Either RAM or hard disk trouble

[Daydreamer]

My Mac Mini G4 has been locking up pretty randomly in the last few days, more commonly when I'm trying to play a video through VLC, but also when just trying to browse through folders in the finder. It's been getting worse too, yesterday evening it barely let me boot up and log in, then it froze soon after the start-up programs had started.

Today I managed to get it to boot to the install CD and run disk utility from there, which refuses to/cannot repair the drive, "Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit" it says... from both the Panther (which came with the machine) and Tiger (which I bought later) installer discs. I also ran the Apple Hardware Test, which claims that everything passed the extended test.

The reason I suspect the RAM is that I had similar lock-ups with a PC that had a bad RAM stick in it, but I'd like to get a better confirmation before I get out to buy RAM or another HDD (or perhaps both, I surely could do with more both).

 

[zeyhra]

Was there RAM added to your mini after you purchased it or only the original RAM? Most often it's 3rd party RAM that causes problems, but it is possible for the stock RAM to be a problem also. The message from Disc Utility may point to something other than RAM however... Personally, I'm most likely to suspect the logic board as I've had 3 logic boards go bad this year (2 eMacs and a Quicksilver G4), all of which supposedly passed the Apple Hardware Test from the disk, but were nonetheless bad, and the symptoms were very similar (freezing randomly, sometimes right away, sometimes after a couple hours; permissions that had the same errors repeatedly even though it was claiming to fix them, same for a file system check in single user mode)

Have you tried repairing disk permissions? And doing a file system check in single user mode?

Before you do go out and buy new pieces, a few things to consider:
1-Is the mini still under warranty?
2-Have you cracked open the mini previously? It's not the most simple of procedures, but it's doable... I've got a PDF of how to do it if you (or anyone else) is interested to see what you'd be getting in to beforehand...

 

[Daydreamer]

It's been out of warranty for about half a year, and I have opened it to add a WiFi/bluetooth card (and just to see how it looked inside before I did that), though everything is Apple-supplied/made. I did try fixing permissions, but I haven't run a verification/fix after that to see if it helped.

Now it won't even let me log in. It takes an awful long time to load and then just sits there with a light blue background and the cursor as if it's going to show the log-in screen (but never does), if I try to get to single user mode it almost immediately switches from the console to the same blue background.

The reason I considered the HDD is mostly because it seems to be happening when I access (relatively) large portions of the disc, such as (as I said) playing videos (2-400 MB), or when finder tries to calculate the size of folders (always hangs at GarageBand when I try to view the Applications folder, which is in list mode and set to calculate folder sizes). I managed to quickly switch to icon mode, then tried to trash GB (computer hangs, of course), and that's when the start-up became insanely slow (if that was just a coincidence or has some relationship, I do not know).

Hmm, logic board failure, for a G4 Mini no less... now that's one part that's not easy to just get from the local computer store, unlike a standard PC3200 RAM stick and a 2.5-inch ATA100 HDD.

 

[bluekatt]

it could be a bad hd or failing ram
the logic board is the worst case scenaio though

 

[Daydreamer]

*sigh* ... okay, just to let everyone know, it's the hard drive. I took it out, put it in a USB enclosure, mounted to my laptop using macdrive, salvaged what files I could and finally tried reformatting it (with NTFS, not that it really matters). No go. It clicks every now and then, but otherwise just sits there working without the formatting going anywhere (Windows disk manager usually shows a percentage of how much of the formatting process is done, and a 40 GB drive shouldn't take that long anyway to format on a USB2 connection).

I'll be getting a 80 GB drive to upgrade the Mini from the now broken 40 GB one, any 2.5" IDE drive should work, right?

 

[bluekatt]

yeah any 2,5 eide disc wil do but unless you really want speed stick with 5400 rpm drives
72 and higher get too hot for that smal enclosure
and i personally dont really care about the marginal speed boost it gives anyway
but why stick with 80 gig and not go higher ?

 

[Daydreamer]

Yeah, a 5400 RPM is what I thought of getting (actually I didn't know there are 7200 RPM 2.5" drives, they're probably too expensive to be worth it anyway, and I specifically chose the 40 GB when I bought the machine to not get a 4200 RPM drive as the 80 GB would have been).
80 GB, perhaps 100, because I feel that the 40 GB was a little bit too tight but I'm not about to throw a huge load of money into it (2.5" drives tend to get quite expensive as the space goes above 80-100 GB), and for storage I've got a PC with almost a terabyte of total HDD space (and at least a few hundred gigs left).

 

[bluekatt]

hmm maybe but having to swap your data around is no pick nick either unless you have a gaggle of external hd's which in the end might be more usefull