iMac won't wake up

[MikeCaine]

I have another problem with my 20" G5 iMac :-(

The Problem - For the last two mornings my iMac, which is left running 24/7, won't "wake up" in the morning. The screen is blank, the white light is on, but no amount of mouse waggling or keyboard bashing will wake it up. I have to power it off, then turn it on again and wait for it to do the fsdk stuff before logging in. I have the screen set to go off after a while but don't use power saving on the disks, etc. It's running 10.4.8 (despite what it says in my sig)

The History - It's about 2 years old. One year ago it wouldn't turn the screen off and after asking here I ended up doing an Archive and Install, which seemed to cure the problem. Four weeks ago I had a probelm with it not booting after it totally froze, see thread http://mac-help.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1507. Within the past few days I've changed one external drive from firewire to USB as it seemed to be having trouble "seeing" the firewire disk. The other firwire disk on the same hub is 100% OK

The Solution -
a) Do another Archive & Install?
b) Boot from install DVD and check permissions?
c) Something else altogether, as I'm not too good at diagnoising Mac problems yet?
d) Give in and buy the 24" iMac?

 

[Ric]

Hi Mike,

if you unplug the external drives, does it wake from sleep okay ?

regards

Ric

 

[MikeCaine]

Hi Ric

I'll try that tomorrow morning if it locks up then

The odd thing is that it doesn't lock up in the day when I'm out at work, it just happens overnight.

Regards

Mike

 

[Ric]

Hi Mike,

you can you send me your crash logs, if you want.

Users-->yourUserName-->Libray-->Logs

Sounds like a process is kicking in that is triggering the crash...

It may be Spotlight trying to index the drive ?

I'll have a read of the logs tonight.

regards

Ric

 

[MikeCaine]

Hi Ric

I had a thought, I was thinking about processes and how the Mac does "housekeeping" overnight, then I remembered that a couple of days ago I set up ChrosoSync to do automatic backups at about 4 in the morning (could be 4 in the afternoon though, the interface confused me a bit).

I've suspended further automatic backups for now to see if that is the cause

I've found a CrashReporter folder in the Logs folder but there's no mention of Chronosync in there, just some general programmes including some that are no longer installed.

Should I send you that folder, or perhaps clear it out first and see what new errors occur?

Thanks

Mike

 

[MikeCaine]

Hi Ric

No go with suspending ChronoSync, it was still locked up this morning

I might unmount and disconnect the external drives tonight and see what happens.

Any other ideas?

Regards

Mike

 

[Ric]

Hi there Mike,

goto Applications-->Utilites-->Console and then 'open quickly' the console log and the system log then save each one of those and forward them on...

I'll have a look through them.

regards

Ric

 

[Ric]

Hi Mike,

thanks I got the logs...nothing in there.

Maybe leave it as it was and then send me the overnight logs.

regards

Ric

 

[MikeCaine]

Hi Ric

It was OK this morning, after unmounting and switching off both external drives.

I've turned the firewire Maxtor 300 back on and have left the Maxtor 500 off for the time being as I switched that from firewire to USB a few days ago. I can't see how that would have made a difference but it's worth trying everything I can think of to resolve this issue

Thanks

Mike

 

[Ric]

Hi Mike,

have a look at the each disk's info in Disk Utility and see if they are formatted differently...

regards

Ric

 

[MikeCaine]

I think they're all HPFS (I'm at work at the moment) but one may be journaled and they other isn't.

I'm now 99% sure that that the root of my problem is the Maxtor 500GB drive. It it's not mounted then everything is fine, but when it is plugged in it freezes they system, but only during the night and not in the day at all.

I bought another 300GB drive yesterday to go with my existing 300GB drive, but I've now discovered that of the 16,000+ photos on the 500GB drive some of them now seem to be corrupt and they've possibly been copied over to the existing 300GB drive with that problem.

I'm now trying to sort through them to get the good ones on to one drive and see what I can recover from the rest.

I had hoped that external backup drives would be trouble free but it's now working out that way for me.

Another thing, in Mac OS X, when I try to copy a folder from one drive to another, when does it give up when it comes across a corrupt file? Why not, like Windows, give the option to skip, retry, etc, rather than leaving the remaining files uncopied? It's a right PITA trying to manually skip the corrupt files and get all of the other ones copied over.

If I set up a ChronoSync job to copy the files over at least it gives to option to retry, skip or abort when a file causes a problem. It's a bit of a nuisance having to set up a ChronoSync task every time I want to copy some files though.

Are there any 3rd party file copying progs that anyone recommends?

Regards

Mike

 

[Ric]

Hi Mike,

sounds like you're getting to the bottom of it.

Is the drive still under warrenty ?

I know what you mean about the copying, it's a pain.

I'll have a look to see if I can find anything that works the 'Windows' way...

regards

Ric

 

[MikeCaine]

Hi Ric

I think it's about 6 months old, my wife bought it for me, probably from the Birmingham Apple store. Don't know where the receipt is though...

I tried running Drive Genius over it yesterday, but as it's a big drive it still hadn't finished by midnight so or course it had locked the iMac up in the morning. I rebooted and set it going again at 08:00 so hopefully it will finish in time tonight.

Regards

Mike

 

[MikeCaine]

Ric, this is very weird

I now have my existing Maxtor 500GB and 300GB and keep getting "error 36" when trying to copy / rescue photos between the drives, and, I've just noticed, the Mac itself.

Then other day I bought another Maxtor 300GB and if I try to copy my photos from any of the other drives to it I get the "error 36" problem, coupled with the brian dead Mac file copy issue, which is driving me nuts

I've discovered tonight that -

a) I get the error when copying any large-ish file from any of the 4 drives to any other drive. It doesn't happen for small files but anything like a photo or pdf or application I get the error 36

b) I can view any of the photos in any of my photo programmes (PhotoShop, PhotoMechanic, Bridge, Preview, etc.) without any problem

This makes me think that there perhaps isn't a problem with the photos files and the disks (except the Mac hangs each night, but seemingly only when the Maxtor 500 is connected)

Could it be an OS problem, or maybe some I/O disk conroller problem

I'm really stumped and still worried about my photos

Regards

Mike

 

[MikeCaine]

Update - I can copy large files around on the Mac disk. I can copy large files from Mac to networked PC. Can't copy files from external disks to networked PC.

Should I suspect Mac I/O or firewire socket or even the firewire hub?

Time for more experiments...

Edit to add - my impression is that's it's slower browsing RAW files off external drives and copying to networked seems a heck of a lot faster then copying to external firewire drives

 

[MikeCaine]

Further update - if I plug either of the two Maxtor 300's straight into back of Mac then can copy photo folders from Mac to external drive OK so I guess it looks like the firewire hub that's at fault.

It's a six port hub and I now have all six potrs used. My problem started though when 5 ports we used. Time to try another firewire hub

 

[MikeCaine]

Getting rid of the hub and daisy chaining the 3 external drives straight off the back of the Mac seem to have solved all of my problems, including the Mac locking up when the 500GB drive is connected

 

[Ric]

Hi there Mike,

glad you seem to have got to the bottom of the problem.

I've never had a Firewire hub, I just daisy chain...

regards

Ric