Mac Mini suddenly slow + clicking noise

Jump to First Reply
tilttilt
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Hi,



My wife who still lives in Ontario (I live in Alberta - long story) told me this morning that my old G4 Mini has suddenly slowed down a great deal. Like it takes around 5 minutes to boot up, around 2 minutes after that to show the login screen, another two minutes to show the dock and when anything on the dock is clicked, it takes around another 2 or 3 minutes for the program to load up.



She also told me that there is a continuous clicking noise coming from the machine, like someone keeps tapping a pencil on a desk. I hope this is not a sign that my hard disk is about to die I do not have Applecare and the machine is around a year and a half old.



Shutting the machine down and restarting did not change anything.



It all started with apparently the cursor disappearing completely, so she turned off the machine and called me.



I shall be calling her in a couple of hours and leading her through disk permission repairs, but in the meanwhile I thought I could post a message here so that someone can suggest other things too that I can have her try while I am on the phone with her.



Thanks and cheers

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    ricksbrainricksbrain Posts: 517member
    Sounds like a dying hard drive to me. If it's at all possible, try to back up what you can. It may be totally dead anytime.



    After that, you could download SMARTReporter and it'll verify if it is, in fact, dying.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 2 of 7
    tilttilt Posts: 396member
    Thanks Ricksbrain. Can I replace it with another hard disk bought not from Apple but from someone else?
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 3 of 7
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,585moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tilt


    Can I replace it with another hard disk bought not from Apple but from someone else?



    Yes, it just needs to be a laptop sized drive (2.5"). This one is quite popular for the Mini:



    http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/90547...tar-7k100.html



    It is a 7200 rpm drive, which is faster than most laptop drives, which are usually 4200 or 5400 rpm.



    You can also fit it yourself but Apple have made it quite difficult to do so. Putty knives will be required to open the machine and you will have to take off the optical drive, which sits on top of the hard drive.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 4 of 7
    ricksbrainricksbrain Posts: 517member
    Marvin may be right, but if you have a G4 mini, you may want to search in the internet for what to do-- I seem to recall that they're considered complicated to work with. I opened mine a long time ago to add RAM and seem to think that you'll have to remove some internals to get at the hard drive. Could be mistaken, but...



    Anyway, good luck.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 5 of 7
    tilttilt Posts: 396member
    OK, SmartReporter says there is no problem with the hard drive, verything is "verified" and Green. However the Mini froze again! It looks like the prblem is not necessarily the hard drive but something in the Mini itself because it keeps freezing up and the ony way to get out of it is to power of and power on again and then when she does that it becomes extremely slow.



    Any ideas?



    Thanks and cheers
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 6 of 7
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,585moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tilt


    OK, SmartReporter says there is no problem with the hard drive, verything is "verified" and Green. However the Mini froze again! It looks like the prblem is not necessarily the hard drive but something in the Mini itself because it keeps freezing up and the ony way to get out of it is to power of and power on again and then when she does that it becomes extremely slow.



    Any ideas?



    Thanks and cheers



    My Mini hard drive did the same thing. It verified fine but every so often, it would freeze the system just like you describe. The annoying bit was, it would only do it now and again - completely inconsistent.



    I thought it might have been something other than the drive too (like the drive controllers) because when I used programs like techtool pro, it would check the drive and then the system would freeze and when it came back, techtool reported the drive as ok. This is why you shouldn't rely on tools that are run from the volume being checked because when the drive freezes, so does the checking process.



    After a month or more of the freezes, I got the drive replaced under warranty.



    If you are unsure, you can get an external firewire drive and clone your system onto it. Do this anyway so you don't lose anything. Then you can boot up from the drive and you can see if the freezes still happen. You may still get hangups because OS X will at times try to access the bad drive but the system shouldn't freeze.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 7 of 7
    tilttilt Posts: 396member
    Thanks Marvin. So basically what you are saying is that I had better start shopping around for a new hard disc I shall



    Cheers
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
Sign In or Register to comment.