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Slow startup, slow shutdown
#38371 01/20/16 08:59 PM
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deniro Offline OP
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I've researched this problem and I've made some changes, but still my old iMac, yes old, has lately been taking a long time to start and shut down. I sit and watch the circular icon. Possibly I've also been getting the beach ball in the Finder more than I used to.

I have reset the PRAM, SMC, deleted unnecessary files, disabled login items, run the Onyx options, used Disk Utility, reinstalled OS 10.6.7, disabled and deleted fonts, stripped languages and architectures with Monolingual. I even disabled Dasboard via sudo, which did nothing. My hard drive has a 160 GB capacity and I've used almost 60 GB of it. That might be the most telling item, but there's a still a lot of space.

Helpful suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
deniro #38372 01/20/16 11:33 PM
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You didn't mention SMART or running a surface scan. Have you tried either one (preferably both)?


Jon

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Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
jchuzi #38373 01/20/16 11:51 PM
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Not a surface scan, just the initial scans by Onyx.

Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
deniro #38376 01/21/16 10:50 AM
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TechTool Pro can run a surface scan (which can take several hours). If you don't have it, there is a way to do it via Terminal but I don't remember the command.


Jon

macOS 11.7.10, iMac Retina 5K 27-inch, late 2014, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 1 TB fusion drive, 16 GB RAM, Epson SureColor P600, Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, MS Office 365
Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
jchuzi #38377 01/21/16 01:39 PM
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Originally Posted By: jchuzi
TechTool Pro can run a surface scan (which can take several hours). If you don't have it, there is a way to do it via Terminal but I don't remember the command.

I don't have time to hunt for it but I had a thread here awhile ago with a robust script for that


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Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
jchuzi #38384 01/22/16 04:42 PM
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Originally Posted By: jchuzi
TechTool Pro can run a surface scan (which can take several hours).

Jon…it may not be too long for deniro as his drive is only 160GB. I recently did a surface scan for a different issue and got it going in the evening, thinking it might be an overnight task. It was wrapped up in less than three hours on a 320 GB drive.

The drive was okay so I don't know if factors, like finding lots of bad sectors, will affect speed.

Last edited by ryck; 01/22/16 04:44 PM.

ryck

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Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
ryck #38385 01/22/16 07:22 PM
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Originally Posted By: ryck
Jon…it may not be too long for deniro as his drive is only 160GB. I recently did a surface scan for a different issue and got it going in the evening, thinking it might be an overnight task. It was wrapped up in less than three hours on a 320 GB drive.

The drive was okay so I don't know if factors, like finding lots of bad sectors, will affect speed.

Finding bad sectors will materially effect the length of time it takes to do a surface scan. When a bad or marginal sector is found the drive tries several times to read the sector before it gives up and remaps it to a spare sector if there are any available on the drive.

Apple has deprecated the practice of defragmenting files and volumes in the more recent releases of OS X and most especially in the case of SSDs, but given the vintage of deniro's Mac and his OS X version, this is exactly the situation many of us routinely prevented with periodic file and volume defragmentation. TechTool Pro or Drive Genius both have reasonably safe and reliable defragmentation routines. Again given the vintage of deniro's Mac a rebuild/repair of the volume structure would not be amiss either. TechTool Pro, Drive Genius, or Disk Warrior would be the recommended tools for that, but even Disk Utility would be better than nothing. No matter which tool is chosen it would be important to have the version that is compatible with OS X 10.6.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

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Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
deniro #38386 01/22/16 07:28 PM
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Any reason you can't update to 10.6.8?

Have you got DiskWarrior for the directory? TechTool to optimize the drive?

Also, more RAM would help.

Sorry if all this is redundant info...

Last edited by freelance; 01/22/16 07:34 PM. Reason: Carelessness

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Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
freelance #38389 01/23/16 01:16 AM
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deniro Offline OP
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RAM is maxed out. I don't own Tech Tool or Disk Warrior, though I did in the distant past, and no intention of buying either.

