Super slow startup after HD & Leopard upgrade

[emoeric]

First the scenario, Then the ailments. Lastly the awesome users with possible answers/fixes.

I was running a MBP 2.0 Core Duo with 80gb HD and Tiger. The space was so limiting, I felt like I was gasping for air everytime I did anything on the computer. Purchased Hitachi Travelstar 200gb (head of its class, tons of positive reviews from Newegg)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822145160

After purchase, used HD enclosure kit, Super Duper software, cloned 80gb internal to 200gb external. So far so good. Performed surgery on MBP (she was such a trooper, super easy process, barely bled). Next install leopard. Leopard says I can't because 200gb when formatted was not GUID partion table formatted. Crap...

Delete some precious music, movies, etc from 80gb and install Leopard over Tiger on the 80gb (still sobbing over missed files). 80gb is now in external drive. Boot into 80gb and tried using Super Duper to copy 80gb to 200gb internal. No luck. Download Carbon Copy Cloner. Success after 2 tries! And now for the problem:

My computer locks up all the time. I apply similar usage to computer (8 apps open: mail, safari, quictime, itunes, etc.) And my computer will lock up on the 8th app or so. Has happened 3 out of 3 times. When I cold boot (I have to press and hold power due to lock up) It takes 5-7 minutes to come back online. Stays on Blue screen for 4-5 minutes. This seems a bit illogical. Can someone help me figure out the extremely slow load times and lockups? I had a 5400rpm 80gb, the new one is 7200rpm with far superior specs.

Thanks in advance to all the helpers and anti-demoralizing posters. This is my first surgery.

 

[samh004]

Have you verified and repaired file permissions in Disk Utility and/or left your computer on late enough at night for the maintenance tasks to run ?

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107388

 

[juanster]

as we speak i amd oing the same thing, i m just cloning a new 250 wd HD right now an dthen i was thinking of jts switching had drives is this going to work ? or am i just wishful thinking...i am cloning as we speak

 

[lucky3killer]

First the scenario, Then the ailments. Lastly the awesome users with possible answers/fixes.

I was running a MBP 2.0 Core Duo with 80gb HD and Tiger. The space was so limiting, I felt like I was gasping for air everytime I did anything on the computer. Purchased Hitachi Travelstar 200gb (head of its class, tons of positive reviews from Newegg)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822145160

After purchase, used HD enclosure kit, Super Duper software, cloned 80gb internal to 200gb external. So far so good. Performed surgery on MBP (she was such a trooper, super easy process, barely bled). Next install leopard. Leopard says I can't because 200gb when formatted was not GUID partion table formatted. Crap...

Delete some precious music, movies, etc from 80gb and install Leopard over Tiger on the 80gb (still sobbing over missed files). 80gb is now in external drive. Boot into 80gb and tried using Super Duper to copy 80gb to 200gb internal. No luck. Download Carbon Copy Cloner. Success after 2 tries! And now for the problem:

My computer locks up all the time. I apply similar usage to computer (8 apps open: mail, safari, quictime, itunes, etc.) And my computer will lock up on the 8th app or so. Has happened 3 out of 3 times. When I cold boot (I have to press and hold power due to lock up) It takes 5-7 minutes to come back online. Stays on Blue screen for 4-5 minutes. This seems a bit illogical. Can someone help me figure out the extremely slow load times and lockups? I had a 5400rpm 80gb, the new one is 7200rpm with far superior specs.

Thanks in advance to all the helpers and anti-demoralizing posters. This is my first surgery.

Go to Disk Utility > Erase (known as format) then click to format into HFS+, it should work fine.

 

[emoeric]

Go to Disk Utility > Erase (known as format) then click to format into HFS+, it should work fine.

I don't want to loose all my precious music and other files. I have 45gb of music and am not willing to loose it. Your solution is implying lose of all data. I am not quite sure I want to do that at this point. By the way, the System Profiler says that it is Journaled HFS+. I am going to attempt the first suggestion, reinstating file access rights, etc.

 

[lucky3killer]

I don't want to loose all my precious music and other files. I have 45gb of music and am not willing to loose it. Your solution is implying lose of all data. I am not quite sure I want to do that at this point. By the way, the System Profiler says that it is Journaled HFS+. I am going to attempt the first suggestion, reinstating file access rights, etc.

Yup, that means about Journaled HFS+.

Now, I have no idea about other situation.

Does you put data in new internal HDD?

 

[emoeric]

as we speak i amd oing the same thing, i m just cloning a new 250 wd HD right now an dthen i was thinking of jts switching had drives is this going to work ? or am i just wishful thinking...i am cloning as we speak

You are not wishful thinking, you will have an OK time doing the surgery. You must take heed to the fact that you MUST be gentle. http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/ has a good guide on what to do. If you are upgrading to leopard after the surgery, follow my steps. You will need to boot your PC from the external OLD HD and copy over leopard from OLD HD.

Have you verified and repaired file permissions in Disk Utility and/or left your computer on late enough at night for the maintenance tasks to run ?

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107388

I sure hope your suggestion helped! I did the repair permissions and it took 7 min to finish (even though it says roughly a minute). I am verifying now and will perform the maintenance you suggested. Easy enough command in terminal. I will let you know after all if it works. Thanks for the first tip.

