IMac :: Crashes Occasionally After Shutting Down Hard Drive
Dec 16, 2010
I have an iMac7.1 with Intel Core Duo, 2.8 GHz, 4GB Memory. I'ts crashing occasionally without any related program start or running, or at least I never found out any relation between software or operating system. I had these with the old tiger 10.4 system and it's continuing with Snow Leopard 10.6 - This is what happens: Just in the middle of my normal work (sometimes I don't even do anything at all), I recognize that the harddrive stops spinning (I can tell from recognizing that the low humming noise from the drive just goes away). After that, I can click on active window, but see the spinning beach ball. No matter how long I wait, this is not changing so that I have to turn off the iMac by holding the power key for a few seconds.
After reboot, all works fine. Yesterday I had another crash just a few minutes after reboot. But in most cases it works fine for another day or two until it crashes again. I already ran DiskUtility (no harddisk errors found) and tech tool deluxe without finding any problem. In old Tiger 10.4 I needed to run a disk repair after each crash (obviously due to shutting down the system using the power switch), since Snow Leopard I never had to use disk repair after reboot. Maybe anybody can give me a hint if there is something I can do about that. Apple care don't help me much, because I don't have an apple store nearby and I don't own a car to bring the machine in.
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Dec 21, 2009
I just had the original 300 GB hard drive fail in my aluminum 24" inch iMac running the latest update of Leopard. I wasn't able to save it using diskwarrior (diskwarrior said it was some sort of mechanical failure) but I was able to recover most of the data from it by booting from an external hard-drive.
So I went out and purchased a brand new Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB drive. The install went fine, it found the drive partitioned it and installed Leopard successful. Then is crashed and disappeared when I left it alone to run all the software updates. I came back and the computer was stuck on "Restart Required" after downloading all the updates. I went to hit restart now, and the system just hanged, wouldn't do anything. So I hard powered down the system and restarted it. It came up with nothing, just stuck on the White Screen of Death. So I plugged the external drive back in and booted from it. Mac OSX couldn't find the drive and diskwarrior would crash if I tried to run it. I tried to boot up from the OSX start-up disk and it couldn't find the drive either.
So I took the case apart and made sure all the connections were solid and the drive was mounted correctly. Everything looked fine so I plugged it in and it started up fine. Finished the updates and the iMac ran great.
So I thought maybe it was overheating, so I've installed smcfancontrol and started to monitor the temp of the drive. I also took the mac apart again and sucked out any dust in the fans or vents. The drive never goes over a 105 F, so it doesn't seem to be overheating.
However, this is where the problem is consistent: everytime the iMac goes into sleep mode, it crashes and the iMac is unable to find the hard-drive again. Unless I unplug it completely for 5 minutes or so. Once I unplug it, it finds the drive and operates like a champ.
I think maybe there's an issue powering the drive back on? Anyone have any ideas?
And my follow up posting later that day:
Quote:
So I ran some tests just to see if was an overheat issue, hard drive malfunction, or sleep issue. I decided to start encoding a video, pulled up Word, Power Point, Excel, started downloading all 6000 mail messages off my server (I never delete my e-mail :-/), also started installing iLife 09, and pulled up a bunch of webpages in Firefox with multiple tabs.
However, I shut off all sleep mode options on the hard drive. I let it run for an hour and came back. Everything is fine, hard drive isn't locked up and smcfancontrol shows the hard drive running pretty hot (115 degrees) but not so hot I'm worried. So it's definitely something to do the hard drives going into sleep mode and not powering back on. It's also weird that I have to leave the computer completely unplugged for 10-15 minutes before the drive is recognized again.
So turning off sleep seems to be my work-around, however, this shouldn't be a long term solution. I'm worried that there is a bigger issue with the iMac, but I'm not sure what would cause this. I've been a PC guy for years, this was my first Mac, and honestly I don't know enough about the inner workings to narrow this down. I would assume this would have to do with the motherboard in some way? But I'm not sure how you would even test it.
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May 25, 2012
My old and trusted 2007 MacBook Pro (10.6.8) has been experiencing repeated crashes for the last few months - the quick type of system crash where the screen goes blue and then the OS pops right back up but with all the applications shut down. I took it into the Genius Bar this week and after running a diagnostc on it, the rep said that my hard drive was failing and that was the cause of the crashes. They wouldn't replace the drive for me as it wasn't the orignal one (I had upgraded to a 500GB 7200rpm drive a little over a year ago). Â
That replacement drive was out of warranty (of course), so I purchases a new 640GB drive from another dealer and replaced it myself. I also made sure to make it a 5400prm drive this time as the 7200rpm just ran too hot for me and I though that could have been one of the reasons that led to it's apparently impending demise.Â
Anyway, less than 24 hrs from installing the new drive, the system just experienced another of those crashes. Now I'm at a loss. Can anyone possibly offer some advice?Â
Info:
MacBook
Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Feb 14, 2008
wouldn't even load. It would just show the little blue "light" flashing on and off, as if Finder were launching, crashing, launching, crashing.After some deduction, I found the problem to be my USB WD hard drive. It used to previously work fine. It has only one partition on it, which is HFS+ formatted. Disk utility verify/repair reports that the drive is fine.
