[OT] Looking For OS X Troubleshooting Suggestions 22

[Kay C Lan]

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 3:07 AM, Jim Hurley <jhurley0305 at sbcglobal.net>wrote:


> But I have one more very sophisticated diagnostic test I perform. I
> listen. Every so often, the HD on my Mac Mini squeaks for a few minutes.
> That can't be good.
>

Are you sure it's the HD, that would be very very unusual. What about the
fan or DVD drive (if it isn't the latest Mac Mini?

The fan might squeak at certain rpm which would equate to certain
tempertures. I think smcFanControl will work in an Intel Mac Mini and show
you internal temps and fan rpm.

http://www.eidac.de/

If you are convinced it's the HD then I completely agree with Bob; it's
time to make a clone and buy a new bigger and faster replacement, before
you lose the drive.

Highly recommend:

http://www.macsales.com/

Buy a complete external kit. Use it to clone your old internal onto the new
external. The move the new HD into your Mac Mini.

Then you can put the old HD into the external case and run programs like
DriveGenius to see if there are bad blocks or something else that might be
causing the squeaks. Don't do this before you've cloned your drive, the
last thing you want is the drive to fail during testing but before you've
cloned.

At worst, if it can't be cured, you can always use it as an emergency boot
drive. I have an old 40GB drive I pulled out of a G3 PB that has a pristine
copy of SnoLeo on it + DriveGenius. Every now and then I start off it and
run software update to make sure everything is up-to-date. Very rarely I
actually start off it so I can do some serious Disc maintenance on the
internal drive of my MBP.

Note, this drive is NOT used for backups, it doesn't have anything
essential on it, so when it does bite the dust it's no great lose. In the
mean time it's got something on it that can be a huge time saver.

As for performance hit, see my previous post; from fastest to slowest:

1) Internal HD

External
2) eSata
3) FW800
4) FW400
5) USB 2.0 HD
6) USB 2.0 thumb drive

7) DVD install disc

I don't have USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt cases but I would expect both of those
to sit somewhere around eSATA, but still below an Internal HD.

HTH