Just another quick question: I repaired permissions on the old HD a couple of days back, and in the meantime I have used this unit very little, maybe an hour at most for web browsing, now when I ran disk utility again it is showing a bunch more errors that need repaired. Is this normal?
Possible IMAC HD/RAM/logic board failure-help please!
- Thread starter rws762
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No, not normal and is usually the sign of a failing drive. That drive probably should be retired and replaced by a new one.
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No, it isn't normal. If you reset the permissions on that drive again and it starts resetting them all again, in diskutil, click on the menu bar "Window" then "show log." If the files are cache files or tmp files used by Safari and you were using Safari as an admin, then you did the reset with your own regular ID, it may very well change them. If on the other hand it's modifying permissions on files and directories that weren't touched then something strange is happening...REALLY strange.
If the hard drive is bad, the reason you see the spinning beach ball is because it's trying to read a sector of the hard drive and it can't read it, so it tries, and tries, and tries again. If it finally succeeds, then it moves on, if it can't it usually either locks up the system or throws a dialog stating that it can't read the file. You may want to look at your /var/logs/system.log file and /var/log/kernel.log file and look for a statement similar to the following:
disk1s2: I/O error.
The disk ID will likely be different if this is a disk problem, what's important is the "I/O error" portion of the statement. LIke I said before this could be the drive itself or a fault on the data path between the drive and the controller (i.e. logic board traces, bad connectors, or bad cables).
Good Luck.
If the hard drive is bad, the reason you see the spinning beach ball is because it's trying to read a sector of the hard drive and it can't read it, so it tries, and tries, and tries again. If it finally succeeds, then it moves on, if it can't it usually either locks up the system or throws a dialog stating that it can't read the file. You may want to look at your /var/logs/system.log file and /var/log/kernel.log file and look for a statement similar to the following:
disk1s2: I/O error.
The disk ID will likely be different if this is a disk problem, what's important is the "I/O error" portion of the statement. LIke I said before this could be the drive itself or a fault on the data path between the drive and the controller (i.e. logic board traces, bad connectors, or bad cables).
Good Luck.
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1. Click on the Apple icon in the upper left corner of the screen.
2. When the menu comes down, select "About this Mac"
3. A dialog will appear, click on the "More Info... " button at the bottom of it.
4. In the Contents column on the left of the window that opens up, click on the little triangle to the left of "Software" to expand it, unless it's already expanded.
5. Under the expanded "Software" section, click on "Logs"
6. A list of log files will appear. Log files that may be of use to you are the following:
fsck_hfs.log: (or something similar) fsck is file system check. This may or may not be present. If it is it's worth looking at (see below). This should indicate indexing problems.
kernel.log: This is a log of kernel activtiy including errors. Disk I/O errors will appear here.
system.log: A general log of system activities.
There are a lot of different ways to read these. If you just click on one of them from the window, the most recent (not full) contents of the log file will appear. You could, for example, click on the "kernel.log" file, and then click on the lower half of the window and you can scroll through it to look for errors or do a CMD-F to bring up a search window and enter a string like "disk" or "I/O" (without the quotes) and try to find it.
I find the following tactic more useful:
1. Click on the kernel.log entry.
2. When the log fills out in the lower half of the window, scroll to the top (if it isn't already there). There should be what looks like a bluish-purple hyper link that will give the full path and name of the log file (/var/log/kernel.log)
3. Right click or control-click on the hyper link. A menu will appear.
4. Click on the "reveal" option. This is good because it will show all log files as well as the "daily.out" file which is useful as well and doesn't show up as a log.
5. Highlight one of the files you want to read by clicking on it once. For this example I'll use "kernel.log"
6. Right click or control-click on the file so a dialog comes up and highlight "Open with" option.
7. A list of available editor should show up. I'll select "TextEdit.app" to keep it simple. If none show up select "Other..." and then "TextEdit.app."
8. The log file should open up. You can scroll through it or do a command-F and do a search for a string (CASE SENSITIVE!!) like "I/O error" without the quotes.
You can repeat that procedure for any of the files. One problem is that the log files turn over and compress themselves as gzips. If you scroll the folder that has all the log files in it you'll notice some with names like "system.log.3.gz". This is a zipped file. If you double click on one, it will uncompress it and (on my system) then store it in the "Downloads" directory as "system.log.3". You can then right click or control click on it to open it for reading with TextEdit.app (or whatever) and search it. You might want to view the contents of the logs directory in long form to make sure the files you're looking at are in the time frame you're interested in.
One file very worth looking at is the file "daily.out" which doesn't show up as a log and is typically huge. It too, will like disk I/O errors.