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May 9, 2009
1. I plug in my 2.5" external hard drive. It appears in Finder. I can see the contents of the main directory. 2. The moment I CLICK on any folder/file, I get the beach ball and Finder crashes. This is the only time Finder crashes.I've searched the forums but all the results are old and no solutions have been found.
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Oct 25, 2010
I have a Digistor external BluRay burner to use with MakeMKV to rip BluRays to my Mac. Here's a link to the model info:[URL:...] It has worked fine with my iMac (2.8GHz Core Duo) except that, on occasion, it would fail to eject the disk. When this happened, I simply pulled the USB connection from the back of the drive (I use the dual-USB connection to maintain battery life after the single-USB connection failed to keep the battery charged), reconnected the cable and hit the eject button on the drive. No problems, just a minor effort to work around. However, now that I have upgraded to an i7 2.93GHz iMac, the same procedure as above will crash my Mac. The moment I reconnect the USB cable, the iMac goes black and won't restart. Instant death, no warning. It won't restart with the external drive connected, either after a crash as described, or even after a normal reboot or cold power up. The only way I can use the drive, is to boot the Mac with the USB cables disconnected from the Mac, and then connect the drive to the Mac after bootup. The "old" iMac was fully up-to-date, running Snow Leopard. There is no outward difference in the operating systems of either machine, yet this happens only on the new model.
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Jul 1, 2009
Just got my brand-new 24-inch iMac yesterday, unpacked it and hooked it all up last night (2.93 Ghz, Nvidia120 card). First off, absolutely beautiful computer. But... I'm already noticing a loud "pop" from the speakers on occasion. In doing a little research, I've seen where others have had this problem, but mostly with external speakers. Mine is with the built-in speakers.
Seems to happen when I open a movie or sound file --- and only when one hasn't been opened in the last few minutes. I get a fairly loud "pop" upon opening the file, then everything's fine. If I immediately open another movie or audio file, I don't get a repeat of the pop, but if I wait, say, 5 minutes before opening another movie or audio file, I get the pop again. No peripherals hooked up (other than cable modem) and no software installed that didn't come on it.
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Aug 21, 2009
I'm running Leopard 10.5.8 on an iMac and continuously have problems booting the machine. The boot process occasionally hangs at the gray screen, but more often it hangs at the blue screen. Sometimes it makes it to the login screen where the cursor occasionally freezes. Whenever these problems occur I have to shut down by holding down the start button, then restart again. Usually the second boot is successful. This booting problem occurs frequently, even after running Disk Warrior and repairing permissions. I don't think this is normal behavior. Has anyone else had such problems? Is there anything I can do to correct this behavior, or is this something that needs to be fixed by Apple?
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Jan 8, 2010
This has been going on for a while. It happened first a month or so ago.
I turn on my 2008 iMac 24". The screen turns white like always, but no Apple icon appears. It starts to make a loud nice again and again. Bip, Bip. Pause. Bip, Bip, Pause. Bip, Bip. Pause.
I turn it off. Turn it on again. Same thing happens. Repeat.
I take out the cable powering the computer and go to school. I put it back in when i returned and turned the computer on. It worked fine.
Nothing happened again until a week after. I was sitting working on the computer, when it out of nowhere shows the "grey screen of death". I turn off the computer, take out the cable, leave it out for half and hour or so, then turn the computer on. It works fine. Works for a week. Same thing happens again.
Now it starting to appear more often tht though, and I'm afraid to turn it on until i get an external HD so i can Time Machine, in case it will appear more often for every time i turn it on.
The guarantee is not valid anymore (never purchased AppleCare) and i can't bring it to a store and show them what it does, because it doesn't always happen.
I read that it might a kernel panic somethingsomething, and that i need to wipe the HD. Though that was when the computer had the grey screen all the time. Not just occasionally like on mine.
