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New iMac problem
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Harvey
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Apr 24, 2015, 08:19 AM
 
My iMac is 8 months old and has stated to act up. First I was unable to get preview to open and more recently it is happening to Safari. My messages say "already open" yet it will not open even with a quit and restart. Rebooting seems to be the only fix. I also am running 5 external drives through a usb hub and that seems to contribute to my problems but I do not know how . . . only that running my iMac without any external drives seems to be a fix also. At one point last week it got so bad that the only thing I could do was a re-install the OS using time machine and the app store. Has anyone else experienced this type of behavior lately with Yosemite or may I have a hardware concern. One more thing: during these episodes the iMac has turned totally black or blue at various times and has needed a back-panel start button reboot. This is my 3rd iMac and is a bit disheartening. I am a mac user since 1985.

Harvey
     
Mike Wuerthele
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Apr 24, 2015, 10:04 AM
 
This sounds like an I/O problem, and I have a culprit in mind, but lets get some basic troubleshooting out of the way.

Well, for clear troubleshooting, I'd try the drives one at a time connected to the iMac, to see if the problem manifests itself individually. If the answer to this question is no, then the problem is likely related to the hub.

Then, I'd plug the hub it, and try single drives again to see if the problem manifests.

I've got nine drives, connected through three different drive cases to a Mac mini, and I've got no issues like you've seen. I do suspect you have a hardware problem, but not with the iMac.
( Last edited by Mike Wuerthele; Apr 24, 2015 at 01:18 PM. )
     
Harvey  (op)
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Apr 24, 2015, 11:47 AM
 
Thanks, Mike. How long before I deem the external drive as OK? a day. a week?
     
Mike Wuerthele
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Apr 24, 2015, 01:18 PM
 
A day of use, probably.
     
BradMacPro
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Apr 24, 2015, 05:01 PM
 
Are any of the external USB hard drives formated with Apple Partition Table from a PowerPC earlier Mac or Master Boot Record from a PC or many drives come from the factory this way? This trips up some software.
     
BradMacPro
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Apr 24, 2015, 05:05 PM
 
You might need this recent update:
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1808?locale=en_US
     
Harvey  (op)
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Apr 25, 2015, 03:07 PM
 
Two of the drives came out of older macs, one a 2008 iMac and another from a 2012 MacBook Pro. Neither were erased or newly partitioned. Could these be causing some sort of identity problems as to start-up disks. I did rename them. The other two external drives were store bought. Thank you for your input.
Harvey
     
   
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