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rdd153@psu.edu

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 25, 2005
11
0
I have a powerbook g4 thats one year old and i dont really have much stuff on there except about 1100 songs and a few programs i downloaded and yet i still only have about 10 gigs of a 60 gig harddrive left. Recently my computer has been acting up. There's been sounds coming from the computer and im pretty sure its not the fan, the computer has been slowing down in general etc..is there anything i could do to help fix this? Such as run some clean up programs or something. thanks for the help!
 

yellow

Moderator emeritus
Oct 21, 2003
16,018
6
Portland, OR
Will Cheyney said:
A complete reinstall may also help matters.

There's a lot of troubleshooting steps to go through before you get to this point.

I'd start by identifying the source of the 'strange noises'. A permissions repair won't help 'strange noises'.
 

yellow

Moderator emeritus
Oct 21, 2003
16,018
6
Portland, OR
IJ Reilly said:
And neither will a reinstall, which has little chance of fixing anything that can't be fixed more easily.

To quote myself:

yellow said:
Will Cheyney said:
A complete reinstall may also help matters.

There's a lot of troubleshooting steps to go through before you get to this point.

In which I think I implied what you wrote.
 

FFTT

macrumors 68030
Apr 17, 2004
2,952
1
A Stoned Throw From Ground Zero
If you are properly storing your files in their proper places in your Home
folder any noticable slowdown may just be due to a cache buildup.

You can try Tiger Cache Cleaner available at VersionTracker.

You should also verify and repair your permissions each time you install
new software.

Edit:

If you only have 10 GB free on your HD, it's time to clean house a bit
and burn some of that stuff you're not using to CD or copy to another drive.

Once you're done it would also be helpful for you to run DiskWarrior from the bootable
CD or from another HD.
to defrag your HD.
 

rdd153@psu.edu

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 25, 2005
11
0
My hardrive kinda makes a sutturing sound. :confused:


Thanks for all the suggestions, ill be sure to try 'em out.
 

mad jew

Moderator emeritus
Apr 3, 2004
32,191
9
Adelaide, Australia
Go to Disk Utility in your Utilities folder and make sure the drive has still got its SMART status verified (select the drive and it'll tell you down the bottom).

It might also be worthwhile starting from the OSX disks and using Disk Utility to repair the drive (not the permissions). :)

Generally a clicking hard drive signifies that it's failing but take these steps before getting too worried because that may not necessarily be the case here.
 

killmoms

macrumors 68040
Jun 23, 2003
3,752
55
Durham, NC
rdd153@psu.edu said:
My hardrive kinda makes a sutturing sound. :confused:


Thanks for all the suggestions, ill be sure to try 'em out.
The last person I knew to get these sorts of sounds lost her hard drive shortly thereafter, and lost everything on it. Fortunately, she'd backed everything up a couple weeks before when she installed Tiger. However, she still lost everything she'd created in those two weeks.

I'd suggest the FIRST thing you do is backup your drive NOW, before the problem gets any worse from the hard drive continuing to be used. If it turns out not to be a dying HD later, at least you took the precaution. If it is, you'll be happy you saved all your stuff.

After that, I'd start trying the other suggestions in this thread, especially the ones about running a verify/repair on your drive, maybe running the hardware test, verifying SMART status, etc.

But BACKUP FIRST.
 

FFTT

macrumors 68030
Apr 17, 2004
2,952
1
A Stoned Throw From Ground Zero
Agreed,

You should make a priority of backing up all your important data before
anything critical happens.

Documents, photos, music library, address book, bookmarks, Installer .dmg's and their correspondiing authorization keys, update packages in your packages folder and so on.
It's also a great time to organize all you had stored so it all makes sense.

If you're like many of us, your whole digital life is on that hard drive.

Once you have everything safe, then run the disk utility from your OS disc
first verifying and then repairing your boot drive.

Hopefully your disk will repair without incident.

You should then try running your hardware diagnostic CD to see if anything
shows up.

If you go to this much trouble, I would then consider a clean erase install
only this time running a custom install de-selecting all the extra printer drivers, language files, Software demos, iDVD themes, and GarageBand
demo songs. Doing so will free up 4.7+ GB of space off your hard drive.

A clean erase install is still the best way to insure that all the stuff you have accumulated isn't bogging down your system.

The only other thing that comes to mind at the moment as far as CPU
hogging, is the use of Norton's AV or Virex 7.5.
If you have either of these installed, that could explain why your system is running slow. Both are notorious CPU hogs.

Sometimes a badly fragmented hard drive will cause your hardrive to work too hard locating data.
This is where DiscWarrior comes in handy, both with diagostic tools and defragging.

If the disc chatter persists after a clean install, then you'll know it's a hardware issue.
 
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