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Disc Warrior or new Mac?


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Hi folks,

 

I've got a 5 year old intel iMac that's been acting up lately, freezing up after using it for awhile. I've been shutting it

down more frequently, as now I can't just leave it on for several hours as I used to without having to reboot. I've freed up 13GB

of space on the 250GB drive. That has seemed to help but hasn't fixed things. Problems seem to have escalated

since I started downloading and playing videos from a new video cam. Not sure if that would have anything to do with it or not. I haven't done any video editing on the computer.

 

I'm wondering if spending $100 for something like Disc Warrior would likely fix the problems, or if it's time for a new Mac. Have

the current models been well received? I've got the cash but this has been an expensive year, so I should probably

avoid spending unless the old Mac is a losing proposition.

 

By the way, I've got three Western Digital My Book external drives I've used with my current computer that runs OS 10.4.11. Would there be any compatibility issue with those with the OS on a new iMac?

 

Thanks for your input...

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<p>I'm no expert, but I thought an iMac users' rule of thumb was to try to have at least 15% free space on your internal hard drive, for decent performance. Maybe you need to shift some things to your external drives. If it were mine, I'd check with a genius at an Apple store.</p>
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<p>My personal opinion, (also a mac user 10.4.11 - 6 years no problems), is that disc warrior would be worth it. But first I would, if I were you, buy a hard drive and remove at least 30% of what is on your mac now and back up. That was a minimum. More would be better. It is definitely the case that 13GB is not enough extra space, at least 25% of the 13 gb would be used for scratch disc on photoshop. Not to mention if you go to Disc utility app you will see that so much more disc space is used as virtual memory for every single application on your mac. No wonder there are issues. Also, while it is true that a mac de-fragments itself, it does not de-fragment large files over about 200mb, I think that figure is even lower. So you will undoubtedly have clusters all over the place. There is much more you can do before running disc warrior, but free up that space first take away at least 75 gb if you can. This is just for starters. I may actually have misunderstood something, did you free up 13GB or have you 250-13? Oh, video files are huge, but I assume you know that. Lastly if the problems started at the same time as the cam downloading I think it would be sensible to investigate what processes are being used by looking at the disc monitor which you will find in applications. Go to active processes and check also the kernel task. re-start your mac, the kerne task should be around 50 mb to 70mb when starting. Now start up the cam and watch the processes that are activated, write them down or take a screen shot, look at the memory that is being used. Google these and double check their purposes. this is always a good way to uncover something fishy. I am not an expert, but have had to self diagnose issues on my own mac down through the years. Important to keep them clean. Sorry forgot to add one last thing, freezing is often (not always) a sign that two identical processes are hogging the same space, fighting for control. It is also sometimes a sign that there is a read write error in memory (the RAM area) due to a badly written piece of something, as I said I am not an expert. But you should consider the video downloading software? Maybe?</p>
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<p>Hi, sorry Something else I just realised - very useful. Go to Cocktail. Google it. It is a French company I think. download this free app. In this app make sure you tick the "Clear system cache", I would advise running this app as a first choice. Clearing the System cache should never be done regularly. But I have done it a number of times over the years and it has always seemed to solve the unsolvable, it is in no way harmful and will not affect anything on your computer as far as files and personal settings go. In fact you will not have any problems as long as you only do it as a last resort. If Cocktail no longer support 10.4.11 I can still help you here. I will zip mine and arrange a file transfer so that you can have a copy. I am not breaking any laws here if it is no longer available for 10.4.11. Software companies have a nasty habit of ceasing support for computerised pensioners like us.</p>
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Well, new Macs will not run OS 10.4 Tiger. They're all Intel Macs now, and new models come with OS 10.8 Mountain

Lion. Starting with OS 10.7 Lion, you cannot run classic, or PPC apps, they must be Intel apps, and Lion won't run

OS 10.4 Tiger. You can check the link below to see a list of apps that will, or will not, run on OS 10.7 or newer.

 

http://roaringapps.com/apps:table

 

That means that you would have to re-format the old WD drives in order for them to be used on a new Mac.

 

Disk Warrior is a great problem solver, and Disk Utility is also capable of handling issues. That is if your issue falls

into a category that they cover. Neither is magic and they don't cover every problem that you could have.

 

It sounds like your hard drive is too full, and that's where I'd put my efforts first. Make some room on it by moving

some of the stuff over to one of your external HDs. It could also be that your internal hard drive might be nearing the

end of it's life, 5 years is old for a HD. It could very well be time to replace it. All of that is cheaper than a new Mac,

but, new is new, and the new ones are much faster than yours, with better graphics, and they will accept a more

memory. If you can afford it, a new Mac is a good way to go, and you will know that it will run newer OSen and

software for some time to come.

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(to Carl or others): If I were to get a new Mac, then how would I retrieve files from my existing external drives?

Can I reformat the drives while retaining the files on them? The current Mac IS an Intel Mac, OS

10.4.11.

