iMac Harddrive Corrupt?

Hi Everyone,

I thought I would give my 7 year iMac a little maintenance as the spinning rainbow wheel has been appearing over the last three weeks every now and then resulting me in rebooting or closing the browser if I could.

Went into Disk Utility and ran Verify Disk Permissions and once that was complete I ran Repair Disk Permissions which all went ok. I then ran the Verify Disk which can take a long time, clicked OK to go ahead and do this. Next minute I got a popup box saying it needs repairing and to put in the Mac OS X installation disc then repair disk. In the progress box it had red text saying Mac HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v60/smilesnz/WordPress%20Site%20n%20Blog/mac_zpsdeb93428.jpg

I don't know if I should dig into repairing it via the CDs if I have them as I'm worried I will just get myself into trouble and iMac might crash. The iMac came with Leopard but when I got my new hard drive on March, 2012 Apple installed Snow Leopard meaning I have no installation CDs for that OS X. OR just keep using it and see how long it lasts.

Details Brought January, 2008
iMac, 20-inch, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
SuperDrive 8x (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM – 2x1GB
Mac OS X 10.6.8 SL
500GB HD - Available 63.57 GB

I had planned on looking at buying a new iMac in 2015 when the new OSX is out and comes with new iMac's along with a new iPhone6 so I can finally use iCloud on all devices.

Thanks for any help

#1 thing to do ASAP (if the HD is on the way out)...is make a backup of anything important (assuming you don't have a backup already).

The best way to repair a disk is to do it from a bootable CD/DVD (like you mentioned having to dig for). If this process is not successful...then it may be time for a new HD. HD's are cheap...so not going to hurt the wallet too much.

By the way...looking at your iMac's specs...2gig of ram is pretty low by todays standards. I would suggest upgrading to at least 4gig of ram (depending on what it can be upgraded to)...I think that it's max is 6gig.

This will also help with the "spinning rainbows".

- Nick

Hi Jen.

Great to see you back (and Tweetie of course). An August 2007 iMac can handle 6GB.

Thanks Nick for the info and suggestions. I have Time Machine running as my backup and have backups of some stuff on a hard drive.

When it is asking to use the installation cd is that the one with Leopard on it, that came with my iMac?
I currently run Snow Leopard and have no installation cd for that so if I need the current OS X cd, then I think I'm stuck.

My next question is does the installation cd just repair and not do anything else to my applications etc?


Replacing this hard drive won't be under the warranty this time and getting the backup transferred over like Apple did last time was at my cost including time it took to do etc. I was told that when this hard drive fails it might be the software that will need updating too and this might be better looking at a new iMac.

Basically I am behind on OS X, my Entourage email is having issues, I'm unable to use iCloud on my mac as I need the next OSX and don't want to upgrade due to 2GB RAM and that is another added cost. If upgrading RAM and replacing a hard drive including adding everything back again, that is going to be costly and I wonder if that's worth doing.

Hi Harry

Running repair disk from the cd does not do anything to your applications. It's essentially cleaning up directory entry errors in most cases.

Since you have a Time Machine backup you don't really need Apple to transfer the data to the new drive for you. The transfer is easy and anyone can do it.

Here's one thing you may be able to do if you have either a spare hard drive or enough external space. Use software like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone the entire drive to an external hard drive. Then you can boot from the external drive, run the repair on the internal drive then reboot from the internal drive.

A safe boot is usually a good option to repair your hard drive:

KiwiJenn said:

I currently run Snow Leopard and have no installation cd for that so if I need the current OS X cd, then I think I'm stuck.

Click to expand...

How did you install Snow Leopard (OS 10.6)...without a Snow Leopard install disk?

Here's where you need to purchase one (New Zealand Apple Store):

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple Store (New Zealand)

- Nick

KiwiJenn said:

The iMac came with Leopard but when I got my new hard drive on March, 2012 Apple installed Snow Leopard meaning I have no installation CDs for that OS X.

Click to expand...

Repeating here...
Doing a Safe Boot forces a hard drive repair. It's a good alternative way to repair the hard drive when you don't have any other drive (like the CD) to startup from:
OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?

After allowing it to finish, restart normally, then use Disk Utility again to verify that it worked.

Thanks pigoo3
for the link to where I can buy SL if needed

Thanks gsahli for the Safe mode info, that I think I will do that as it checks the system and doesn't want cds. Then will run Disk Utility again.