Mac G5 crash issues. Hardrive-related? Please Help!

[fossiltooth]

My Dual 2.0Ghz PPC Mac G5 has been freezing up. You know, freezing up in that awesome way where absolutely nothing works. No mouse. No keyboard. No cmd+opt+esc. Fans start going crazy.

The computer will work fine for days and days. It routinely behaves on several 12-hour sessions in a row. But whenever my studio partner hooks up either of his Glyph hard drives (and old GT050 and an old NetDrive) the computer will ineveitably crash. It could take minutes, it could take hours... but it will crash. Recently it has crashed in an all-new way. I saw white DOS-looking some text come up on the screen, outlined in black boxes saying things about system failure. It looked like the Mac terminal was taking over or something.

The crashing persists. If I hook up another computer and try running disk utilities and disk warrior on the system drives, the computer will usually be fine again for days... until those glyphs get hooked up again! Does any of this make sense?

Disk Warrior tells me that several hidden files such as DS_Store on the desktop and several plist files are damaged and can not be repaired. I tried an archive and reinstall of the OS, but I still get the same messages. Usually, after running all these disk-fixing programs the computer is all better until those dumb drives get hooked up again. Unfortunately, this time it's continuously crashing. Thoughts? Hardware? Software? Satan?

I think it's not a RAM issue, but it's hard to say. My only way of testing if the RAM is flawed is pull each pair out of the machine and guess at whether or not the intermittent problem is gone. Is there a better way to test for faulty RAM? How about PRAM? Could that be it? Should I try clearing it? I currently have some Western Digital Drives in my machine. I've heard bad things about the brand, but I don't know if that's the issue either.Do I need a new Logic Board? Any suggestions?

I hope it isn't a hardware issue. I'd love to figure this out myself. I'm finally ahead a few bucks this month, and it would be great to be able to buy some new gear instead of paying a bucketload to get the system back to normal.

Thanks in advance!

[RoyMatthews]

How are your partner's drives connected? FW? The crashes have to be related to the drives somehow.
I don't know much on how to read it but the mac will have a crash log on it.
Open Console in the Utilities folder and click on 'Logs'. I think anything pertaining to this would be under /Library/Logs. There maybe some info in there. It is a bunch of computer-ese though.

[RoyMatthews]

Here's a couple of other thoughts:
Search and/or post on the Apple Discussion boards if you haven't yet:
http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa

If you have it run the Apple Hardware Test cd. If you purchased applecare when you got the machine you should have received the CD.

In the Energy Saver preference do you have 'put hd to sleep when not in use'? Try with that off. maybe the Glyphs go to sleep when not used for a period of time and freaks out the computer when it has to wake them.

Have you run a disk check on the Glyphs?

It's a pain but shutting down and then connecting the drives may help. That's just a guess though.

If it's a FW port issue you can get a FW PCIe card relatively cheaply.

[fossiltooth]

In the Energy Saver preference do you have 'put hd to sleep when not in use'? Try with that off. maybe the Glyphs go to sleep when not used for a period of time and freaks out the computer when it has to wake them.

Hmmm. That could make sense. Thanks!

Have you run a disk check on the Glyphs?

Can't seem to get them to be stable long enough to do so!

If it's a FW port issue you can get a FW PCIe card relatively cheaply.

Didn't think of that. How do you suggest I go about narrowing it down to that possibility?

[RoyMatthews]

Is it possible to connect the Glyphs to a different computer? Check 'em there.
If other drives work fine of of the FW bus then I would rule that out but it is possible that if the Glyphs are older they are more susceptible to a funky bus.

If it comes down to the Glyphs being the problem it may be time to upgrade them. Drive are fairly cheap nowadays.

See if you have or can get a hold of the Apple Hardware Test. It couldn't hurt to run that.

[trumpetgunk]

try this program for testing memory:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15837/rember

[ericmedley]

My G4 dual was having similar issues when using FW drives. the FW port on the Mac finally failed altoghether. I bought a 3-port FW PCI card. Since then, I've not had a single problem. It wasn't expensive at all. Perhaps, you might give it a try.

