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TICKET ARCHIVE -> to format or not to format?

roxani - May 23, 2006 - 2:13 am

my computer is giving me a headache. it;s not as reliable/steady as it used to be in many ways. i was thinking to format it but someone told me that it is not very good for a computer to format it very often. i formatted it 6 months ago, but i had to repeat the procedure 3-4 times, since i kept doing smthng wrong and the greek patch wasn't working. i also upgraded panther from 10.3.3 to 10.3.9.
the problems (from minor delays to crash reports) really started after the repeated formats. i run a virus check, disk utility and hardware check many times but nothing was found.so, what should i do?
p.s. if it were a pc i would be almost certain that it is some kind of a bug. i have clamxav antivirus system which is freeware.

ericl - May 23, 2006 - 12:27 pm

It would be best if you could describe an actual problem(s) before taking any action.

It is not harmful to format/re-format the disk.

Formatting will make all the data/software on the disk unusable & it must be reloaded.

I have a couple 5 y/o Mac's that have never beed re-formatted.

Thanks, Eric

roxani - May 24, 2006 - 3:20 am

i'll try to make a short list:
1. The first obvious problem is that is not as fast as it used to be. e.g. when i open the finder window and choose one of the discs it takes some time (like a 5-10secs) to show what's inside each volume. it is also a bit slow on start up even though i have put extra memory recently
2. It crashes when i render large video files (like more than 1 giga). it is generally not very stable as it used to be. I have to keep saving what i'm working on as if i was using an old pc.
3. It doesn't recognize anymore my usb flash drive. system profiler sees it but disk utilty doesn't. Also a friend of mine recently tried to plug his i-pod in and it did not see it as well.
4.font book got really slow when i put a line of new fonts and i had to erase all the new fonts to be able to use my programs.
that's all i can remember right now. i hope my english didn't confuse you.

roxani - May 27, 2006 - 9:30 am

i'll try to make a short list:
1. The first obvious problem is that is not as fast as it used to be. e.g. when i open the finder window and choose one of the discs it takes some time (like a 5-10secs) to show what's inside each volume. it is also a bit slow on start up even though i have put extra memory recently
2. It crashes when i render large video files (like more than 1 giga). it is generally not very stable as it used to be. I have to keep saving what i'm working on as if i was using an old pc.
3. It doesn't recognize anymore my usb flash drive. system profiler sees it but disk utilty doesn't. Also a friend of mine recently tried to plug his i-pod in and it did not see it as well.
4.font book got really slow when i put a line of new fonts and i had to erase all the new fonts to be able to use my programs.
that's all i can remember right now. i hope my english didn't confuse you.

ericl - May 27, 2006 - 1:01 pm

Your English is just fine.

At some point I will need to know more details about your system:

Model number
Amount of memory
A list of all disk drives you have connected & what is on each one
An estimate of how many files you have & how large they are

As far as speed is concerned, as your disk(s) get full they will have a harder time storing your files in an efficient manner. Ideally, files are stored in a manner that minimizes your disk read/write mechanical mechanism from having to travel back and forth across the disk. The fact that your files are very large makes this problem worse. If you delete a file, the space can be re-used, but depending on how much the size of your files varies, the space feed-up by a delete might not be re-used in an effient manner. This problem is known as filesystem fragmentation. Apple does not provide a utility to de-fragment the filesystem; other operating systems such as Windows do.

On a Mac, the workaround is to make a copy of your data , reformat the disk & then re-install the data.

As far as the crashes are concerned, all modern computers like to store a copy of the file(s) you are working on in memory. If there is not enough memory, the Operating System will use space on disk. This technique is called "virtual memory", and the part about using the disk space for memory is called paging/swapping.

I have worked on several different UNIX systems & Apple is not all that reliable. If your system runs out of memory, a poorly written Operating System can "deadlock", and I suspect this is the source of your freezes crashes. If this is happening, the fix is to add more memory.

I will reserve any further comments until I see the details on your system.

Thanks, Eric

roxani - May 27, 2006 - 3:47 pm

well i thought it was a memory problem as well so i put 1.5Gb but i didn't see things getting any better. anyway here's the info u asked for. thanks-a lot



Machine Model: Power Mac G5
CPU Type: PowerPC 970 (2.2)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 1.8 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1.5 GB
Bus Speed: 900 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.1.5f0

2 hard disk drives (the first one is partitioned in two)
1.Maxtor 6Y160M0:

Capacity: 152.67 GB
Model: Maxtor 6Y160M0
Revision: YAR51FW0
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Serial ATA
bay_name: A (upper)

ericl - May 28, 2006 - 11:18 am

Thanks for the info - can you send me info on how full the disks are?

(1) I have the same exact Mac

(2) 1.5 GB is not that much memory on a Mac; especially for what you are doing.

(3) When your computer crashes, important filesystem-structure data held in memory does not get properly written to disk. The result is filesystem corruption.


When you ran disk utility, did you run it from the O/S CD so you can check & repair your boot disk? If not, you need to do this & make sure that you repair as well as check the boot disk. Be sure to do this on both disks.

Then boot normally & see if the usb drive is recognized.

FYI, sometimes the above procedure does not fix the problem 7 re-format is required.

Let me know what happens, Eric

roxani - May 30, 2006 - 7:06 pm

well, what happened
i run disk utility once again on all 3 drives, hardware test as well, and "everything appears ok". but is not. it still crashed twice in one day. could it be due to some software/programme not running properly? or the video card? (but the latter is checked on the hardware test, i think...) because i really can't believe it's the lack of memory that's causing these problems. it even crashed when i was using dvd player and that's not a heavy program.
+the usb is still not recognized.
so, is re-formatting the only solution??

thanks a lot
roxani

roxani - May 30, 2006 - 7:14 pm

well, here's what happened
i run disk utility once again on all 3 drives, hardware test as well, and "everything appears ok". but is not. it still crashed twice in one day. could it be due to some software/programme not running properly? or the video card? (but the latter is checked on the hardware test, i think...) because i really can't believe it's the lack of memory that's causing these problems. it even crashed when i was using dvd player and that's not a heavy program.
+the usb is still not recognized.
so, is re-formatting the only solution??

thanks a lot
roxani

ericl - Jun 1, 2006 - 10:15 am

Let's try to find the source of the crashes before we take drastic steps.

(1) What application are you using when the computer crashes?

(2) Are there any other applications active in another window when the crash happens?

(3) What steps are you doing to resolve the crash (such as force-quit & re-start the application, re-start the computer, etc)?

(4) Go to the Finder. click on help. search for "application crashes".
Read that article. The next step is for either you or myself to analyze these reports.

Thanks, Eric