iMac woes

[nessiemac]

Guys,

Having a load of grief with my Mac and i am useless when computers don't work properly.

I have an old mid 2010 iMac that has worked wonderfully until a few months ago where it just randomly freeze, no spinning beach ball but just freeze. Switch off and all good.

Then it would not restart at all when frozen unless in safe mode where i would run the disk repair thing, find a load of errors then work for a few days.

Now i can't get it to start at all in safe mode either.

Just loads up the progress bar then switches off every time. I can get it to the Screen with macOS utilities by starting and pressing cmd and R But it wont back up from time machine and running disk utilities from there and first aid just fails.

I am a photographer and have everything backed up on external drives but would like to get it back to normal if possible!

Cheers.

Edited by nessiemac on Tuesday 19th September 15:53

[nessiemac]

Running First aid comes up with

First aid process has failed.
The volume Mac HD could not be repaired.
Disk full error
File system verify or repair failed
And on and on...

[essayer]

Certainly seems like the drive has failed - they don't last forever.

If you're prepared to do it, https://9to5mac.com/2015/02/13/how-to-swap-imac-ha...
otherwise a Mac repair shop should have no issues.

[Spanglepants]

Went through this with our 2011 IMac. Make sure you replace the HD with a SSD one. Way way better and so much faster.

[clockworks]

Same problem last year with my 2011 27". Kept freezing, then HDD died.

I didn't fancy taking the screen out to get to the HDD, so I took it to an authorised repairer. They charged me about £40 labour to replace the drive.

I asked about fitting an SSD, but they said they wouldn't do that, as there would be problems with the fans if I used a drive without the correct temperature sensor. Googling at the time showed some software tricks to get around the problem, but no hardware solution. Is that still the case now?

[nessiemac]

clockworks said:

Same problem last year with my 2011 27". Kept freezing, then HDD died.

I didn't fancy taking the screen out to get to the HDD, so I took it to an authorised repairer. They charged me about £40 labour to replace the drive.

I asked about fitting an SSD, but they said they wouldn't do that, as there would be problems with the fans if I used a drive without the correct temperature sensor. Googling at the time showed some software tricks to get around the problem, but no hardware solution. Is that still the case now?

How much all in then to replace the HDD?

[Rushjob]

clockworks said:

Same problem last year with my 2011 27". Kept freezing, then HDD died.

I didn't fancy taking the screen out to get to the HDD, so I took it to an authorised repairer. They charged me about £40 labour to replace the drive.

I asked about fitting an SSD, but they said they wouldn't do that, as there would be problems with the fans if I used a drive without the correct temperature sensor. Googling at the time showed some software tricks to get around the problem, but no hardware solution. Is that still the case now?

No you can now get an inline temp sensor to put on the ssd as mentioned in the link above. Must admit I'm tempted to upgrade mine to ssd as its getting v slow with lots of spinning beach balls.

[Troubleatmill]

If you are getting an SSD fitted- bump the memory up while you are there.
Both make a huge difference.

[jmorgan]

What about getting a smallish external ssd with a thunderbolt connection and load Mac OS on that, then boot from the external hd?

I have OS X on an external spinning HD and it works if a little laggy.

Saves opening it up.

[mmm-five]

clockworks said:

I asked about fitting an SSD, but they said they wouldn't do that, as there would be problems with the fans if I used a drive without the correct temperature sensor. Googling at the time showed some software tricks to get around the problem, but no hardware solution. Is that still the case now?

But if there's no HDD in there, there's really no need for a HDD temp sensor, as you won't be producing anywhere near the heat with the low power draw of the SSD.

I put a 512-ish gig SSD in my mid-2010 21.5" iMac (3.6ghz 11,2) a couple of years ago, as I noticed the later OS versions were becoming really slow due to using the HD for caching rather than memory (obviously assuming that every new Mac would have an SSD or Fusion drive).

I didn't fancy doing it myself, and the local Apple approved/authorised place would only install Apple-approved parts - so the bill was about double what it would have been had I had the bottle/skill to do it myself!

Still using it as my 'portable' machine now as the 2015 27" iMc 5k is too big to lug around.

[clockworks]

I paid £200 for a 1Tb HDD and RAM upgrade.

I think the problem with not having an HDD temp sensor is that the fan speed controller gets confused, and the fans run flat out. This is quite noisy.
Good to know that there is a solution now.

