Another "My Mac is slow" problem

6string · May 21, 2011

dtravis7 · May 21, 2011

BrianCN said:
No Trouble Found on the extended hardware test.

It still could be the hard drive being flakey. Tests don't always tell the whole story. Have you tried running Disk Utility and repair? If so what happens? You will have to run Disk Utility from the OSX DVD so the Hard Drive will be unmounted. Also if you boot in Safe Mode like was suggested, run FSCK from the Terminal and see what it reports.

Hope some of this helps.

BrianCN · May 21, 2011

dtravis7 said:
Also if you boot in Safe Mode like was suggested, run FSCK from the Terminal and see what it reports.

Hope some of this helps.

Can you be more specific with that? Do I just type in FSCK and Enter? Sorry for being ignorant.

dtravis7 · May 21, 2011

Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck

Down toward the bottom it tells how to run FSCK and the switches you use. Hope it helps. Can't hurt!

BrianCN · May 21, 2011

dtravis7 said:
It still could be the hard drive being flakey. Tests don't always tell the whole story. Have you tried running Disk Utility and repair? If so what happens? You will have to run Disk Utility from the OSX DVD so the Hard Drive will be unmounted. Also if you boot in Safe Mode like was suggested, run FSCK from the Terminal and see what it reports.

Hope some of this helps.

I ran the disk utility (repair) from the install disk and no repairs were necessary.

Lifeisabeach · May 21, 2011

BrianCN said:
Greetings. My Mac is slow. I am close to throwing it in the trash. Intel iMac5 that originally came with Tiger and has since been upgraded to Snow Leopard and 2GB of additional ram. Updates take forever. I get the spinning pinwheel all the time; click a menu item=delay, then pinwheel, then it'll finally open. Sometimes I will get the pinwheel just by moving the mouse pointer. I have deleted the caches, verified the volume, run the SMART utility, etc. I broke down and purchased some program called DiskToolsPro, mostly so I could defrag the hard drive. 48 hours later, it was still defragging at a snails pace, so I quit the utility. I am at wits end with this machine. Does anyone know how I can resolve this so I can again enjoy using my Mac?
Thanks in advance, BrianCN.

48 hours in a defrag???? Wow! Well that definitely sounds like your drive is dying, as others have suggested. But you have what should be a very good tool to test your disk at your disposal already… DiskTools Pro. The same tool you are defragging with. I'm not acquainted with it, but the manual for it says it has an option to scan and repair bad sectors. Here's their manual… be sure to read it through before starting this.
http://summitsoft.fileburst.com/DiskToolsPro/DiskToolsProManualWeb.pdf

BrianCN · May 22, 2011

lifeisabeach said:
48 hours in a defrag???? Wow! Well that definitely sounds like your drive is dying, as others have suggested. But you have what should be a very good tool to test your disk at your disposal already… DiskTools Pro. The same tool you are defragging with. I'm not acquainted with it, but the manual for it says it has an option to scan and repair bad sectors. Here's their manual… be sure to read it through before starting this.
http://summitsoft.fileburst.com/DiskToolsPro/DiskToolsProManualWeb.pdf

Yeah, that was the first thing I tried, but it looked like it was going to take several days, so I stopped that scan/repair and started the defrag. That wasn't too bad until it hit 87%, then it just creeped along. I stopped the defrag and restarted after repairing the disk permissions again, and it cruised right along until it got to about 89% and was working on the same files from the first attempt. I don't really have any reason to believe that the drive is dying, except for what I have been told on this forum. All the hardware tests I have done check out OK. I have an external drive that I have not hooked up yet, but I am tempted to figure out how to move my music, pictures, videos, and address book over to it and start over with a clean install (if I can figure out how to do that properly). I am not too saavy with a Mac.

dtravis7 · May 22, 2011

There is no way things should take that long.

If you want help doing what you said, let us know and we can tell you how to proceed.

And also did you boot in Safe Mode and run FSCK?

Lifeisabeach · May 22, 2011

BrianCN said:
Yeah, that was the first thing I tried, but it looked like it was going to take several days, so I stopped that scan/repair and started the defrag. That wasn't too bad until it hit 87%, then it just creeped along. I stopped the defrag and restarted after repairing the disk permissions again, and it cruised right along until it got to about 89% and was working on the same files from the first attempt. I don't really have any reason to believe that the drive is dying, except for what I have been told on this forum. All the hardware tests I have done check out OK. I have an external drive that I have not hooked up yet, but I am tempted to figure out how to move my music, pictures, videos, and address book over to it and start over with a clean install (if I can figure out how to do that properly). I am not too saavy with a Mac.

Are you running the defrag or scan/repair from a dedicated boot disk, or are you booted into your Mac as normal? If the latter, that may explain why it's taking so long. You really need to be booted from a different partition or boot disk to do that properly. Personally, I have a USB thumb drive with OS X installed on that to run utilities like these.
Format Your USB Flash Drive for Use With OS X

MichaelTheGeek · May 22, 2011

Great tips.

MontyMo · May 22, 2011

You might want to try SpinRite

It is a great program that will either eliminate or "point to" your hard disk as the issue. If your hard dive is messed up SpinRite will do its best to fix it!

Monty

BrianCN · May 23, 2011

OK, so yesterday I ran the defrag again. It cruised right along until it hit 89% again, then it slowed down. It finished a couple of hours later. Yay! I then ran the scan and repair bad sectors, which was really fast, but it quit at 149GB, without reporting any bad sectors. I ran it a couple more times, with and without the repair option, and both times it quit at 149GB. ??? Either way, the machine seems to be running much better. Not perfect, but better. I hooked up the external drive and backed it up using Time Machine. I would like to thank all of you that helped me out, and if you have any other thoughts, feel free to share. BrianCN.

iWhat · May 23, 2011

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