I think my harddrive's failing, please help
 

Hi, well lately every three days or so (I leave my mac on all the time and have it on a targus cooling pad) when I try to go and do something on my mac the authentication dialogue for the screensaver doesn't come up and my mac just sits with the wheel of death. Then if I boot off the install cd shipped with my mac none of the utilities including the installer sees the HD. But interestingly enough if I leave the mac off for 15-30 minutes or so and turn it back on it boots fine and the HD is found :confused:. Do you think this is the signs of my HD failing :(? If so what do you recommend I do? Will the tech guys at the Apple store be able to help me? I believe my mac is still under warrenty because it's new (just had it for 62 days or so and the HD was a custom 100GB installed by Apple before shipping the mac to me) and has been registered online. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

First of all, make a backup.
Make sure the backup is ok, preferably do a complete clone to an external FW drive.
Then run the hardware check on your machine.
Also have a look at the SMART readout of your disk.
Reading the logs might also hint you whether it's a hardware or a software problem.

thanks for the reply :), but how do I get to the hardware check? also how do I check the SMART readout of my disk? sorry, not that experienced with macs so please bare with me :o, thanks. :)

To get the SMART status, you need to open Disk Utility which is located in Applications->Utilities on your hard drive. Once you've opened that, click the name of your hard drive, then press the blue button on the toolbar captioned 'Info'. In the window that comes from that, you will see the SMART status.

To look at logs:
Launch the "Console" application (under /Applications/Utilities) and look for relevant error messages. Note that messages are labeled with the date & time so you can use that to locate the part of the log to look at. Copy & paste the relevant messages back here so we can see them.

Your machine should have come with a Hardware Test CD - you can use that to do various tests of the hardware.

Talk to Apple about it
 

I've found that if a hard drive is going to go, it will usually do it within a short time of when you get it (just in my experience). I had a seagate hard drive that started to get intermittent like that before it crashed and stopped working completely. I agree with voldenuit, If you can still read it, even if somewhat, make a backup as soon as possible! I would just talk to apple about it. I had to send in my old iBook G3 for a display problem shortly after I got it. They are pretty helpful and, over the phone, will step you through whatever you need to do to return it so they can make repairs.

I'm not at home right now but when I get home I'll look for it...I remember my mac coming with 2 cds, I know the first one is the MacOS X Tiger installer so I suppose the 2nd one is the hardware test cd...I'll see when I get home, if it indeed is the hardware test cd how do I start the test, do I just boot off of the cd like I do for the MacOS X installer?

If your machine is 2 months old, I'm quite surprised that it came with Tiger CDs. First of all, Tiger only came out about one month ago. And Tiger is usually supplied on one DVD instead of CDs. Maybe you meant Panther?
With Tiger, I have heard (but not verified) that the Hardware Test is on the DVD.

I don't recall, but yes, I would think that you boot from the Hardware CD to run the tests. Just insert the CD and see what it says.

2 months? no I've had it for much less then even a month, guess I mistated that earlier :o...anywho yeah I've noticed that the Disk Utility says the Tiger CD is 4.2GB or something like that so it must be a dvd...where would I find the hardware test if it indeed is on the one cd?

I do have a second cd/dvd that came with my mac too...never bothered to see what was on it but the hardware test may be on it...so basically I now have two questions...if it is on the first cd where would I find it and start it and two if the second cd/dvd is indeed the hardware test how do I start the test, do I just boot off the cd/dvd like I do for the installer cd/dvd?

You'll have to do what I would do (I don't know the answer off hand) - insert the DVD and look around to see what is on it, read all the "readme" documents, etc.

ah ok, thanks alot for all your help :)

well everything passed both the extended and quick hardware test interestingly enough...so I just rebooted back into OS X and have taken a look in Console...here's the error(s) I found:

that seems to be during the night when I was sleeping...so what do those errors show? Does that mean my HD is indeed starting to fail? Please help, it'll be much appreciated. Thanks!

I'd assume the worst
 

It seems like I remember something similar from when my Seagate hard drive was having problems (before it failed completely). It couldn't write and assumed that it was a write protected device. I would probably assume the worst; there's no sense in letting your computer have intermittent problems until the day your warranty runs out. If you talk to apple they will probably tell you it is a defective hard drive. It is not working correctly, you might as well send it in to apple and they'll get you a new hard drive (probably refurbished or rebuilt). I'm sorry you are having problems. Hard drive failures seem to be a fact of life; just the other day my dad had a hard drive go out and he lost a lot of data. I'd be thankful that yours is working well enough that you can still get to your data.

Those scary-looking errors you are seeing are normal, and probably come from your CD drive (they also show up if you have a read-only disk image mounted). Hard drive failure errors look more like 'disk1s1: I/O error', though note that scratched CDs and DVDs can also produce these type of messages. 99% of the time, they are nothing to worry about.

The SMART facilities on most drives can detect impending doom before these sorts of errors start to show up in the log (SMART also logs previous failures that might have prevented you from seeing the messages in the logs).

Zapping the PRAM might help (there should instructions in the welcome guide). My old iBook did some weird things when the battery went flat.

If you've had your PB for under a month, you should be covered by Apple's 90-day phone support warranty: it might be worth a try. The symptoms you describe could also be down to software configuration, bad RAM, a loose connection, a damaged IDE cable or possibly a number of other less likely things.

I've seen those errors before, and they've always been when I've just mounted a .dmg file. I always thought that it seemed like the filesystem wanted to journal the locked volume resulting from the .dmg file. Note the 'disk1s2' which refer to a drive or a mounted volume other than your internal drive which will be 'disk0s10' or something along that line.