 

[juanster]

you guys won't believe this I was half way rhdu my cloning and I got up from my desk touched my external hard drive by accident and there was a huge static discharge and it stopped clonning the disk seems to be okay but I had to erase everything and star all over again arfgyg. At least I didn't t fry my disk I guess

 

[emoeric]

Have you verified and repaired file permissions in Disk Utility and/or left your computer on late enough at night for the maintenance tasks to run ?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107388

Ok, the verifying took an additional 10min. After it finished, I restarted. Total bootup time from off to logged in with ical open is: 1 min and 51 seconds. Proceeded to check for updates. Installed security issue and Macbook pro update. After updates, boot up is as follows:

Off, black screen= 0:00
Gray screen to blue screen= 0:10 seconds
Blue screen halt= 1:16 (1 min and 06 seconds)
Logged in with ical= 1:34 (18 seconds)

This still seems very odd. The load times are astronomically large, considering the usual 40 seconds from off to logged in with Tiger.

Also I attempted to do the maintenance with the supplied article you sent:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107388
and seems to not work within leopard. I type the cmd, and terminal asks for password. I then put in password, hit enter, and nothing happens. 5 seconds later it says sh: /etc/daily is not valid directory.

Do you think its a wise investment to get maintenance software? does OSX come with some? Other utilities I can use to make it faster boot up?

you guys won't believe this I was half way rhdu my cloning and I got up from my desk touched my external hard drive by accident and there was a huge static discharge and it stopped clonning the disk seems to be okay but I had to erase everything and star all over again arfgyg. At least I didn't t fry my disk I guess

Juan, I highly recommend you DO NOT TOUCH your computer during cloning. It is cloning exact data to a new HD. You typing and messing with your computer could damage the overall clone. Dont touch right now. Give it 3 hours and 30 min for 80gb, more time for more GB. Obviously you can move your mouse to see the status but don't do anything else. no music, nothing.

 

[juanster]

Juan, I highly recommend you DO NOT TOUCH your computer during cloning. It is cloning exact data to a new HD. You typing and messing with your computer could damage the overall clone. Dont touch right now. Give it 3 hours and 30 min for 80gb, more time for more GB. Obviously you can move your mouse to see the status but don't do anything else. no music, nothing.

understood, ian on my touch now thanks for the advice

 

[juanster]

and about three hours later I am done, procedure was super painless... everything working perfectly, changed HD for 250 WD and added some RAM at the same time..

 

[mad jew]

Did the disk verify (not the permissions verify) come back with any errors? Have you tried repairing your drive from either the boot discs or Single User Mode?

 

[emoeric]

Did the disk verify (not the permissions verify) come back with any errors? Have you tried repairing your drive from either the boot discs or Single User Mode?

Thank you mad jew, thank you. Now here's what happened. The first time I did the disk utility, I did the permissions INSIDE of normal OSX. No problems occurred. Silly me, should have done it off the leopard install disc (per the instructions on how to repair a disk you/apple gave me).

Booted up from install disc. Ran disk utility. First did verify disk. Results came back stating the disk seemed OK (in green). Did the repair disk option, same response. Decided to re run the permissions verify and repair. BINGO, The jackpot of errors. About 10 or so errors popped. Lucky I have an iphone, not so lucky for anyone attempting to read these pics. The camera on the iphone sucks... horribly. Without further ado, I will post the images and type what I believe they say. Some serious stuff going on. First, let me show you how my drive is does not have the right permissions and can not format a drive with "GUID partition table" option. The picture with the HD icon with a red exclamation point, thats the first part. When I click it, I get the error message at the bottom that says, "...please reformat this drive with GUID partition Table...you will lose all data...." etc. The other three pictures are pretty hard to read, if you zoom in on them you will see they start with "Warning: SUID file" One of them says SUID file "usr/libexec/load_hdi" has veen modified and will not be repaired. The next three are under System/Library/ PrivateFrameworks/ and is in regards to disk management. The next is desktop services. Then install framework. The list goes on and on.

I dont know what to do. I have pondered this for quite some time and am thinking it could be a couple of things:

1. Possible faulty Hard Drive. At first the drive did not make any noise. Now occasionally it makes a clicking sound (reviewers on new egg say this happens). It still makes me ponder, is the drive faulty?

2. The Carbon Copy I did, did not clone everything. Stopped at 73GB of a 76GB used HD. However Super Duper did warn me it would not clone everything over (even though I was selecting ALL FILES) and that it would omit some system files. hrmmm, I wonder if Carbon Copy Cloner omits the same system files, and in turn is causing my problems.

3. If I was to presumably wipe out this HD, and start from a fresh install, I wonder if I would be able to partition the drive as a GUID Partition Table. Once I did that, could I feasibly clone the drive again over the CORRECTLY partitioned drive. Would that fix the problems?


I really love learning, and want to get to the level of knowledge I had with Windows and building PC's. I want to learn why this is happening, and how I can fix it. Please help everyone. Thanks in advance.

P.S. My iphone does not sync either. I had to creatively email them to myself to post these pics.

P.S.S. Mad Jew, I was Unable to boot into safe mode or single user mode Pressed Shift key for 10 minutes and finally gave up. Also instructions say to wait for startup sound, but I do not get a chime/ "baaaadum" that I usually get. scary...

 

[emoeric]

Number 3 would not work. I do not have an option ANYWHERE in the install OSX environment to partition the drive with "GUID partition table" How do I do this? Someone please help, I just want my computer back.

AIM me if you want: theemoeric
Thanks.