Mac pro Locking up, 8 minute startup

[thedarkhorse]

Hi,
In the past couple of weeks I've been having issue with my workstation locking up, the first couple times it only happened when activating expose, I'd have a bunch of apps open(final cut, photoshop, bridge, entourage, +) and it would freeze when I activated expose when all the windows were shrinking.
In the past week though it's been happening out of nowhere, still with final cut and other various apps open but no warning, but now the screens don't freeze they go blank, but the tower doesn't sound like it's powering down or doing anything besides the norm. It almost seems like a video card issue.
However just minutes ago it happened again, screen went blank(thank god my final cut autosaves every 5 minutes). Did a hard restart and logged in but after my desktop picture loaded nothing was happening, spotlight was up in the corner(not the whole menu bar) and mousing over spotlight showed a beachball. Another hard restart and same thing, so I just let it sit for a while and after 7-8 minutes of sitting there with just my desktop image the rest of the os finally loaded. I was getting worried as I have deadlines and one of them is tomorrow. This machine is usually in use monday-friday 9-5.

Specs:
OSX Tiger 10.4.11
quicktime 7.3.1(can't upgrade to 7.4 or 7.4.1 because it causes issues with after affects rendering & were getting a Red cam which the latest quicktimes don't work well with)

Mac Pro Quad Core 2.66
5GB 667
ATI x1900 w/ 2 monitors(1920x1200 & 1280x768)
500gb system drive
2x 500gb drives in mirrored software raid
320gb storage drive

Running mostly
Final Cut studio 2(latest updates) & adobe design premium cs3 and occasionally after effects cs3

Anyone else having this issue or have a solution?

Also our other editor has noticed his station(almost exactly the same but with 8gb ram) has been running a little slower than it should be as of late.

 

[coneman5259]

Everything you just noted happened to me when my system hard drive gradually went out, the screen going black and everything, But not the spotlight thing, that happened in on my class computer when after logging in it would load the desktop image and just the spot light bar, then the spinning beach ball of death, and that hard drive went out. Not trying to scare you or anything.

 

[thedarkhorse]

well thats good to know, were putting in an order for some hard drives tomorrow. Is there a way to test if the hard drive is failing? I know some have that SMART thing built in. If it is I'll try a new one(anyone know the easiest way to completely mirror the drive so I can just swap in the new one?), and if that fixes the issue I'll send the faulty drive back, it should be covered under applecare right? it came with the system

 

[coneman5259]

well if you have applecare you can just send it to them and have them mirror your drive for you, if you change them yourself they might call it a void, then say bye bye to that warranty.

 

[Brianna]

If there were nothing wrong with the system I would do a permissions repair, and then use carbon copy cloner on the drive. But I think it sounds like you installed something that is having issues with your system. Did you use permissions repair before installing your last update, or before you installed your latest software? It could be a drive issue, so in any case you probably will be trying that first. Good Luck.

 

[rontheancient]

We have quite a bunch of the Rev A Mac Pro's where I work. A lot of them were having similar problems: slowness, lag, some even stopped working. It turns out that Apple was pushing out bad disk images at the factory. A simple erase and install should work fine, and try to avoid using the restore CD's to be safe. If erasing your HDD is not your cup of tea, I suggest using 3rd party diagnostic utilities like Seagate SeaTools, only down side is that its PC only. Another alternative is to do what Brianna said and perform a permissions repair. Hope this helps

 

[Nhan-Ai]

Seagate HD the problem?

Apple apparently finally acknowledged some problems with the Seagate Harddrives - still, they're not issuing a recall. Your problem sounds like a lot I've read on the internet. Then this morning, I got the following email from a tech guru at my school. Apple hasn't issued a recall yet - but some people have had luck contacting them and demanding new hard drives before the crash actually happens. Others have just opted to get a new hard drive to prevent the problem from happening.

"There have been a lot of problems with Seagate hard drives and MacBooks:

http://www.retrodata.co.uk/notice_apple_seagate_drives.php

To find out what model and version of hard drive you have, click on the Apple icon in the upper left corner and choose About this Mac. Click the More Info button. The System Profiler will open.

On the left side – look for Serial-ATA. Highlight Serial-ATA and check for the model. If the model begins with ST – that means it is a Seagate hard drive. Then look for the revision. If the revision is 7.01, your hard drive is at a great risk of failing. Please back everything up.

If you should receive the “beach ball of death” and can’t force quit – please shut down your laptop and don’t restart it."