I always had font problems in 10.6.8. Fonts looked jagged. I worked on that for a long time over years. I don't want to mess with it anymore.

Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
deniro #38401 01/24/16 05:54 PM
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There's a program called SMART Utility for $25. Anyone here think it's worth getting?

I ran the demo. It found no problems.

Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
deniro #38402 01/24/16 06:07 PM
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It found no problems, so it run it out, and then make a decision. (It seems to me like a lot of money for what I call "paranoia-ware".) Have you checked its reviews on MacUpdate...always worth a look?

Originally Posted By: The small print
The demo runs for 30 days or 15 launches, whichever is longer.

Note: I didn't research whether the demo is restricted functionality.

(If you bought AppleCare with your iMac, the TechTool Deluxe disc that came with it can run a surface scan.)

Last edited by artie505; 01/24/16 06:15 PM. Reason: Un-redundified

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Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
deniro #38407 01/25/16 12:21 AM
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As Joe has pointed out, many times, SMART is not the last word in testing a hard drive. A surface scan is much, much better. At any rate, Disk Utility can do SMART, albeit manually when you launch it. Simply select the disk in the DU window and the SMART status will appear in that window.


Jon

macOS 11.7.10, iMac Retina 5K 27-inch, late 2014, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 1 TB fusion drive, 16 GB RAM, Epson SureColor P600, Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, MS Office 365
Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
jchuzi #38408 01/25/16 12:56 AM
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I can't tell whether SMART Utility does a TechToolPro quality S.M.A.R.T. test or not (Edit:) is just a GUI for DU's test. (I won't risk running my out of date version of TTP, but from memory I'll say that it reports on more criteria than are shown in the MU screenshot.)

And while a surface scan is, indeed, useful, it tests for something that S.M.A.R.T. does not test for, and more or less vice versa.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
jchuzi #38410 01/25/16 03:52 PM
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deniro Offline OP
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Quote:
Simply select the disk in the DU window and the SMART status will appear in that window.


No, it doesn't. I don't see anything about SMART in Disk Utility.

Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
deniro #38414 01/25/16 04:39 PM
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DU has a different appearance in El Cap, compared to Snowy. If I recall correctly, you'll see SMART status at the bottom of the window. (Be sure that you have selected a drive in DU.)


Jon

macOS 11.7.10, iMac Retina 5K 27-inch, late 2014, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 1 TB fusion drive, 16 GB RAM, Epson SureColor P600, Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, MS Office 365
Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
jchuzi #38415 01/25/16 08:03 PM
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That's right. I had to click on the other hard drive icon. There were two.

SMART status: Verified

Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
deniro #38417 01/26/16 12:02 AM
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The problem with SMART in general is each drive manufacturer sets it's own SMART parameter limits and they quite naturally set the limits very high to postpone declaring a failure as long as possible. Additionally each vendor determines what values to test.It is entirely possible, even likely, a drive may fail multiple parameters while the aggregate value still reports "Passed". In fact I have encountered that exact situation a few years ago. TechTool Pro is the only tool I am aware of that reports all of the individual SMART parameter values as well as the aggregate value.

Since the SMART standard has been around for a good while there is no reason the report from an older version of this TTP would create any problem. The only problem with out of date utilities is when and if you attempt to make repairs or changes using them on a more recent version of OS X.

Last edited by joemikeb; 01/26/16 12:03 AM. Reason: Typo

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

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Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
joemikeb #38418 01/26/16 12:13 AM
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I just ran TTP's SMART on my 1 TB Apple HDD, part of a fusion drive. The only questionable part is Temperature Changes (190), where the indicator is not quite in Fail territory but almost at the third line, but not in Fail territory.

Raw Read Error Rate (1) reads just to the right of the leftmost line, as does Seek Error Rate (7). Both are comfortably in the Pass region.

How do I interpret these results? All other parameters were perfect. TTP rates this overall as Pass.