One problem with disk I/O errors is they only occur on an actual read failure. I hate to sound like an ad for Scannerz yet again, but it will identify what it calls an "irregularity". An irregularity is a successful read that takes too much time. It's not uncommon for Scannerz to detect false irregularities caused by system interrupts, but if you see one that's way too long, like anything above 1 second, it needs to be checked. A read shouldn't take more than milliseconds and might take up 1 or 2 seconds if the system decides it needs to kick in and do some clean up work or handle some long term interrupt, but this is rare.
With Scannerz, what you do is look at it's log files, find any really long irregularities, and then rescan them in cursory mode (a limited scan over a specific region of the drive). If the drive itself is bad, irregularities will continue to show up in the detected region of the drive during the scan, time and time again (they're repeatable). If the problem is related to the logic board or cabling, they won't - but they'll likely show up varying all over the place. Consistent failures or irregularities over specific regions of the drive tell you it's the drive itself, inconsistent failures or irregularities tell you it's elsewhere. Scannerz is the only tool that I know of, aside from in-house applications from drive manufactures that detects these types of problems. SCSC would do themselves a favor (a BIG favor) by putting in some block diagrams of step-by-step procedures for troubleshooting these types of problems in their manuals, but they aren't there. What's transparently obvious to electrical engineers is not so for others. Additionally, most people with drive problems are looking for quick solutions, not to wade through a 150 page manual! I guess it's a good thing for them they offer tech support!
An irregularity is, I believe, a pre-cursor to hard drive failure - the controller, drive, and OS just haven't deemed it as a failure yet, and what constitutes a failure varies from drive to drive. Picture if you will an irregularity where Safari is continually trying to read a cache file and one of the sectors of the drive holding the cache file takes 5 seconds to read instead of, say 5 milliseconds. The result is spinning beach balls. If this file needed to be read 100 times by Safari, a sector that's taking 5 seconds to read will require 500 seconds, whereas a good drive would do it in half a second.
If you see something strange in the fsck log files, it means the indices are having problems. Once again, I hate to sound like the ad-master for DiskWarrior, but if you see a problem here and none of Apple's utilities will correct it, then that's the only tool I know of that can adequately address it (if it's addressable). This should not be a problem on your internal hard drive, because your installs are fresh. It might, however, be a problem on your backup drive. If index problems are occurring on a fresh install of your internal drive , it likely means that the very first few megabytes of your hard drive are corrupt.
Another thing that I just thought of is remapping a bad sector (including those with irregularities) out. To do this you would use diskutil to erase the internal drive, but under the "Security" section, select the option to zero out the data. This will force any bad sectors to be remapped into good sectors. A decent drive will also detect irregularities and remap them as well - it's manufacturer dependent if this actually occurs. In the case where all spare sectors are exhausted, what happens seems to be up for grabs, but a lot of times diskutil will report that it can't fix the disk, which usually means the spare sectors are all used up. You would need to do this from the install media. If the drive can't remap bad sectors, it means failures have been occurring all along and the drive is problematic.
Personally, I don't use Apples backup utilities. I've written some bash scripts using rsync - it doesn't do a formal backup but I only use them when I'm confident I'm happy with the changes I've made, and I don't distribute them to all my systems.
I tend to be paranoid about backups.
Hope this helps!
2. When the menu comes down, select "About this Mac"
3. A dialog will appear, click on the "More Info... " button at the bottom of it.
4. In the Contents column on the left of the window that opens up, click on the little triangle to the left of "Software" to expand it, unless it's already expanded.
5. Under the expanded "Software" section, click on "Logs"
6. A list of log files will appear. Log files that may be of use to you are the following:
fsck_hfs.log: (or something similar) fsck is file system check. This may or may not be present. If it is it's worth looking at (see below). This should indicate indexing problems.
kernel.log: This is a log of kernel activtiy including errors. Disk I/O errors will appear here.
system.log: A general log of system activities.
There are a lot of different ways to read these. If you just click on one of them from the window, the most recent (not full) contents of the log file will appear. You could, for example, click on the "kernel.log" file, and then click on the lower half of the window and you can scroll through it to look for errors or do a CMD-F to bring up a search window and enter a string like "disk" or "I/O" (without the quotes) and try to find it.
I find the following tactic more useful:
1. Click on the kernel.log entry.
2. When the log fills out in the lower half of the window, scroll to the top (if it isn't already there). There should be what looks like a bluish-purple hyper link that will give the full path and name of the log file (/var/log/kernel.log)
3. Right click or control-click on the hyper link. A menu will appear.
4. Click on the "reveal" option. This is good because it will show all log files as well as the "daily.out" file which is useful as well and doesn't show up as a log.