One note, make sure it's Mac compatible. Otherwise you won't be able to find the drivers...
e

[fossiltooth]

try this program for testing memory:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15837/rember

Great tip! Thanks so much. That should save me from plenty of future headaches. Does it really seem to catch issues?

Is it possible to connect the Glyphs to a different computer? Check 'em there.
If other drives work fine of of the FW bus then I would rule that out but it is possible that if the Glyphs are older they are more susceptible to a funky bus.

Yeah, that's the one thing that concerns me. My partner, who owns the drives say they haven't caused his old computer to crash, but I haven't seen it in action or put them through the paces myself. If that's true, than I worry about the integrity of my computer's hardware.

If it comes down to the Glyphs being the problem it may be time to upgrade them. Drive are fairly cheap nowadays.

Agreed! I'm just trying to convince the guy who own them that they definitely are the problem. It's hard to do that at the moment, because those drives have been unhooked for sometime, I've run all the disk fixing programs that usually do the trick, and my computer still crashed twice yesterday!

See if you have or can get a hold of the Apple Hardware Test. It couldn't hurt to run that.

I'll give that a shot. Does it really seem to catch everything?

[RoyMatthews]

See if you have or can get a hold of the Apple Hardware Test. It couldn't hurt to run that.

I'll give that a shot. Does it really seem to catch everything?

I've only used it a couple of times and it never found a problem so I don't know. But I think it's SOP for an Apple Tech to run it.

Are you able to check the crash logs?

[RoyMatthews]

The only other thing I can think of is try running the machine with the default RAM. Remove any 3rd party add on RAM and see if that helps.

[fossiltooth]

See if you have or can get a hold of the Apple Hardware Test. It couldn't hurt to run that.

I'll give that a shot. Does it really seem to catch everything?

I've only used it a couple of times and it never found a problem so I don't know. But I think it's SOP for an Apple Tech to run it.

Are you able to check the crash logs?

D'oh. I can't find my Apple Hardware test disc anywhere. I borrowed a friend's but it isn't compatible with my machine. Unfortunately you can't download them from the apple site without paying for their insurance. Kinda funny that you need to pay to download something they gave you when you bought your machine.

I could check the crash logs I suppose, but I'm not sure if I would be able to make sense of them.

[rwc]

Have you tried the program applejack yet? http://applejack.sourceforge.net/

I'm not a mac expert but this always fixes stupid nonsense like that.

[fossiltooth]

Have you tried the program applejack yet? http://applejack.sourceforge.net/

I'm not a mac expert but this always fixes stupid nonsense like that.

Thanks for the tip. I found another good free one called OnyX as well:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582

Well, my computer has been running fine for a couple of days now.

My partner is erasing reformatting his drives. I think it's time to retire them, but the glyph drives are so retardedly overpriced that he has trouble justifying getting rid of them. But if the system crashes once they're reformatted, I'm throwing them out the damn window myself!

[DryCounty]

FWIW I've seen a lot of issues lately with some of the Apple updates (10.4.x) and G5's that are set to sleep after a set period of time. It might also be related to certain Security Updates as well.

I almost always shut down my dual 2.0 G5 night and never put it to sleep or spin down the drives when not in use.

AppleJack is good but Onyx is really all you need. Run in periodically, like every month or two. Check the SMART status of drives in Disk Utility periodically also. Rember is a front end for Memtest, which is available here and costs all of $1.49:

http://www.memtestosx.org/

WELL worth it, imho.

[fossiltooth]

Computer has been working fine for the past few weeks.

I ran Onyx and Disk Warrior, and Disk Utility and memtest, and I evern re-installed the operating system, just to be sure.

It worked fine on several all-day tracking sessions.

My partner hooked up his G^&%!%#N Mo$@%^king Glyphs again this week.

The system crashed one hour into a major tracking session. First session of an all-week booking. He said he trashed all the files, but didn't re-format the drive. Not sure if it would have helped anyway.

I mean, there's clearly something wrong with the computer too, as he says the drives don't cause his older G4 to crash. But it just annoys the hell out of me, because I could probably go forever without fixing whatever's wrong with computer if it wasn't for those F*ing Glyphs!

Same sh*t again. Corrupt and unfixable plist and DS_Store files all over the system drive. I'm taking the computer to the shop.