Hello! As I'm writing this from my first generation Mac Mini, my 1. gen Alu iMac stands next to me, cold and hurt.
I have had some strange problems with it lately. It all started with the hard drive turning itself of while running OS X. Right after it turned off, it turns on. Like it loses power and gets it back after one second. I had to hard reset the iMac (by holding the power button in), and when trying to boot again, it just went gray with the Apple logo and a progress bar. While the progress was growing in the progress bar, the hard drive ran good, but when the progress bar dissappeared the Apple logo was still there and nothing happened.
In single-user mode I did a fsck (which it probably did while showing the progress bar), only this time I could see the problem. "Keys out of order", which indicates a serious directory problem.
I have Vista installed on a partition on the hard drive, and when booting into vista, after some time, the hard drive stopped, and vista crashed (by just freezing). So, the HFS+ file system corruption most likely do not have anything to do with the hard drive turning off, and is most likely a result.
I did try running Diskwarrior on it, and the disk turned off at step 5 every time, which is "Locating directory data". When booting into single-user mode and doing a "mount -uw /", I can freely ls my way around and look at everything at normal speed, but when trying to make a new file with pico, the disk turns off and on, and after some delay pico turns up and I can save my new file.
The disk certainly does not turn off at random times, but when trying to do operation to it. While in the boot menu for instance (hold alt), the disk never turns off!
Therefore, I suspect the problem lies in the logic board of the HDD, or maybe some low level device driver problem? What do you think?
System specifications:
iMac7,1
Intel Core 2 Duo 2,4 GHz
Serial: W89363TAX89
Serial ATA 320GB 7200RPM WDC WD3200AAJS-40RYA0 connected to a Intel ICH8-M southbridge
Link to other specs
(Backup lies safe (i hope) on two different externals.)
I have had some strange problems with it lately. It all started with the hard drive turning itself of while running OS X. Right after it turned off, it turns on. Like it loses power and gets it back after one second. I had to hard reset the iMac (by holding the power button in), and when trying to boot again, it just went gray with the Apple logo and a progress bar. While the progress was growing in the progress bar, the hard drive ran good, but when the progress bar dissappeared the Apple logo was still there and nothing happened.
In single-user mode I did a fsck (which it probably did while showing the progress bar), only this time I could see the problem. "Keys out of order", which indicates a serious directory problem.
I have Vista installed on a partition on the hard drive, and when booting into vista, after some time, the hard drive stopped, and vista crashed (by just freezing). So, the HFS+ file system corruption most likely do not have anything to do with the hard drive turning off, and is most likely a result.
I did try running Diskwarrior on it, and the disk turned off at step 5 every time, which is "Locating directory data". When booting into single-user mode and doing a "mount -uw /", I can freely ls my way around and look at everything at normal speed, but when trying to make a new file with pico, the disk turns off and on, and after some delay pico turns up and I can save my new file.
The disk certainly does not turn off at random times, but when trying to do operation to it. While in the boot menu for instance (hold alt), the disk never turns off!
Therefore, I suspect the problem lies in the logic board of the HDD, or maybe some low level device driver problem? What do you think?
System specifications:
iMac7,1
Intel Core 2 Duo 2,4 GHz
Serial: W89363TAX89
Serial ATA 320GB 7200RPM WDC WD3200AAJS-40RYA0 connected to a Intel ICH8-M southbridge
Link to other specs
(Backup lies safe (i hope) on two different externals.)