5. Highlight one of the files you want to read by clicking on it once. For this example I'll use "kernel.log"
6. Right click or control-click on the file so a dialog comes up and highlight "Open with" option.
7. A list of available editor should show up. I'll select "TextEdit.app" to keep it simple. If none show up select "Other..." and then "TextEdit.app."
8. The log file should open up. You can scroll through it or do a command-F and do a search for a string (CASE SENSITIVE!!) like "I/O error" without the quotes.
You can repeat that procedure for any of the files. One problem is that the log files turn over and compress themselves as gzips. If you scroll the folder that has all the log files in it you'll notice some with names like "system.log.3.gz". This is a zipped file. If you double click on one, it will uncompress it and (on my system) then store it in the "Downloads" directory as "system.log.3". You can then right click or control click on it to open it for reading with TextEdit.app (or whatever) and search it. You might want to view the contents of the logs directory in long form to make sure the files you're looking at are in the time frame you're interested in.
One file very worth looking at is the file "daily.out" which doesn't show up as a log and is typically huge. It too, will like disk I/O errors.
One problem with disk I/O errors is they only occur on an actual read failure. I hate to sound like an ad for Scannerz yet again, but it will identify what it calls an "irregularity". An irregularity is a successful read that takes too much time. It's not uncommon for Scannerz to detect false irregularities caused by system interrupts, but if you see one that's way too long, like anything above 1 second, it needs to be checked. A read shouldn't take more than milliseconds and might take up 1 or 2 seconds if the system decides it needs to kick in and do some clean up work or handle some long term interrupt, but this is rare.
With Scannerz, what you do is look at it's log files, find any really long irregularities, and then rescan them in cursory mode (a limited scan over a specific region of the drive). If the drive itself is bad, irregularities will continue to show up in the detected region of the drive during the scan, time and time again (they're repeatable). If the problem is related to the logic board or cabling, they won't - but they'll likely show up varying all over the place. Consistent failures or irregularities over specific regions of the drive tell you it's the drive itself, inconsistent failures or irregularities tell you it's elsewhere. Scannerz is the only tool that I know of, aside from in-house applications from drive manufactures that detects these types of problems. SCSC would do themselves a favor (a BIG favor) by putting in some block diagrams of step-by-step procedures for troubleshooting these types of problems in their manuals, but they aren't there. What's transparently obvious to electrical engineers is not so for others. Additionally, most people with drive problems are looking for quick solutions, not to wade through a 150 page manual! I guess it's a good thing for them they offer tech support!
An irregularity is, I believe, a pre-cursor to hard drive failure - the controller, drive, and OS just haven't deemed it as a failure yet, and what constitutes a failure varies from drive to drive. Picture if you will an irregularity where Safari is continually trying to read a cache file and one of the sectors of the drive holding the cache file takes 5 seconds to read instead of, say 5 milliseconds. The result is spinning beach balls. If this file needed to be read 100 times by Safari, a sector that's taking 5 seconds to read will require 500 seconds, whereas a good drive would do it in half a second.
If you see something strange in the fsck log files, it means the indices are having problems. Once again, I hate to sound like the ad-master for DiskWarrior, but if you see a problem here and none of Apple's utilities will correct it, then that's the only tool I know of that can adequately address it (if it's addressable). This should not be a problem on your internal hard drive, because your installs are fresh. It might, however, be a problem on your backup drive. If index problems are occurring on a fresh install of your internal drive , it likely means that the very first few megabytes of your hard drive are corrupt.
Another thing that I just thought of is remapping a bad sector (including those with irregularities) out. To do this you would use diskutil to erase the internal drive, but under the "Security" section, select the option to zero out the data. This will force any bad sectors to be remapped into good sectors. A decent drive will also detect irregularities and remap them as well - it's manufacturer dependent if this actually occurs. In the case where all spare sectors are exhausted, what happens seems to be up for grabs, but a lot of times diskutil will report that it can't fix the disk, which usually means the spare sectors are all used up. You would need to do this from the install media. If the drive can't remap bad sectors, it means failures have been occurring all along and the drive is problematic.
Personally, I don't use Apples backup utilities. I've written some bash scripts using rsync - it doesn't do a formal backup but I only use them when I'm confident I'm happy with the changes I've made, and I don't distribute them to all my systems.
I tend to be paranoid about backups.
Hope this helps!
I thought I'd provide an update. This AM I thought all might be well (OK sometimes I like to live in denial), then upon leaving Mail everything locked up, and shortly therafter I got that d*mn beachball!! I decided to install my new HD. With the help of a Youtube video that was spot on and in HD to boot my iMac now has a Seagate 1TB 7200 SATSA. I installed Snow Leopard & iLife 09, updated them both, and that will be all for a couple of days while I see if the old problems develop. After that I can restore either my TM backup or my Carbonite backup & just the bare minimum programs I need & use regularly. From all I've learned here I think the hard drive is the problem. Wish me luck!