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<p>Ray, If your talking about image files, it should read the external drives fine. But how full is your main drive? If you only have 20 GB left, It may be too full. Most computers start to gag when you get the drives too full. I try to keep mine 40 free on the main drive. Can you move stuff off to external drive? Also on the older mac you should be able to get a larger HD. This would give your computer new life. There are a couple of places in Costa Mesa on 17th that can swap out your drive and probably transfer over your programs. If you don't want to shell out for a new one, you can check it out. </p>
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<p>NO you <strong>cannot</strong> reformat the drives and keep the files on them! You might run Disk Utility on the disks to see if there is anything wrong.<br>

Is 3GB really the max RAM? You don't say what kind of Mac you have. I also suspect that freeing up more hard disc space on your main drive would help.<br>

How successful a move to Lion or later is depends a lot on what kind of old files you have and how you have titled them. Some kinds of older Microsoft document files ended up on my migration as weird kinds of Adobe files, for example. </p>

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<p>Hi Ray:<br>

I had a similar problem with my previous iMac. I solved it by getting a free utility that allows me to manipulate the CPU cooling fan speed. The first time I put the fan at full speed, a bunch of dust blew out. That really helped; but, I still ran the fan at faster than the idle that the iMac was calling for. The downside is that increased fan speed equates with increased noise. I gave that iMac to my inlaws and got a new one mostly so I could get above the 3GB RAM limit. Giving it to the inlaws has allowed me to remotely manage a known computer using Team Viewer. I'm sorry that I cannot remember the name of the fan speed management app; but, I'm sure you'll be able to quickly find one.</p>

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<p>Hi again Ray:</p>

<p>I forgot to mention that migrating from an oldMac to a new one is a breeze. there are several ways to do it including restoring from a Time Machine backup. It is very important to have a current backup before you attempt to migrate to the new machine. As I recall, all of that is fully explained in the instructions for setting up a new Mac.</p>

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My Mac is a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo<p>

 

Memory 3GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM <p>

 

I believe I purchased it new in 2007.<p>

 

I'll try freeing up some more space on the drive. One thing though, is that after the beach ball or freezing completely, it doesn't boot up

right away after shut down. I usually have to wait awhile- not sure- 10 minutes? -to not get just a grey screen on start up. Maybe it is overheating, or the drive is just petering out gradually... ?

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That didn't do it. Nothing changed, same result. Shut down and unplugged for a half hour or more before

it started running again. Still runs slow. Maybe time to just bag it in and suck it up for a new one. Software

programs and OS systems seem to be planned obsolescence every few years anyway.

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<p>Disk Warrior can be a life saver so yes, if you ever end up with a Mac again, get it. That isn’t to say it will fix your problem which could be hardware (bad ram, etc). This is a vastly different kind of repair app than Cocktail or Onyx. You might also try using either the free AppleJack (which isn’t the same as Disk Warrior but can fix many issues) or if you don’t mind working alone in Single User Mode, just run Fsck in:</p>

<p></p>

1. Restart the computer holding down both the Command key and the S key.<br />2. After lots of text appears on the screen, type "fsck -y" (no quotes) and hit return.<br />3. The system will write some messages on the screen. If it says that the volume was fixed or changed, redo step #2.<br />4. When you get the message that the system is OK, you can either type "halt" to shut it down completely, or "reboot" to start it back up again. shutdown -n now <br />

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management" (pluralsight.com)

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Okay, you would need to reformat any drives that are not setup as GUID-Mac OS Extended (journaled), IF you want

to use them for backup. Personally, I hate external drives like the WD My Book, because most come with unneeded

software that can become a problem. My choice, but it might not be yours, is to buy my drives and external

enclosures separately, then I can swap out the drives in those enclosures at will. Currently, I'm using Icy Dock

enclosures, but there are many others. If you are just storing files then that is another matter. Reformatting does

wipe the drive, but if you're not using it for backup, or bootable clone, then don't worry about it. Remember, any files

created with software that will not run under Lion, or Mountain Lion, are going to be an issue for you when you move

up to the newer Lion or MoLo. Any questions about this sort of thing can be easily answered by Apple's people. They

will gladly walk you through the process.

 

One way to really make some room on your HD is to upgrade the OS, then get rid of old Classic and PPC apps that

you will not be able to use anyway. Below is a link to a procedure to do just that and it works very well. I had roughly

350 such apps when I upgraded, which gained me a pretty good chunk of HD space. Here's a link to that procedure.

 

http://www.macworld.com/article/1162559/locate_delete_powerpc.html

 

One last thing, I STRONGLY recommend that you backup, or replace, your current internal HD ASAP. If you don't

you are very likely to lose your data by running a 5 year old HD that will not live forever, and can die without notice.

 

HTH

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<p>Got a similar problem with a 6 year old iMac...the video card is on the ritz with erratic screen rendering when it seems to warm up. Alos looking at new/refurb with 16GB vs 3GB!<br />First things first at least update to 10.6 to eliminate the video problems perhaps.<br />Disk Warrior dont know about. There are some equally good free utilities to try first on the HD.<br />If all else fails, money solves everything! Get a new one.</p>
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<p>Hi ray, no it was cocktail because I have it now for 4 years and it was free then. There is a special piece of code that you can type into Terminal that will do an exhaustive check on all hardware in your computer. The normal Disc Utility does not do this check, it is run from BOOT and you type into the Terminal screen. It is very simple, I did it once. Unfortunately I can not find that info, It annoys me because I wanted to pass it onto you. If there is a problem with the cooling system then this will tell you in detail what is wrong. I am hoping that someone might recognise what I am saying and click on. Sorry I can not be any more help here.</p>
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<p>There are not many utilities that would qualify as being equally as good as Disk Warrior at what it does. In fact, I can't think of one. Having said that, some utilities are better at some things than others. Drive Genius is good, as is Disk Tools Pro, but neither is as good as DW, IMO. </p>
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