[Craikeybaby]

My 2010 iMac has had the odd lock up recently and I suspect that the HDD is on its way out, so it is good to know that a fix isn't too expensive.

[Warmfuzzies]

jmorgan said:

What about getting a smallish external ssd with a thunderbolt connection and load Mac OS on that, then boot from the external hd?

I have OS X on an external spinning HD and it works if a little laggy.

Saves opening it up.

Expense, I've been looking for one for a while, Jesus Christ they are over priced

K

[jmorgan]

Warmfuzzies said:

jmorgan said:

What about getting a smallish external ssd with a thunderbolt connection and load Mac OS on that, then boot from the external hd?

I have OS X on an external spinning HD and it works if a little laggy.

Saves opening it up.

Expense, I've been looking for one for a while, Jesus Christ they are over priced

K

Not tried a SSD with USB3 connection, OS X on an external spinning HD is certainly usable but I do notice a lag on some things.

External SSD over a certain size are silly money, add on Thunderbolt and its daylight robbery. However, £240 on Scan for a 256gb thunderbolt vs ripping open your iMac if you are not sure what you are doing?

However this is my backup plan for a main HD fail, that is OS X on a spinning external HD with USB3, at least it gets the computer up and running again and may allow a better repair and access to the main drive. I have not tried to run any apps to see if it is OK and not sure how you would manage copying apps back and for to the SSD depending on size for a good running speed.



Not sure what they are so expensive, I had the bright idea of looking for a good sized 3+tb one. Then quickly stopped looking.

[Spanglepants]

Theres no problem at all, Ive had the SSD fitted for at least two years and it uses fan control software which has been working perfectly.
I'm certain theres also a hardware solution to it as well. You'd be mad not to fit an SSD.

clockworks said:

Same problem last year with my 2011 27". Kept freezing, then HDD died.

I didn't fancy taking the screen out to get to the HDD, so I took it to an authorised repairer. They charged me about £40 labour to replace the drive.

I asked about fitting an SSD, but they said they wouldn't do that, as there would be problems with the fans if I used a drive without the correct temperature sensor. Googling at the time showed some software tricks to get around the problem, but no hardware solution. Is that still the case now?

[aaron_2000]

I'd say you have 3 options. Option A.) Replace with a new HDD which is also your cheapest option Option B.) Replace with an SSD and consider using an External HDD for all your long term storage, photos, old documents ETC Option C.) Replace with a Fusion Drive (Not sure if you can on older Macs/Minis) they give you the speed of an SSD but the capacity of a HDD. I'd say if you can't replace your HDD with a Fusion then do replace with an SSD, the speed difference is worth the cost. You also have the added plus of a longer life span.

[Vaud]

You can buy a SSD thunderbolt caddy and add the SSD of your choice. Worked fine for 3 years for me of heavy daily use as a boot and primary drive.

[jmorgan]

Vaud said:

You can buy a SSD thunderbolt caddy and add the SSD of your choice. Worked fine for 3 years for me of heavy daily use as a boot and primary drive.

Or a caddy, but last time I looked at them (caddy's) they were silly money compared to a USB3 caddy?

Just checking my app folder size, apps alone, 150 gb. Probably a few in there I do not use a lot, one game is 45gb. So 250 or so for me, larger if I could afford it.

It is certainly on my radar when my drive fails, either a caddy or dedicated thunderbolt and I have indications that my hard drive is on its way out.


Though the tinkerer in me would be buying the kit to rip the screen off and have a go at the internals with some upgrades.......

https://www.ifixit.com/Device/iMac_Intel

[Vaud]

jmorgan said:

Or a caddy, but last time I looked at them (caddy's) they were silly money compared to a USB3 caddy?

Just checking my app folder size, apps alone, 150 gb. Probably a few in there I do not use a lot, one game is 45gb. So 250 or so for me, larger if I could afford it.

It is certainly on my radar when my drive fails, either a caddy or dedicated thunderbolt and I have indications that my hard drive is on its way out.


Though the tinkerer in me would be buying the kit to rip the screen off and have a go at the internals with some upgrades.......

https://www.ifixit.com/Device/iMac_Intel

My caddy was about £90 IIRC.

I have taken an iMac apart (2008 model I think) and it was a total PITA. I would not do it again.

[jmorgan]

90? If I may ask, without breaking any forum rules, which one?


That cost (that I thought was a lot) has kept me to a spinning USB3 option.