Can´t login with my user account, with other accounts runs slow and then freezes.

[ElViejo]

Hi. I need some help.

My 2 and a half years old Mac Pro 8 cores with OS X 10.5 was running quite slowly and re-booted randomly, so I decided to reset the PMU by pressing that little grey button on the mainboard.

For a week or two, everything was fine, but today suddenly I noticed that the machine was slow at startup and just couldn´t login with my user account: after entering my password, a blue screen appeared and I heard the disks working, but then returned to the username/password screen. I tried to use the guest user account and other account with administrator privileges, and they worked for a few minutes, although the machine was slow and finally it froze down. I was able to move the cursor around the screen, but nothing else.

Are the PMU problem and this issue related or it´s just a coincidence?

I managed to check the start-up disk with the disk utility , and it said it was OK. I tried to startup in safe mode and it didn´t help. What else can I do? Run the hardware test with the OS disc? Fresh OS reinstall?----> And if I do a fresh reinstall of the OS, am I going to keep everything I have in the other non-system disks which I run in a RAID 0 setup?

Thanks a lot for your answers.

 

[Loa]

Hello,

My feeling is that it's *not* software (OS or your accounts) related. But to be sure, do you have a spare drive you could use to install a fresh copy of the OS and see if the computer works fine then?

Loa

 

[ElViejo]

I´ve asked a few IT guys about the issue and all of them agree with you. It seems a hard disk problem, they say.

I´m gonna buy a new disk to make a fresh installation and see what happens.

I suppose any modern SATA III will work (and outperform the original disk), right?

 

[Loa]

Hello,

I´ve asked a few IT guys about the issue and all of them agree with you. It seems a hard disk problem, they say.

Could be hardware too, as in the mac pro itself. So if a fresh install (not a copy) on a new disk doesn't solve your issues, then its the machine itself that has an issue.

I suppose any modern SATA III will work (and outperform the original disk), right?

Yes, and not necessarily.

Loa

 

[ElViejo]

Yes, and not necessarily.

I´ve checked it and I was using a Seagate Barracuda ST3250.
3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, Cache 16 Mb, 78 Mb/s max sustained bitrate.

I´m not very familiarized with the HDD market, so I don´t know if a reasonabily priced new HDD can outperform that. I´ve heard that those eco-friendly "WD Caviar Green" are cheap and look great on paper, but are not very recommendable.

 

[Loa]

Hello,

I´ve checked it and I was using a Seagate Barracuda ST3250.
3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, Cache 16 Mb, 78 Mb/s max sustained bitrate.
I´m not very familiarized with the HDD market, so I don´t know if a reasonabily priced new HDD can outperform that

Most current drives will beat that, but I'm sure just much you're going to see real world differences.

I´ve heard that those eco-friendly "WD Caviar Green" are cheap and look great on paper, but are not very recommendable.

I wouldn't recommend caviar greens as a main or system drive: they're not designed for that. On the other hand I own 8 of them (six 2TB, and two 3TB) and I absolutely love them. But I use them to store data (music, photos, videos...), not my OS.

For a main/ OS drive, I'd go with a Caviar Black, which are among the fastest "regular" drives. Of course, if you want more power, you have two main options: RAID0 with mechanical drives, or a SSD. SSDs are in a wholly different budget class, but they're also in a wholly different level of performance.

Loa

P.S. No, I do not have 18TB of data! All six of the 2TB ones are for back-ups! :-D

 

[ElViejo]

Just for the record: after a new disc and a fresh install, the machine is running again. I don´t know if it´s for the new installation or because the old disc was messed up, but it´s working.

Thanks Loa for the help.

I´ll try to fix the old drive it if it´s possible, but I don´t know what diagnose software could be useful for this.

 

[jonnymo5]

I saw the same behavior when my main HDD was dying. Thats where I would put my money.

As someone said before, green drives don't make good system drives since they are optimized for energy efficiency and they sacrifice speed to do that.