Hard Drive Failing on iMac?

Your hard drive is reporting hardware errors, do get it backed up as soon as you can and then get it replaced. If you look at the bottom of the first image, it shows "SMART Status: Failing".

There are no software errors on the Macintosh HD partition which is why it's still being reported as okay, but with the drive failing that will change.

And yes the drive was made by Samsung.

 

Yes, the drive will need to be replaced. I'm not sure what the price will be in the UK, but the US price is $265 as of last month.

How old is your system? Would it be covered by the Apple warranty or by the EU-wide consumer laws?

 

Yes, you will need to replace the HDD. Hopefully you have already been backing it up continuously.

Personally... I would now back it up twice to two different destinations. Your NEVER want to have just one copy. If you have not been backing up... you better hope that it makes it through a full backup cycle before dying.

/Jim

 

Run Apple Hardware Test in Extended Mode 2-3 times back to back, if you get errors then you have confirmed a hardware issue. You will need to take it in for repair. Even if no errors appear that does not guarantee you DO NOT have hardware problems you still might.

 

Recommendation:

Regarding the hardware tests... make sure that you have two backups of your machine before doing anything else. At this point, preserving your data must be your #1 priority.

/Jim

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The licensing is very vendor specific. If you "clone" your machine to an external HDD... and then clone it back to the new (or repaired) HDD... then I think most (or maybe all) of the licenses will all remain (but I am not positive).

If you restore from backup (ex: time machine/time capsule)... some of the application may need re-licensing. In some cases (ex: adobe's 2 machine license)... you can un-install/un-register an application prior to changing the HDD... and then re-install and re-license afterwards. Others do not allow that... and still others will just work without doing anything.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

/Jim

 

Mike,

You need to get to your nearest store, get yourself a HDD... and get your data backed up. I personally would not touch the machine until I did that.

/Jim

 

Cloning generally doesn't require you to add the license info, because it's already on the exact clone. I've restored to a new HDD many times, almost always without having to type in a license code for any, including some Adobe products.

Regarding your failing HDD. Even with a time capsule on order I would run, not walk to the nearest location where you can pick up a cheap USB external HDD and clone immediately before using the data on your existing drive much more. You can then use the Time Capsule for an additional backup when you receive it.

That drive is in the midst of failing, and may already have some data loss that isn't showing up on the volume check, which mostly checks the directory information, not every file.

Hold off on any more testing of that drive, as the testing itself can push the drive over the edge.

 

Probably can try http://www.volitans-software.com/

To get an idea of what the specific problem is, bad sectors, temp, etc.

Still need to get the drive backed up and likely replaced.

At least you can still get at it, this machine i have got corrupted by bad sectors from a failing drive, and i had to research how to force Mac OS to rebuild the directory so i could salvage the data (worked) -- wouldn't boot but it loaded the drive, so i can save it.

Though I started with saving data first, before worrying about cloning a corrupted drive.

 

It is unlikely. If you are concerned about having a virus... you may want to rebuild your new drive from scratch, and then selectively restore your data.

/Jim

 

Hard drives are mechanical beasts and they fail, even if taken care of correctly and not used much.

I've seen drives fail after just a month of light use, and other drives take years of hard hard use before they started flaking out. Most drives give great service throughout their lifetime, but some just fail, through no fault of the user.

 

What you show is purely a hardware issue. There is no way writing a file on the disk could be the cause of it.

Also, as a future note, once you know a drive is failing, I recommend you don't try and run diagnostics on it until after you know you have a good backup or 2.