weird finder behavior became unresponsive

[Sossity]

Strange behavior from my mid 2010 macbook pro Snowleopard 10.6.8.

A few minutes after starting up my computer, I went to click in finder to view some files, I noticed that the graphic icon options that I have of delete, VLC player & others were just small crosses, I then tried to click a file documents, but nothing, I tried to click the red button in the top left corner to exit finder, but it did not work, so I clicked to hide finder, then I reopened finder, this worked the first time, but then a second time it did not.

I then went into disk utility to do a permissions repair, & it ran & did a repair, I could not understand the log, but there was a bunch of javascript & core services that had letters saying what they should have been, & what they were.

I then tried to more commands in finder, but now it was totally unresponsive. so it seemed a shut down or restart of the computer was needed. I tried the apple menu, shut down & restart, but nothing. I tried shutting down by pressing the power button, nothing. I then right clicked on finder, to force quit, but the only option was to relaunch, when I chose this option, the computer finally shut down. while it was doing this, I could hear the fans spinning louder before it shut down.

After a couple of minutes to let the computer quiet down, (the fans), I started it up gain, & it was back to normal.

What happened? & do I need to be concerned? did the repair permissions fix it? do I need to do anything else?

what do I do if my mac will not startup or shut down/restart?

 

[r0k]

I can't comment on the symptoms you are seeing but I would answer your last question by saying Backup, Backup, Backup. And by Backup, I don't mean just Time Machine. Look into crashplan (free), CarbonCopyCloner or another third party solution in addition to or even instead of Time Machine.

Sometimes "flaky" things can be the prelude to rotating HDD problems. Our Macs average over 3 years old which is hitting the point where rotating platter drives statistically begin to fail. I decided to replace the HDD on my Macbook with a hybrid SSD (gives me a fresh 3 year lease on life). I also decided to put SSD drives in our other machines (gives possibly unlimited life). You are halfway to the 3 year point where rotating media can become worrisome but I would not assume nothing bad can happen. Get your backup strategy in place and plan ahead for the time when you decide you are ready to replace your internal HDD.

 

[Sossity]

I shut down turn on every day, will this stress the hard drive? In addition to backup, would it be better to just leave my laptop on all the time?

I f I get a replacement solid state drive for my mac, what would be the best one?

 

[CaptainChunk]

I shut down turn on every day, will this stress the hard drive? In addition to backup, would it be better to just leave my laptop on all the time?

I f I get a replacement solid state drive for my mac, what would be the best one?

No, shutting down every day would not stress a modern hard drive. If your laptop is set to sleep after a set amount of time (this would be enabled by default in the Energy Saver pane in System Preferences), it will spin down the hard drive(s), which effectively turns them off.

The problems you're experiencing are usually a pretty good indicator that the hard drive is failing. Hard drives sometimes fail immaturely. A fact of life. You can't always predict when one suddenly decides to go south.


As for SSDs, there's really two different camps. Performance-minded people tend to swear by Sandforce-based drives. They're often the fastest, but do have well-documented firmware issues that affect their reliability. Some people have problems with them, others don't. I actually prefer Intel SSDs. They aren't always the fastest SSDs you can buy, but they do have a solid reputation for reliability. But in either case, there are no real guarantees. SSD is relatively new technology. While they lack moving parts, in general, they're still not as robust as mechanical drives, which benefit from three decades of development.

 

[Sossity]

If I get a back up drive & do a back up, & then get a new hard drive, how do I transfer the contents of the old drive taken out from the laptop to the new hard drive? so I can have the new hard drive with all my apps & other documents from my old hard drive & boot up my machine?

I am still a little new to macs, & there is only the one mac in my home; my laptop.

I ran an app called SMARTReporter & it showed up green, & green means ok.

It also gave me a log that I copied & pasted;

2010-11-01 03:27:09.995 SMARTReporter[804:207] Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)
2010-11-01 03:28:48.832 SMARTReporter[810:207] Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)
2010-11-01 03:28:58.568 SMARTReporter[810:207] Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)
2010-11-01 03:52:15.590 SMARTReporter[194:207] Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)
2010-11-01 03:52:22.558 SMARTReporter[194:207] Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)
2010-11-01 03:58:20.257 SMARTReporter[221:207] Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)
2011-02-06 03:37:29.154 SMARTReporter[964:207] Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)
2011-02-14 22:14:32.423 SMARTReporter[200:207] Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)
2011-02-14 22:15:03.683 SMARTReporter[200:207] Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)
2011-02-14 22:15:40.338 SMARTReporter[200:207] Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)
2011-03-09 02:14:08.145 SMARTReporter[628:207] Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)
2011-09-30 03:14:06.489 SMARTReporter[441:207] Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)
Fri Sep 30 03:14:36 Sossity-Corbys-MacBook-Pro.local SMARTReporter[464] <Info>: Drive: 'ST9500420ASG (Macintosh HD | 5VJ456M0 | disk0)' Status: SMARTOK (S.M.A.R.T. condition not exceeded, drive OK)

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

Cache cleaning required

Snow Leopard is poor at keeping caches clean. When the various caches are over-full, weird behaviour can result. Lion is much better at both keeping caches clean and at maintaining file permissions, particularly on Java. I would suggest you download the free utility ONXY and run the cache cleaner part of it. You don't need to restart between each cache cleaning operation, just click on "close" and run the next section. Restart when you have cleaned all caches.

SMART reporter is not brilliant as a predictor of HDD problems. You might be better running either Tech Tools or Disk Warrior and checking the disk for surface errors.

 

[Sossity]

Well this has got me worried, I need my laptop for my online classes, I have just bought a portable backup drive that I will use to clone my internal hard drive.

So I have run onyx & cleaned caches & permissions, & all seems ok now, but it seems that my hard drive may be failing. I have been using or doing online school work that involves alot of java, for choosing answers & saving them.

I also opened disk utility & had it check the drive & it's SMART status is verified.

so after I have backed it up, should I take preemptive action, & replace the hard drive myself now? & how would I go about doing this & placing the cloned content from the old drive? & get my laptop up & running again?

why wait for it to fail? I looked at tech tools & it is $99.99 dollars, that is alot for me as a college student to pay just to find out if the hard drive is bad.

I am not sure what to do next after doing a backup of my hard drive.

 

[CaptainChunk]

Well this has got me worried, I need my laptop for my online classes, I have just bought a portable backup drive that I will use to clone my internal hard drive.

So I have run onyx & cleaned caches & permissions, & all seems ok now, but it seems that my hard drive may be failing. I have been using or doing online school work that involves alot of java, for choosing answers & saving them.

I also opened disk utility & had it check the drive & it's SMART status is verified.

so after I have backed it up, should I take preemptive action, & replace the hard drive myself now? & how would I go about doing this & placing the cloned content from the old drive? & get my laptop up & running again?

why wait for it to fail? I looked at tech tools & it is $99.99 dollars, that is alot for me as a college student to pay just to find out if the hard drive is bad.

I am not sure what to do next after doing a backup of my hard drive.

I haven't bought a new Mac in over two years (so it's hard to say for sure), but every 3-year AppleCare agreement I've purchased alongside my new Macs have included a bootable copy of TechTools on CD-ROM.