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Good Luck! (you said you wanted us to wish you luck! 
Please post back sometime in the next week to let us know how it turned out.
Please post back sometime in the next week to let us know how it turned out.
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Hope that new drive solves it. Your issue does sound like my iMac when the original 320GB WD drive started to die.
Keep us posted and good luck!
Keep us posted and good luck!
OK I installed the new Seagate 1TB HD, and installed only Snow Leopard & iLife 09 (updated both to current). After 3 days of running lean & crashless I installed the remainder of my programs and did a Time Machine restore of my user files only:
Photoshop Elements 8
Office 08
Print Shop 2
Scrabble
Quicken Essentials
Intego Virus Barrier
Big Fish Game Manager-1 game loaded
Now yesterday I got the beach ball lockup again once, and once this AM. On the advice of someone on the Apple Support Communities I uninstalled Intego Virus Barrier, I'm going to see if this might help, since I know AV progs can interfere with other programs, esp. in PC world. I was wondering, is it possible that there is something in my Time Machine backup, that when restored, causes my system crashes? I only restored "Users" under the Migration Assistant options, I didn't restore Applications or Settings since I only wanted my documents, photos, movies & music. Does TM restore anything else when you select only "Users"?
Photoshop Elements 8
Office 08
Print Shop 2
Scrabble
Quicken Essentials
Intego Virus Barrier
Big Fish Game Manager-1 game loaded
Now yesterday I got the beach ball lockup again once, and once this AM. On the advice of someone on the Apple Support Communities I uninstalled Intego Virus Barrier, I'm going to see if this might help, since I know AV progs can interfere with other programs, esp. in PC world. I was wondering, is it possible that there is something in my Time Machine backup, that when restored, causes my system crashes? I only restored "Users" under the Migration Assistant options, I didn't restore Applications or Settings since I only wanted my documents, photos, movies & music. Does TM restore anything else when you select only "Users"?
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As far as I can tell (unless I missed it)...there is no mention in this thread what exact Mac model you have (other than it is an iMac).
How about filling us in on what exact model you have...and how much ram it has.
- Nick
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Thanks for the info!
I just wanted to be sure we weren't dealing with a "super" ancient iMac...with very little ram.- Nick
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I would try and disable the virus software and see it that's the problem. I wasn't aware that you had that installed. I'm not familiar with it, but I know in some cases they have to be configured to target specific applications and libraries so it knows it's OK to load them. You might also want to contact the maker of the software.
Another thing to try is to bring up the Activity Monitor and let it run while you use the computer and when it locks up, see what process is eating up all the CPU or blocking on I/O. You could also check the logs (previous post).
I hope you didn't toss the other drive. You could pick up a USB and/or FIrewire case and probably use it as a backup drive.
I'd check the virus software first. This sort of thing happens all time on Windoze systems for that very reason.
Another thing to try is to bring up the Activity Monitor and let it run while you use the computer and when it locks up, see what process is eating up all the CPU or blocking on I/O. You could also check the logs (previous post).
I hope you didn't toss the other drive. You could pick up a USB and/or FIrewire case and probably use it as a backup drive.
I'd check the virus software first. This sort of thing happens all time on Windoze systems for that very reason.
I'm cautiously optimistic at this point, the Mac has run a whole day w/o BBOD since ditching the AV software. I don't regret putting the new HD in, it seems to run faster than the old one (probably also due to the fresh OS install too). If this is the culprit I think I'm going to run w/o the AV software. We don't live too dangerously on the internet (stay away from Russian porn sites and downloading torrents and you're 90% of the way home). At any rate it has been a learning experience for me, I hope I don't have anything more tragic to report. Thanks again.
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I'm in the no AV column. Some run it most don't here.
From what I see AV on a Mac usually causes more harm than the Malware it is intended to prevent.
From what I see AV on a Mac usually causes more harm than the Malware it is intended to prevent.
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Here's an idea: Send the makers of the AV software a bill for your hard drive! 
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You just said that when you restore your files from Time Machine backup is when your Mac is messing up. So don't use that backup. It seems like you have narrowed the problem down to the backup from Time Machine. You said it worked well when you didn't put the backup on to the hard drive. There must be a corrupt file or something in the backup.
So, don't use that backup. Restore you Mac and don't put the backup on it. Then just re-download any apps you want, you may lose your files but you will get your Mac back.
Let me know if I missed something.
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