27'' iMac ''suspended in time'' !?..

hi guys

it's been a month i bought a 2013, 27'' iMac i5 ( 3.2GHz, GeForce GT755m, 8GB RAM + 16GB Transcend RAM i added ) & after MANY yet to be solved USB 3.0 issues w/ both my 1 year old NewerTech Guardian Maximus enclosures ( the 3rd, new one works FINE but i'll spare you - got an Apple Tbolt/FW800 adapter to be able to function.... ) i accidentally managed to erase a 3TB drive

i got Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery to try get back as much data back as i could....

so far so good, problem is my iMac seems to ''hang up in time'' every so often !!

it's not going to sleep, it's not shutting down it's ....as if time stands still to it ? it's very weird & as a consequence Stellar Phoenix is taking FOREVER to get it's thing done - it's been days & days now... - VERY frustrating...

i went into System Prefs, (un)ticked all the boxes to keep it awake, except for the display which is set to be turned off after 20 mn


i've restarted the computer, checked if i installed the Transcend RAM correctly & tested it ( all good.. ) reset the SMC, the NVRAM, checked my temps & they seemed perfectly alright, iStat Menus showing typical results of : cores 1 to 4 between 54º & 56º C !?..

best way i can describe what happens is that after i'm away for a while, upon returning the screen is dark ( as it should, right ?.. ) i tap the space key, it takes a couple of seconds for it to come back BUT with a catch : the hour on the clock is NOT correct & there is absolutely no activity in the Stellar's app window's status/activity bars
then the iMac's clock only ''adjusts'' itself to the correct time some 8 or 10 seconds later & so do the blue status bars in the Stellar app window ''come back to life'' for lack of a better description - even Apple Mail only starts receiving/displaying new emails sent during this ''coma'' when the iMac comes out of it..

while i'm at the computer, the app progresses pretty fast recovering files, the only workaround i've found so far being making a huge list of YouTube videos to play one after the other
the same happened while scanning the drive making it a VERY TEDIOUS & long process, much longer than it normally would...

as it is right now, i'm still 1.2TB away from an almost full recovery ( seems Stellar managed to get back almost 2.5TB out of the 2.7TB of data i deleted - thank goodness for that !.. ) so i'm obviously weery to try something that might interrupt the process & have to restart from scratch but still i'd like to ask if anyone has experienced this or has any ideas what is causing this behaviour ?

in human terms it feels as if you're waking up someone in the morning that stares back at you w/ a hazy look in it's eyes & mumbles something only becoming coherent & LOOKING at you a couple of minutes later, you know what i mean ?

what could possibly been causing this ? any suggestions will be very welcome

many thanks for reading

Nuno

Does this happen if you're not using that application? i.e. if you leave it with a browser open or TextEdit etc. Leave it for same period as before then come back to it. Does it behave the same?

hi mrplow

afaik it does it whith any app, but will definitely try it out to make sure - however it also did the same when running Data Rescue 3

also i forgot to mention i'm running 10.8.5, all updates made except the OS - since i need my computer for work stuff, i never upgrade the OS right after new versions are available, waiting instead for a while until most the bugs/incompatibilities are ironed out..

Try different apps, but also try disconnecting the external disk. I know that you 'need' to be using that disk but for the purposes of fault finding that's the way to go.

It does sound like the Mac is sleeping. You may want to try a free app like Caffeine to force it to remain awake

thanks

since i've managed to run the data recovery thing all the way & recovered most of my ''lost'' files ( i could slap myself…LOL.. ) i will disconnect the drives, can even disconnect everything, no biggie….

i'll post back my findings asap

cheers