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Mac HD test ok but won't erease!

M

mbalaic

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 26, 2008
16
0
I have problems with iMac alu 24" 2.4Ghz, 4 Gb RAM. First one I got had strange noises comming from its HD so I returned it and got a new one. This one worked great until yesterday when it started hanging constantly. As soon as Finder would load it would show beachball and stopped responding. Mouse still works but dock freezes and there's nothing to do but power off.
I tried everything: cleaning caches, boot with cmd+alt+P+R, booting from Leopard CD disk utility says its ok, then I tried Tech Tools Pro all tests (surface scan ran for 4 hours) but not a single error. Btw, everything works in safe mode. Apple hardware test - all passed. I took USB external disk and installed OSX there and booted that system and than my iMac HD wouldn't show on Desktop at all!!! After a reboot it did but I couldn't acess any of the files, just got spinning wheel. Rebooted in safe mode again - everything ok. Called apple store that sold me iMac - the guy said to erease everything with 7 passes. Did that, left it overnight. In the morning while building GUID Partition map got error: Disk erease failed, input/output error. Does anyone have any advice? Is it hard disk or is it just the bug witd Disk utility I read about on the forums? What should I do? I used Mac for Pro applications and CS with few small apps like Perian, VLC, App zapper etc - no strange experiments and stuff. What to do?! Thanks!
 
I can't be the man who killed 2 iMacs in 8 months! :(
But how can I even prove it's a faulty drive? All hardware tests are ok, the problem with erasing could be only Leopard bug... in theory they could workaround that erasing problem and give me back erased drive. Can I rely on Tech Tools report that all hardware is ok?
 
called the guy, he said to send them iMac and to expect it back with new hard, probably, in a month! :eek: Btw, I'm in Croatia and the only Apple support that exist here is 300 km away. Should I write to Apple asking for a faster service or is this kind of thing normal with Apple?
 
Can anybody point me in the right direction? I'm trying to find what EXACTLY Mac doesn't load when you boot with SHIFT. Thanks.
 
JediMeister, thanks for the link. I think unfortunately it doesn't list all differences because it seems to me that in safe mode you don't have VRAM enabled. When I try launching Aperture in safe mode it says that graphic card is not sufficient for Aperture to run.

Hope this info helps if somebody has similar issue. I found some threads on Disk Utility bug when trying to erase disk. Formatting it with 2 partitions did the trick! I made one with 40Gb and the other with the rest and it went flawlessly. Then I installed OSX 10.5 from original dvd. Everything went ok. First suspicious thing happened when intro animation started playing: as soon as it started i pressed F11 (to volume down the music) and animation froze but music kept on. When it was over I waited 10-15 secs and it faded to black and Country selection appeared. From then on I set up everything without problems. Restart. Update with 10.5.5 combo - everything ok. Restart. Update to Quicktime 7.5.5 - restart. Installed After effects CS3 and Aperture. Played with some settings in System Preferences. worked in Aperture and CS3 for half an hour - BAM! Frozen. Shut down with power button. Took one RAM module out, left with 2Gb. Restart in safe mode. All ok. Restart in normal. Continued working in Aperture and AE CS# for 1,5hours - then another freeze. Power off. Unplug. Went to bed. This morning. Plug in. Power on. Boot up normally. Frozen after 5 secs. Restart. Same again. Put OSX DVD 1 in, tried booting with D key pressed - didn't start Apple hardware test. Tried again - no luck. Any ideas?! This is totally weird...
 
Did another AHT - al passed. Tried pulling out other RAM module - still freezing. Please help! :(
 
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