[bbales]

Yesterday my imac (first generation aluminum) was really slowing down, with scads of open programs, etc. Just was acting generally funky, including programs hanging and requiring forced quits, etc.,so I restarted it. After it came back, I tried to open Entourage, which told me my database was corrupt. So I proceeded to rebuild it, and also proceeded to leave for the evening. So this morning, first of all, Entourage FINALLY opens, and about 3 weeks of emails are completely gone. Plus, the icons don't bounce when the program is opening, PLUS when they are open, the indicator is missing.

Any idea what the deal is? I repaired permissions to no avail. My computer is supposedly backing up to Time Machine, as it has been for about 6 or 6 hours now, and believe me, there's no need for that. The other funky thing is that my dropbox icon in the menu bar won't open (or drop down, or whatever you want to call it), to let me into that. Some of theprobems I was having yesterday involved iphoto, which is have in my Dropbox file -- I had to forecequit iphoto when it quit responding when I was trying to import 6 photos. I don't know if that has led to my present difficulties or not, but dropbox has not synced completely to my laptop, and I think one of the imported photos is to blame.

So -- first of all, any ideas? Second, any solutions? I supposed I could reinstall SnowLeopard, to see if that rights the situation. Or I can use Time Machine and return everything as to how it was yesterday morning at 8:57 a.m., which seems to be the last backup (and even that shouldn't have happened. I use Time Machine Editor and that should have backed it up every 8 hours yesterday. The thins I did do yesterday I can simply copy before I set the wayback machine.

Any help gratefully appreciated.

[bbales]

Well, another restart did the trick! Icons acting normally. And dropbox is finally back in business too! Haven't checked my Entourage mail -- but Im thinking I could definitely go into TimeMachine and get yesterday's identity and go from there.

Very, very weird. And Safari is still dogslow.

[Chuckit]

How much space is left on your startup disk?

[Cold Warrior]

My first guess is a failing hard drive, either corrupt sectors or failing mechanical parts (or both). I would install another hard drive with a fresh OS install and see how that works, or install SL onto an external. Boot from the external and see how things run there.

Open Disk Utility and check the SMART status.

I'm moving this to iMac since that's your model and there are non-OS X issues involved as well (backups, Entourage, etc.).

[bbales]

SMART status is verified. I have 50 GB free -- though I will say I was ripping movies (and then moved them to an external), so at one point in the past few weeks I was down to about maybe 18 or fewer GB left.

A hard drive problem is really NOT what I want to hear right now! But at least all is good now. I'll just double-check on time machine!

[ibook_steve]

I agree with CW. That HD sounds like a ticking time bomb ready to die.

Steve

[bbales]

What makes you think it's the hard drive? Just curious -- I have only had (knock on wood here) one drive ever fail on me -- that was my original 12-inch PB, and the clues were a lot different.

Thanks for all the help. Good thing I back up frequently! And how hard is it to put another drive in an imac?

[ibook_steve]

Originally Posted by bbales 

What makes you think it's the hard drive?

Pretty much every symptom you mention. Hanging apps, corrupted databases, lost email, etc., are all indicative of a hard drive that is not properly reading and/or writing data.

As far as ease of replacing the drive, it's probably a user-replaceable part on your machine. Read the manual or check ifixit.com for a take-apart.

Steve

[imitchellg5]

Since you back up everything regularly you could always try a reinstall... But I agree with the mods, sounds like your HDD is failing... a reinstall could push it over the edge.

[msuper69]

Actually, the symptoms are indicative of possible file system corruption.

I had some very similar problems, including horrible user interface response times, programs crashing among others.
I was really getting annoyed at the horrible performance of OS X.

Then I booted from the SL install DVD thinking I would do a reinstall but instead just used Disk Utility to repair the drive.

File system errors were found such as an invalid volume count; all problems were eventually corrected by Disk Utility, I rebooted and everything was back to it's snappy, reliable norm.

[seanc]

I second (third?) hard drive failure, from experience, that's what it sounds like.
On a Windows box you'll usually get specific tasks/programs hanging or failure to boot.

When the hard drive was failing on my 12" PB, I could here the hard drive repetitively seeking to read data.

When the 500GB drive in my MBP developed 1 bad sector, OS X would almost completely hang. It couldn't read the bad sector, but it would keep trying over and over again, resulting in a spinning beach ball and everything gradually stopping, until it either managed to read the sector or gave up.
I got the drive backed up via Time Machine, which took a long while and replaced the drive. Even with only 1 bad sector, I'm not risking it.

msuper: What I suspect may have happened with you, is that you had a bad sector on your disk. When you 'repaired' the disk, it moved the data from the bad sector of the disk, to a spare one and marked the old one as bad.

[bbales]

Well, I'm just having such fun reading all these comments! (And by the way, I think it is the drive. When I was saving documents earlier today it made a distinctly different sound -- kind of like a fan or something was running.) I think the disk repair is a good idea and I'll try that tonight. I think i'll pass on the reinstall, given the warning that it might push it over the edge.

Would anyone try Disk Warrior? I'd have to buy the upgrade, which won't even get here for a week or more. I only have version 3.

And -- I have appleCare on this thing. Will apple give me a new drive and install it for me?

[seanc]

No software can fix a mechanical issue with the drive. I've used my copy of Disk Warrior once.
Apple will replace your drive for you, unless you want to do it yourself.

Keep time machine running regularly.