Type in Terminal
diskutil list
to see what your boot volume is.

If the hardware diagnostics didn't find any problem then I don't think the problem could be any of these things. If your Mac OS X install DVD doesn't recognize the hard drive then that pretty much rules out a software problem (the OS X install DVD has its own set of software). It sounds like an intermittent problem which, unfortunately, is one of the hardest kinds of problems to diagnose and is one of the most common.

You said that after leaving the machine off for a while it goes back to normal. I think this is probably your biggest indicator as to a hardware problem. The next time your computer goes into a mode where it doesn't recognize your hard drive, then boot into your diagnostic CD (or DVD) and try to run the diagnostics then. I fear they will indicate a faulty hard disk.

By the way, I had a drive fail while my iMac was under AppleCare. It passed all the Apple Hardware Tests too. However, when I called AppleCare they said that many times failures are intermittent and the test won't detect them if the symptom is not happening while the test is running. They told me to run the test over and over again. So I ran it (what seemed) about 30 times in a row and eventually did get an error with the drive.

Intermitent HD failures, running Apple Hardware Test in loop 24hrs, nada, help please
 

Well I created a thread earlier I believe a while ago about me experiencing intermitent HD troubles, well it's still occuring :(. So I've finally decided to run the Extended Apple Hardware Test in a loop all day and all night...I wake up today and check the test, no errors found :(. I am positive it's the HD because when it happens the Disk Utility on the installer cd that came with my mac fails to check the drive or it flat out doesn't appear for 15 minutes or so. In fact yesterday the HD displayed these symptoms again and I immediately booted into the Hardware Test and started running it in a loop, but alas it has turned up nothing and is currently on its 45th loop :( (stops running once a error is found and displays the error). What should I do? I think my mac is still under the complimentary 60 day warranty so is there a chance if I call them and explain my problem that they'll replace the HD with a new/refurbished 100GB HD free of charge regaurdless of whether or not I get a error code from the Hardware Test? Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks!

I merged your latest post with the previous thread. Please don't start new threads when it is basically the same problem being discussed. The old postings provide readers with important background info about your problem.
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I would recommend that you call Apple without delay (while your warranty is still good).

It is probably not enhancing your chances to start a new thread when this one gives the whole story:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=40426

Make a backup, then if you can reliably reproduce the error, get Apple to replace the disk under warranty.

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edit
same minute, but hayne still quicker clicker ;) .

called Apple...they were completely unhelpful :mad: :(...I called them, got a guy, told him what has been happening, he then told me to boot off the installer cd and told me to run the disk check in the Disk Utilitiy off the cd, of course no errors were returned because the issue is intermitint and not occuring as of now :(, he then tells me that he can't help me since it's not happening right now and recommends I bring it into my local Apple store to have them check my mac. However do you guys think the Apple store will be any more helpful? Do you think they may actually try to discover the issue with the HD and replace it like it needs to be? What should I do? I feel like I'm at a dead end now with a dying HD....:( ugh!

EDIT: Also, do you guys know of any utilities similar to the Apple Hardware Test that work on Tiger that may find the problem with my HD (e.g. produce a error)?

I'd clone the disk to an external FW drive, then use that to boot.

If you can work without trouble when booted from the external drive, re-format the internal drive completely using the zero all data security option, re-install the OS. Check if it runs stable before you copy over your custom setup using the Migration Assistant.

If there are any problems in the process of re-installing, you should have a completely Apple-compatible reason to have the disk changed.

well...guess I really don't have all that much of a choice...:(...I'll try that and *crosses fingers*....who knows maybe that will solve the problem, thanks for the advice as it is much appreciated, will be sure to keep you guys updated as to whether this solves the problem or not :)

well I just reinstalled MacOS X Tiger and am in the process of reinstalling the apps which I backed up on cd...however I notice that my mac is acting strange...when I try to load Dreamweaver it takes forever, maybe 2 minutes to load, before it took only 10 seconds or so, and a look at Console shows the following concerning lines:

Jun 13 15:13:20 john-musbachs-powerbook-g4-12 KernelEventAgent[68]: tid 00000000 received unknown event (12)
Jun 13 15:18:22 john-musbachs-powerbook-g4-12 KernelEventAgent[68]: tid 00000000 received unknown event (12)
Jun 13 15:19:49 john-musbachs-powerbook-g4-12 KernelEventAgent[68]: tid 00000000 received unknown event (12)
Jun 13 15:21:32 john-musbachs-powerbook-g4-12 KernelEventAgent[68]: tid 00000000 received unknown event (12)
Jun 13 15:22:01 john-musbachs-powerbook-g4-12 authexec: executing /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/Current/Support/LaunchCFMApp
Jun 13 15:27:06 john-musbachs-powerbook-g4-12 /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/ATS.framework/Support/ATSServer: FOExceptionMainHandler caught a fatal exception at 0x000476d8

Jun 13 15:27:06 john-musbachs-powerbook-g4-12 /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/ATS.framework/Support/ATSServer: ATSServer got a fatal exception!! Please check /var/tmp/ATSServer_98.

Anyone got a clue if these lines are bad or ignorable?

They look bad. I'm guessing this is something specific to Dreamweaver and its licensing. Maybe check with Macromedia's site.
But note that with these apps, you often have to reinstall them from the original media - you can't just copy them across from another drive it seems (from other trouble reports I think I recall reading).

hmm, well thanks for your reply :), this is weird because I'm installing it in the same manner as I did originally before I just reformatted my HD and zeroed it out...is ATSServer even related to Macromedia products or is that a MacOS X Tiger application? :confused: