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<blockquote data-quote="chas_m" data-source="post: 1631721">Being that we aren't there, don't have all the information, can't see the machine and test it ourselves, nothing we can say here is &quot;definite.&quot; We can only tell you what our experience suggests to us is the most likely explanation given the data you have supplied. As a former Apple tech, I'm betting your hard drive is failing.What could have caused this? Nothing in particular. A hard drive is a set of spinning platters with lots of mechanical parts. They fail randomly, like lightbulbs. Like lightbulbs, they GENERALLY work for a very very long time before failing, as yours has (at least five years now) and like lightbulbs, they sometimes give you warnings that they are about to fail completely (as yours seems to be doing), but sometimes just &quot;die on the spot&quot; without any apparent cause. SSDs are less likely to do this, one of the reasons they are so popular these days (no moving parts = higher reliability).After you've made a backup of your data, you should take it to a tech who will likely confirm my diagnosis. They will probably suggest replacing the drive, which is generally not a big expense. You have the option of going for a larger-capacity hard drive or a faster but more expensive SSD -- but really, as that machine is nearing the end of its useful life for a variety of reasons I would suggest the cheaper route of just replacing the hard drive -- and use the money you saved to start saving up for your next Mac.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="chas_m, post: 1631721"] Being that we aren't there, don't have all the information, can't see the machine and test it ourselves, nothing we can say here is "definite." We can only tell you what our experience suggests to us is the most likely explanation given the data you have supplied. As a former Apple tech, I'm betting your hard drive is failing. What could have caused this? Nothing in particular. A hard drive is a set of spinning platters with lots of mechanical parts. They fail randomly, like lightbulbs. Like lightbulbs, they GENERALLY work for a very very long time before failing, as yours has (at least five years now) and like lightbulbs, they sometimes give you warnings that they are about to fail completely (as yours seems to be doing), but sometimes just "die on the spot" without any apparent cause. SSDs are less likely to do this, one of the reasons they are so popular these days (no moving parts = higher reliability). After you've made a backup of your data, you should take it to a tech who will likely confirm my diagnosis. They will probably suggest replacing the drive, which is generally not a big expense. You have the option of going for a larger-capacity hard drive or a faster but more expensive SSD -- but really, as that machine is nearing the end of its useful life for a variety of reasons I would suggest the cheaper route of just replacing the hard drive -- and use the money you saved to start saving up for your next Mac. [/QUOTE]

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