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10.2 problem just started...

kiwi_the_iwik

kiwi_the_iwik

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 30, 2001
1,110
2
London, UK
OK - so I finally upgraded to 10.2

Everything was working perfectly, until yesterday - when I find that my computer (G4 Cube 450Mhz, 768Mb Ram) freezes every 10-15 seconds, for about a second at a time (and I can hear a click from the HD at the same time...).

What the hell's the deal here?

I haven't upgraded to 10.2.4 yet - the download's humungous for a 56K dialup connection. I'm waiting for my broadband service to be activated early next week before I attempt to get it.

Have any of you suffered the same fate as me? Any answers?

Cheers, all!

:D (smiling, for now...)
 
Clicking Hard DRIVE? That ain't good, and IMHO it is not Jaguar. I'd start pricing drives. Nice thing is they are cheap. (Oh, keep backing up your data, because it's just a matter of time.
 
if its a quite loud click, such as a spin and then click click....yeah start pricing hard drives. if its just your average hard drive seek, then the problem is different.
 
Audible clicks are almost uniformly not good, but please know I could be way wrong. It's just that I have Jag running on older machines than that and it's fine. Did you try a clean, reformatted install of OSX10.2? If not, I'd try that first. If it clicks on the install, well, then, there you go. $80.00 for a nice 80GB.
 
Back up your data!

I would back up your data ASAP. I've never had this problem but I was reading another thread where three different users reported that their drives died within a month of when the hard drive clicking started. What kind of drives do those Cubes take, anyway? Regular 3.5" IDE drives?
 
Yeah - it's like an "accessing" click sound. Just your normal, everyday hard drive noise. The problem is that it occurs every time the cursor freezes. And it's just the one sound.

Baffling...

I tried addressing startup preferences from the X.2 Install CD, and have even tried Norton - and have defragmented the drive. Luckily, I have 2 partitions - with 5Gb on OS9, and 15Gb on OSX. So I can effectively check the drive if I start up in OS9.

Everything checks out - so far...

I'm wondering, after reading a few worrying threads lately, whether my installation of the first Safari Beta had anything to do about it - shame if it does: I really like it, and I don't want to go back to Exploder.
 
Nuts - I'd already used Norton Utilities V.6 thru OS9 to do a general HD cleanup of both partitions a week ago.

Did a total disk defrag and optimisation, and ran Disk Doctor (fixed Major problems - like it always says. Gives them the justification to tell you to buy the upgrade, I suppose...)

Sort of annoyed, too - got Applecare Warranty, which only has Techtools Pro V3 - and is incompatible with OSX (what's the point, I ask you?)

All this happened before the mouse freeze started. And I thought I was doing some good before trouble set in - NUM 6 is supposedly compatible with X.

Ah, well. I think I've shortened the life of my Hard Drive...

Bugger.

:rolleyes:
 
Clicking=bad hard drive!

I work for an Apple Service Center, and we literally *just* had a Cube in for the same problem. The hard drive sounded down-right nasty. clicking, and clicking, you can almost picture the drive reading the same sectors over and over again.
My supervisor isn't a fan of the Cubes at all because of its cooling method. He suggests that the hard drives go easily in Cubes because of the heat. I dunno, maybe, maybe not.

BUT, there are aftermarket mods you can get to add a fan to the top of the cube case. I'd recommend making sure you don't clutter stuff around the Cube for maximum airflow, and buy a new WD or Seagate HDD.
 
Sounds like drive to me also, sorry My wifes imac was making the same sound but fortunately it was under warranty and apple replaced it! Everything i tried did nothing Apple was great--- good luck!
 
Well - I backed up my data. I did two different types of save - the CDRW way, and the DV Backup way (via a FireWire cable to my camcorder - 1 tape=@10Gb - download it from www.versiontracker.com). Now, I'll stand by for the chime of death. Then, I'll go down and buy a nice drive - thanks for the advice AnotherMortal: a Seagate or WD sound great. What'dya think of the Maxtor drives? I can pick one up (a 40Gb) for around £60 at my local dept. store...

I've decided to opt for a large external FireWire drive - for the time being I can't see the point in getting a large internal - especially if this kind of thing happens again...

;)
 
Alright - here's the followup...

You won't believe this, but neither the Hard Drive or the OS were faulty!


...it was the mouse...


It finally passed away at 10:15pm GMT 29/01/03. May it rest in pieces (probably in my toolbox). :(

I just got off the phone to Apple, and they're sending me a new one, free of charge, within 4 working days. I love those guys...

:)
 
That is a COMPLETLY new one on me. The symtoms you described don't exactly point to a mouse, but computers are always trying to fool us!
 
Well, Les - it all made perfect sense in the end...

The mouse had a kink in the cable (possibly thanks to my 2 year-old - hmmm...), which in turn cut the power to the laser tracker. It was something I noticed when I picked it up - the laser light kept flickering, and the hard drive would start whirring and clicking. It was also why the mouse would "die" on the screen for brief periods.

So, the hard drive "accessing" sound was related to the faulty mouse - as far as the computer was concerned, I was unplugging and plugging in a mouse (albeit, rather rapidly at the time ;) ), and it was loading in the appropriate drivers each and every time the cable on the mouse kinked.

So - hooray! No HD damage (for now...)

:D

Small problem: I'm without a mouse for a few days...
 
- kiwi_the_iwik

I'm sorry you had a scare, but glad you got it adressed. I have to admit, that's a new one on me (writing in little black book).

Question tho', do you have a FireWire drive? I'd look into getting one specifically for backups with CCCloner.

Yeah, there are other ways, but hey, nothing like a live backup with zippo compression. Talk about piece of mind.

About HD failures, most hard drives when they fail it's actually the armiture bearings going hasta-la-bye-bye after all that popping back and forth. Additionally, most HD manufacturers engineer the drive to fail gradually, from the outside of the platter inwards. Now this is great because if you optimize, those outer tracks are the empty disk space, so that gives you time to prepare.

Just $.02
 
It just shows that you have to follow the principle of a good detective: suspect everyone. You can investigate suspects in order from most likely guilty to least likely guilty, but don't leave anyone out!

Which reminds me of two times when I had a hardware problem with add-on cards that wasn't diagnosed by swapping each part in turn:

(1) Two memory cards on a home built system (when RAM came on cards intead of chips) worked in other systems but never in this system. It turned out that they were addressed to the same address via DIP switches.

(2) A system with three add-on cards worked if you added any one or two of the cards, but not if you added all three. There were no known conflicts between them. It turned out that the power supply couldn't handle the total power requirements.

Somehow, computer problems always seem obvious in hindsight.
 
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