The first two disc drives on my i-mac G5 died. The deaths were preceded by the computer freezing several times, mostly (but not always), when having been asleep. The drives also slowed considerably in the days before they went kaput. The first one went after about a year, the second after about a month. The third has been OK since January, but it froze for the first time a few days ago. When I turned it off and restarted it, I got the "flashing question mark in the box" icon. When I turned it off and restarted it again, it used my backup hard drive as the startup disc, displaying the wallpaper I was using in December, and icons of programs I had not reinstalled! I called Apple and the tech showed me how to get the computer to recognize Macintosh HD as the startup disc. He could not explain how this happened, and running the repair utility on the hard drive showed no problems. The problem happened again yesterday, but my hard drive could not be seen either when the computer was booted from the backup drive or the CD Install disc. Nevertheless, after using the computer as started up from the backup drive, I shut it down, started the computer the next morning, and all was back to normal. Apple is saying there is a file corrupting the drive, but can give me no clue as to how to find it except to say that it's either a new Application, or something I carried over from my Windows PC. However, it's been weeks since I finally moved most of the old files from the backup to the HD, and I haven't installed any new programs recently - at least none that I might have "just installed" when these problems cropped up before.
Any suggestions! Apple refused to replace the computer, and I'm tired of installing OSX over and over.
George
Any suggestions! Apple refused to replace the computer, and I'm tired of installing OSX over and over.
George