EDIT: I just checked the Reports from TTP 8.03 and there is no difference in SMART when it was done in April, 2015 (when the computer was new). May I assume that this questionable result means nothing?


Jon

macOS 11.7.10, iMac Retina 5K 27-inch, late 2014, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 1 TB fusion drive, 16 GB RAM, Epson SureColor P600, Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, MS Office 365
Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
joemikeb #38419 01/26/16 01:21 AM
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Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Since the SMART standard has been around for a good while there is no reason the report from an older version of this TTP would create any problem. The only problem with out of date utilities is when and if you attempt to make repairs or changes using them on a more recent version of OS X.

That was my gut feeling; thanks for confirming it. (I assume the same can be said of using an outdated version of TTP to run a surface scan.)


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
artie505 #38422 01/26/16 05:15 PM
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Since any repairs resulting from a surface scan would be the responsibility of the drive firmware it should be safe.

Again the principal danger occurs if out of date versions of DW, TTP, DG, or whatever attempts to make repairs or changes to the system — particularly to the file or volume structure. There are also potential problems with any test, repair, etc that uses command line utilities as those can and do change from OS X release to OS X release.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
joemikeb #38423 01/26/16 05:51 PM
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It's interesting that with all the discussion that's gone on here over many years about surface scans and zeroing all data to map out bad blocks I don't remember anybody ever having mentioned until very recently that bad blocks discovered during a scan are automatically mapped out.

If that's the case, and totally apart from its security functionality, zeroing either maps out bad blocks without your ever knowing they existed...bad idea, or is redundant because the bad blocks you know about from having run a scan have already been mapped out.

Zeroing is, of course, contraindicated with SSDs, but it now appears to have always been contraindicated, even with HDDs, without running a scan beforehand.

(Should this line of discussion have its own thread?)


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
artie505 #38425 01/26/16 05:58 PM
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Any time a drive encounters a bad block the firmware on the drive automatically remaps that block to an available spare sector on the drive. That happens in the normal course of writing to the drive. The critical factor in a surface scan is the discovery of NEW bad blocks which by definition would be data blocks that have gone bad since they were last written to.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
joemikeb #38427 01/26/16 10:02 PM
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deniro Offline OP
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Onxy runs a SMART scan when you launch it.

Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
deniro #38428 01/26/16 10:19 PM
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A SMART test encompasses a whole suite of tests, and what joemike said was that TechToolPro is the only utility of which he's aware that runs it and reports on each test individually, which gives you a much better idea of how your HDD is faring than does a simple aye or nay.

Last edited by artie505; 01/26/16 11:53 PM. Reason: Clarity

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Slow startup, slow shutdown
artie505 #38430 01/27/16 12:08 AM
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Artie is dead on. OnyX, Disk Utility, Cocktail, TinkerTool System, and a host of other utilities all use the same Unix command to perform a SMART check. It reports only an aggregate pass/fail. TechTool Pro actually talks to the drive itself and reports all of the several SMART parameters reported by the disk drive along with information on what the pass/fail value is for each SMART parameter.

TechTool Pro 8 shows 23 different SMART parameters reported by the HDD portion of the Fusion drive on my Mac mini and 10 SMART parameters for the SSD portion. The HGST drives in my RAID array report 19 SMART parameters but many are different parameters than are reported for either my other HDD or SSD. It all depends on what parameters the vendor collects and what pass fail limits the vendor sets for each.

The Google Labs test of HDD failures indicated SMART was a poor predictor of impending drive failure because the manufacturers set the SMART limits too high. SMART is better at telling the user the drive has already failed. Google Labs recommends the use of surface scans as the best predictor of impending drive failure. As I said previously it is the presence of NEW bad data blocks that is a reliable indicator the magnetic surface media on the drive is beginning to fail and flake off.

Last edited by joemikeb; 01/27/16 12:24 AM. Reason: I hit post too soon

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

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