and run that pretty regularly, once a month or so.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html

CMartucci · Apr 10, 2011

It says that there is 50 out of 70 GB available on the hard drive. That should be more than enough free space. I've run Onyx several times, Cocktail as well. Nothing seems to work.

Buzzard2010 · Apr 10, 2011

One inevitability could unfortunately be that the HDD is just giving up and failing on you. After all it is 4 years old now, before anyone says it though I know HDDs can last alot lot longer, heck i've got a 10gb HDD that still works no problem, but then you never know when anything is going to fail.

- Simon

CMartucci · Apr 10, 2011

Buzzard2010 said:
One inevitability could unfortunately be that the HDD is just giving up and failing on you. After all it is 4 years old now, before anyone says it though I know HDDs can last alot lot longer, heck i've got a 10gb HDD that still works no problem, but then you never know when anything is going to fail.

- Simon

I figured that might be the problem. It had a good run.