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Mar 26, 2012
So as the title says when I boot up my iMac, on occasion, it seems to have the "Updating" Status bar, then the mac boots normally, then the sound is disabled. As I said though this dose not happed all the time but when it dose the only way to fix it is by rebooting the iMac once again. Processor 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5Memory 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512 MBSoftware Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (11D50b)
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3), Has Parallels Desktop Installed
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Mar 1, 2012
I've had a lot of problems with my iMac G5 power supply and since I have newer computers I've decided to get rid of this computer.Â
I want to save the hard drive and put it in a case, then use it as an external drive on my other Macs.Â
What sort of case do I need to shop for? Should I look for SATA or what exactly is the proper nomenclature.Â
Is USB 2 the preferred choice, or Firewire, or what? Is there a USB 3? I use a mid-2010 27 inch iMac with the intel processor, and I needed to buy an adapter to use my older Firewire external drive. Is Firewire a dodo?Â
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Feb 18, 2010
I was wondering if anyone had successfully installed and 2nd hard drive in their iMac?I have a 2 year old 2.8 24'' iMac and the performance just isn't cutting the mustard, it's all hard drive related and I already have a decent 1TB drive in there.I was thinking of perhaps swapping the optical drive with a second hard drive for RAID0, but not too sure if there will be space and was wondering if the optical drive is a standard SATA connector, or if there is some way I could run a SATA+power cables externally?
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Jan 25, 2009
I have a Imac 20 with a small 3.5 hard drive and I have bought a bigger 360 gig 3.5 hard drive to replace the old one. I have the new one in an external case with USB 2.0 right now. Is there some way I can transfer the entire contents of the old hard drive on to the new one and then swap out the old drive with the new drive and not miss a beat?
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Jun 21, 2012
Every few weeks my iMac will suddenly freeze, the screen going black or white or pink etc. The only way I can get the computer back is to hold down the power button to force a shutdown. Then after a restart everything is OK for a few more weeks. Usually it occurs when I am on the internet. I click on something and suddenly the computer is frozen. I am on OS X 10.6.8 and usually use Safari. Ironically when I opened this forum 5 minutes ago there was a similar sounding problem at the top of the list!
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), FCE 4 + FCS 3 . . . Little Knowledge, Many Opinions.
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Apr 6, 2008
I have an iMac G4 with a failed HD. I know this because it boots from my external drive. Does anyone know where I can find the Hard drive part # and a take-apart guide?
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Jun 5, 2009
I've been looking at a number of different Firewire 800 enclosures to use with my new Mac Mini and I have seen lots of complaints with almost all the enclosures that I have investigated, including the Newertech MiniStack v3 which I thought should be a good one. A recent enclosure I came across that I haven't seen any bad reviews about is the Icy Dock (MB559UEB-1S). I'd like to know if others are using this and what they think about it. The next question has to do with the type of hard drive to put into the enclosure. Is it worth getting a high performance drive, or will the Firewire 800 interface be the bottleneck even with an average speed drive?
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Oct 17, 2007
I plan to purchase one of the new iMac's and I assume that the hard drive is not user replaceable so I know there are warranty risks but a couple months ago I was able to upgrade the hard drive in my current generation MBP to a 250GB drive. When I get an iMac I plan to get the more expensive 20 inch version and want at least 500GB since it'll be dual boot (BootCamp) Windows XP/Mac. Even the 750GB is tempting. I may go the route of the smallest hard drive and then buy a larger hard drive and upgrade myself to save money but is this hard to do?
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Feb 5, 2010
I did a search but couldn't find any specific info as related to the 20" (late 2006) iMac. Basically, I do a lot of audio work with Logic and DP and I'm interested in replacing my 20" iMac's optical drive with a second internal hard drive. If anyone has any experience or insight regarding this, I would greatly appreciate your input. About 6 months ago, I did a DIY replacement of my iMac's internal hard drive (upgrade to 1 tb), so I'm pretty sure I'd like to DIY an optical drive / hard drive swap - that is, if it's 1) Proven to work stably (thermally and otherwise) 2) Not going to require the iMac's fan to be running faster/louder than normal Looking at my iMac's system profiler, the DVD drive is on an ATA bus (which, as I remember it, is slower than S-ATA). What kind of transfer rates do you think one could realistically expect with a hard drive on this ATA bus? Also, would I have to be careful about new hard drive compatibility, or are S-ATA and S-ATA II backwards compatible with ATA?
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Jun 6, 2010
Lately I've been using my external hard drive as the main drive of my imac I5 and every day it freezes when I open 3 or 4 apps or more or while doing several stuff at the same time. This, obviously, doesnt happen when using the internal hard drive of the imac, so I suppose is due to using firewire 800 or usb 2.0. Is it normal for every external hard drive to freeze when using it as the main drive or maybe is it that my external hard drive is bad?
I'm planning on buying a more quieter external hard drive to use as the main drive of my imac, but I wont do so if it also keeps freezing every day. Any suggestions? Is it normal even when using firewire 800? When using the external hard drive I umount the internal drive of the imac. Maybe this is the reason? Its a Lacie Big Disk 500GB. Would an external SSD make a difference or would it still freeze?
