iMac 1.9ghz PPC > constant repair disk permissions needed > why?

[will0407]

Hi all,

Just wanted a bit of advice-

My Dad has a 1.9ghz, 2.5GB Ram, 160GB iMac PPC G5 (the first version with the built in isight)

It's currently running Tiger. Over the last few months, it has started needing fairly regular repairing of the permissions (boot from disc, utlities, repair permissions). Does anyone know why this is?

It has also started slowing down in terms of speed with the beach ball appearing more and more often.

If I upgraded it to Leopard for him, would it a) stop us having to do the permissions repair, and b) increase the machine's speed or stability?

Any info would be appreciated.
Will

 

[KoolStar]

To answer number 1, most likely any reinstall of the OS is going to help. However, for number two, installing leopard is not going to net a speed increase. In some aspects it may even decrease performance due to the fact that leopard was really designed for the intel architecture.

 

[will0407]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll leave tiger on there then as I don't want to slow it up even more

 

[will0407]

OK, the need for disk permissions to be repaired is becoming more and more frequent. Can anyone shed any light on why this is? And would upgrading to leopard be a worthwhile thing to do?

 

[donuttakedonuts]

I don't think leopard is a good idea unless you need the features. Bad disk maybe though.

 

[Makosuke]

On the permissions issue, why are you assuming it needs this so often? Are you assuming that your permissions repairs are improving with the slowdowns/beachballs? It's a whole lot more likely that they're being caused by something else and if it seems to help it's only because of the reboot, not the permissions repair (you also shouldn't need to boot from the install disc to run Repair Permissions--it will work fine and do its job if you just run Disk Utility from the Utilities folder, including on the disk it's running on). If you're actually having PROBLEMS related to permissions, then that would point to some errant piece of software screwing things up or maybe, as suggested, disk corruption.

A more likely cause of slowdowns would be an almost-full hard drive (how much free space is there?) or maybe even a failing hard drive. Have you run the "Repair Disk" routine (not permissions, the other button) while booted from the install disc, and if so did it find issues? Also have a look at the SMART status in Disk Utility.

Now, assuming that the hardware is ok, I personally would highly recommend upgrading to Leopard--in my experience it actually is a little faster in most areas. That machine has plenty of RAM, so no issue there, and even if it doesn't result in any speed increase, the improvements and better software support is easily worth it, and it will probably take better advantage of that much RAM. There's also the factor that Leopard is the final version of the MacOS that will run on that computer, so you won't need to think about upgrading again.