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Zoom · Mar 28, 2010, 06:17 PM

I've been running my Mac Pro under Bootcamp (on a separate drive) for a long time now (couple years), hardly ever returning to the Mac side... until this weekend. (Sorry, it's a work machine and I've been doing all Windows stuff for a while now.)

And now it's unbelievably slow. I ran all sorts of maintenance utilities (Onyx mainly) - still, it was slower than molasses. It's not RAM usage (20% of the 4GB) and it's not CPU-bound (all 4 CPUs were very low). All I could guess is that it was somehow the disk I/O.

I finally ran a hard drive read/write test (AJA System Test... never heard of it, but found it on the web). It scored 0.3 MBps, or 2.4 Mbps. That's horrendous. The read speed was just over 400 Mbps. It took like 6-7 hours to upgrade the OS (which I was hoping might fix it, but didn't.)

Any idea what might cause this? I'm guessing it's just time to get a new drive, but this just seems so odd. One of the utilities checked the SMART status and said the drive was fine. But it sure doesn't seem fine.

Could wiping the drive and reinstalling the OS help at all?

It's a 2006 model, I think. It was running OS 10.5 till today, now it's 10.6.

reader50 · Mar 28, 2010, 07:23 PM

You probably have spare drive bays. Pop a new drive in, do a fresh install on it. If the OEM drive is bad, the new one will cure everything.

Your factory drive is 4 years old now. It's not remarkable to lose a drive after that long. Oh, and I'd stop using the original drive until the new one is in service - you want to save any remaining life on the old drive in order to import your user folder.

Zoom · Mar 28, 2010, 07:30 PM

Assuming it's the drive and I need to replace it...

Can I install a whole new drive and then still boot back into my other Bootcamp OS (which, recall, was installed on another drive)?

AKcrab · Mar 28, 2010, 07:33 PM

That should be no problem.

Zoom · Mar 29, 2010, 01:59 PM

A new hard drive seems to have fixed the issue. There must be something wrong with my original drive. Luckily, I had a spare I could install. And I was also able to log into the bootcamp drive with no problems whatsoever. Thanks!

seanc · Mar 29, 2010, 03:23 PM

Since you have Windows, download and install Speedfan. If you're running Vista/Windows 7 you'll need to run it as administrator. Run the online analysis, please post the report here. At the bottom of the web page, you'll find a well hidden permanent link.

Zoom · Mar 29, 2010, 04:32 PM

Here's the results of the test. It all looks good, except that one "Hardware ECC Recovered" item. And the performance was horrible, as I said.

The overall fitness for this drive is 94%.
The overall performance for this drive is 3%.

seanc · Mar 29, 2010, 04:37 PM

It's broken

Re-allocated sector account is low, as is hardware ECC recovered.

Read the text description - that's the valuable part!

Throw it out. Or try and RMA it.

Zoom · Mar 29, 2010, 04:41 PM

Can't RMA it - it's the original stock drive (ie, 4 years old).

My question is: how is it broken? This just seems like an odd way to fail. All the SMART data looks basically good. Why would the performance drop off a cliff? I'm all fine now, so I'm not concerned with just wiping the drive and pitching it, but I'm just curious what could cause this behavior. Whatever it is, it's obvious that the SMART stuff isn't catching it.

seanc · Mar 29, 2010, 04:50 PM

You're probably right, unless for some bizarre reason it's a Seagate with a 5 year warranty.

The drive will probably have been failing for a long time, either due to manufacturing error, rough handing, bumps or power issues. I see it ALL the time (work in IT). Latest winner is a Seagate 160GB SATA with 26,000 (not a typo) bad sectors. Somehow, it still boots and runs, albeit slowly.

Different drives fail at different levels, depends on how the manufacturer sets the values. Seagates seem to want to be pretty high on re-allocated count before they'll fail SMART.

I have a 500GB drive in my MacBook Pro - it got 1 pending sector and the whole OS would beachball when it tried to access that sector. That's why your performance flopped, trying to access data that it can't, or at least very well.

Zoom · Mar 29, 2010, 04:53 PM

So... would a re-install on that drive fix the problem (assuming that new writes would avoid that sector)?

seanc · Mar 29, 2010, 04:56 PM

Nope, it's failing. Throw it out.

I would never trust any drive that had 1 bad sector, let alone however many yours has. It's almost always a sign of bad things to come.

Can I see the blurb down the bottom?

Zoom · Mar 29, 2010, 04:59 PM

Um... I don't think so. I see a section on "Forum Link", then "Forum Rules", then a footer with local time, copyright, etc.

seanc · Mar 29, 2010, 05:17 PM

Example - this drive is still in use!

S.M.A.R.T. hard disk status and hard disk failure prevention

The permanent link is found:

The link to get back and see a new report about this hard disk in the future is this. Consider that new hard disks and new checks are added over time.

Zoom · Mar 29, 2010, 05:33 PM

Oh. :-) Sorry. I'm off that computer now, and I had no clue what you were referring to. Got it. Do you still need to see it?

seanc · Mar 29, 2010, 05:34 PM

Don't need to, just curious, that's all

Mac Write · Mar 30, 2010, 07:08 PM

S.M.A.R.T. isn't really that smart. If you have a PC with SATA I would suggest SpinRite which is the best Hard Drive app around. Do try a format and re-install of Snow Leopard.