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Nov 22, 2010
I'm curious what people use for external storage on their iMacs. I have a Mac Pro which is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm debating whether to get a new Mac Pro or to get an iMac, which would be a pretty good speed bump from my Mac Pro 1,1. I'd get the ssd drive, and the 2TB harddrive and get aftermarket RAM. But what I like about the Mac Pro is the upgrades you can do. And I like the four hard drive bays, for storage and backup. I've got over 3 TB of photos and music/tv/movies, so I'm going to need an external drive. In addition, I'd like to be able to backup everything. Is there an elegant way to do this on an iMac with an external drive that isn't super loud and hot?
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Jul 14, 2010
My intel 2006 iMac recently died, and I'm wondering if I could one of the 1GB RAM sticks into the a G3 iMac I own. And more importantly: If I could put the hard drive from the intel iMac into the iMac G3.
The intel iMac was made in late 2006 and the iMac G3 was made in 1999, 1998 or 2000.
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Jan 4, 2011
I need to replace the hard drive on my 17" iMac G5, will this work?
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digita...x1RSBNJV8YHGYW
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Mar 13, 2009
Will upgrading the hard drive void the warranty?
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Jul 1, 2012
Recently a email link was clicked on and since then my wife has been having issues with her G5 shutting down. Sometimes the box will not completely boot at all and others it will boot up for a moment and then shut itself off.
I have looked for teh Flashback Trojan and appear to be clean. If i boot the box in safe mode when booted in safe mode all seems okay. I have also recently reset the PRAM and have had the machine up for a few minutes and it has not shut down yet.
Info:iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
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Nov 23, 2009
My poor Imac hard Drive is about to go pop.What does every one think the best hard drive on the market is that will work with my Imac.I have a 20" Imac with a 2GHz Processor which is a Intel 2 Duo Core with 4Gb 667 Mhz DDR2 Sdram, 250Gb HD.I was looking at the Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB SATA 32MB Cache Hard Drive.
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Apr 1, 2007
I have a iMac G5 (Pre-iSight). I just got home and my computer was off, I didn't turn it off and I asked my mom, she said she didn't come into my room. I was posting something on here and my computer shut off on its own. What gives?
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Feb 2, 2009
I have a refurbished iMac G5 that randomly just shuts off. It makes a little "zzzttt" sound, like something is short circuiting and then dies. Sometimes I can power it right back on and sometimes I have to unplug it and wait a few hours before it will come back on. While it's running, there are no issues. It functions beautifully. Anyone else had this type of problem or can you suggest a solution? Here's the info on it:
Mac OSX 10.4.1,
Machine Name:iMac G5
Machine Model:PowerMac8,1
CPU Type:PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Number Of CPUs:1
CPU Speed:1.8 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU):512 KB
Memory:1 GB
Bus Speed:600 MHz
Boot ROM Version:5.2.2f4
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Feb 4, 2009
I've learned quite a bit from this site in recent weeks as I found it following my purchase of a 20" iMac (2.66 GHz) a month ago. I've got a question for the group and I'm quite certain it's a stupid one so please be gentle. As I do every night, last night I put my iMac to sleep at around 11:15 pm before going to bed. Upon awaking this morning I couldn't get it to wake up. Hitting keys on the keyboard didn't do it, nor did moving the mouse around. I'm not sure if this is important but both my keyboard and mouse are wireless. Power to the other things on my desk was still on so it wasn't a power problem.
Anyway, I hit the power button on the back to see if it had simply shut itself off and nothing happened. I hit it again. still nothing. Finally, hitting it a third time did the trick and the computer roared to life and came on normally. It had never done this before. It had always immediately awakened in the morning upon hitting a button on the keyboard. First, is this common for an iMac to shut itself down? Second, why would the power button be unresponsive? Finally, if the machine had actually not been off (which I doubt very seriously) did I do a big "no no" by hitting the power button to turn it off/on?
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Mar 23, 2010
I have a MacBook which has recently been shutting down when it feels like :/ this all started a week or two ago (well not the shut downs but other issues that I'll get too), basically the fan I think has been knocked as it is bumping the top or something as the whirring is getting loud and it sounds like every now and again it hits something
Also CPU usage seems to be averaging out at 20% for Safari and 100% for HD Video where as it used to be very small amount for Safari and 30 - 40% for HD.
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Dec 25, 2010
I got an iMac i5 recently, and I've downloaded iStat. It seems as though the HD hovers around 55C, and I think 60C is the maximum. Are there any precautions I should take, or is there nothing to worry about?
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