34 replies to this topic

[swissdude]

Hi guys, I have a 27" iMac which is like 4 years old

Now it's starting to die. I don't know what it is.

When it's on, after 10 minutes it starts getting really slow and gets worse and worse where I'm foruced to just shut it down from behind.

Sometimes it starts and the Apple logo doesn't come and instead I get a flashing folder icon. I have to shut it down and then wait some hours for it then start it again then it's ok but it's getting more and more frequent.

--

I don't know what to do. Buy a new hard-drive? Or just use the money on a new machine?

I don't have any papers or CD's for it, I moved countries in the 4 years and lost everything

What to do?

[.Neo]

It's impossible you have a 4-year-old 27-inch iMac since the model has been introduced less than three years ago.

It does sound like a defective hard drive though. You could try and replace it yourself, take it in for repairs or buy a new iMac. That's up to you.

An extremely easy option is to buy an external FireWire 800 hard drive, install OS X onto that and wipe the internal HDD and stop using the latter indefinitely. Simply hide the internal drive from the desktop and Finder sidebar and pretend it doesn't exist. You'll hardly notice a difference, if any at all, between running the system off a FireWire 800 drive or internal. It's definitely a viable stopgap solution until you decide to buy a new iMac.

In any case you'll need a retail OS X Snow Leopard DVD or OS X Lion disc image restored to a USB stick (or whatever) to reinstall the system.

[swissdude]

Woops my bad, it's the 24" one - sorry .. in my office I work on the 27 hence my confusion

[Jason Stillion]

You can check e-bay for copies of OS X, just make sure the version you get runs on your mac.
Then try re-installing.

[swissdude]

Ok cool - but I have a strange problem.

I went into Disk Utility and tried to "Format" my hard-drive. But the "Erase" button isn't visible, I can't click it. Only "Erase Free Disk Space" is there but I can't click "Erase" on the hard-drive so how will I do that, and how can I make the iMac understand to boot off a external hard drive?

Further more how do I install a copy of the OS onto the hard drive?

Thanks for your help

[.Neo]

Obviously you can't erase the startup disk you're currently booting off from. You'll have to boot off the OS X Install DVD (pre OS X Lion) or recovery partition (OS X Lion or newer).

To startup from an Install DVD press and hold "C" after you hear the startup chime or select it in System Preferences > Startup Disk. To startup from an external drive press and hold "Option" / "Alt" after you here the startup chime and select startup drive of choice. Or select it in System Preferences > Startup Disk.

To install OS X onto an external drive you just install the system as you would normally, only select the external drive instead of the internal one. Easy peasy. Be sure you format the external drive using a GUID Partition Table and as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). (See screen shot for instructions)

In any case I would first try to make a backup of your internal HDD, reinstall OS X and see if that fixes the problem. If a clean installation of OS X still fails at improving things you're probably looking at a defective HDD. But first rule out a software issue.

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[+Jdawg683]

i do not believe that the hardware is to blame. sounds like youve just accumulated too much clutter over 4 years. a reformat should help. sorry i cant help you with the "how to" though.

[DirtyLarry]

Before you go ahead with a reformat, etc., have you tried the basics of verifying permissions/disk using Disk Utility? That sometimes can go a long way and address some performance issues.

[.Neo]

DirtyLarry, on 25 June 2012 - 14:22, said:

Before you go ahead with a reformat, etc., have you tried the basics of verifying permissions/disk using Disk Utility? That sometimes can go a long way and address some performance issues.

It's highly unlikely wrong permissions will cause your Mac to give out a "startup disk not found " error through the means of a flashing folder with question mark icon. If not impossible. Frequently that's a sign of the internal HDD going bad.

It couldn't do any more damage though.

[swissdude]

Larry, I Tried that already - no luck

[DirtyLarry]

.Neo, on 25 June 2012 - 14:26, said:

It's highly unlikely wrong permissions will cause your Mac to give out a "startup disk not found " error through the means of a flashing folder with question mark icon. If not impossible. Frequently that's a sign of the internal HDD going bad.

It couldn't do any more damage though.

While highly unlikely, I was having the same exact issue a few years back, and repairing the permissions did fix it. At least enough to the point I could grab my files and it died completely about a week later that is.

swissdude, on 25 June 2012 - 14:29, said:

Larry, I Tried that already - no luck

Well, as noted above, it was worth a shot at least.

My advice would be get all your files off if it, and get a new HDD.

If you can afford a new machine, then go for it, but at the very least a HDD is rather inexpensive, and it could wind up being fine minus the HDD. If you are hesitant about spending the money on an HDD and would rather put it towards a whole new comp, I say why not. There is a pretty vast difference in the components between now and then. I know, I pretty much have the same exact iMac as you do, mine may even be a bit older actually, and it definitely is showing its age. Not the fastest machine out there, even when performing as it should. So I pretty much now use it as a station to sync my iPad and iPhone and keep all my music and photos on. Have a Macbook Pro for my day to day stuff, and there is a big difference in performance, definitely. Good luck regardless.

[swissdude]

Thanks all

Last question, how do I go about the process of installing LION OS X on a seperate hard-drive? I don't get how I'm supposed to install it precisely - thanks

[swissdude]

I have a Lacie hard disk - hi-speed usb 2.0

1.5TB

Transfer rate: 480MBits/s

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Is this ok to try and make my imac boot of that? If I format that and put OSX Lion on it

[Gocom]

swissdude, on 28 June 2012 - 14:40, said:

Last question, how do I go about the process of installing LION OS X on a seperate hard-drive? I don't get how I'm supposed to install it precisely - thanks

As long as the current old drive is still in somewhat working state and data on it can be read and is intact, I would just clone the drive. That way you don't need to do any installing or configuration even. I myself use SuperDuper to do clones/backups of Mac OS installations, and I do run Lion from a portable SSD.

swissdude, on 29 June 2012 - 06:25, said:

Is this ok to try and make my imac boot of that? If I format that and put OSX Lion on it

You can, but I would highly recommend at least a Firewire 800 instead of a USB drive. A quality HDD/SSD would be good too and a decent enclosure, one which doesn't seal all heat in, error out or fry itself from constant use. You can't have write/read errors with a system drive.

[swissdude]

Sorry guys I don't understand how to do this exactly

I've formatted in the right format my external hdd

Now how do I install Lion on this? I have the Lion gm file? I just put it there and open it there?