Yesterday my Mac Pro 1,1 (2007) running 10.7 started freezing up. It keeps on doing this after restart. Usually it will perform one task, but when asked to do a second, it freezes. The cursor will still move but I can only do a hard reboot to get out of the situation.
It is independent of which software I start up.
I have installed a SSD drive for the System OS;
upgraded memory to 14 Gb
installed a new graphics card.
DiskWarrior 4.3 will not deal with my drives because my OS is too new (although 4.3 should be compatible with Lion) but it did do a diagnosis of the drives and found nothing wrong with them (it did report a few files with problems).
Disk Utility also tested the drives and found no problems.
Should I test the memory? The added memory is about 5 weeks old, though (2x4Gb Kingston). Or could this still be a SSD failure?
Best Answer
That could be a lot of things. It could be the system, it could be the hard drive, it could be a drive cable...it could be lots of things. It sounds like it's a drive problem.
The following links are "how-to" links from the guys that make Scannerz. One is how to use activity monitor to try and isolate processes that are using too much CPU/Memory etc and the other is about bad hard drives. The Activity Monitor post says it's about Mountain Lion, and clearly some of the topics are Mountain Lion specific, but in general it shows how to use Activity Monitor and some tricks I never new about. Here are the links:
http://www.scsc-online.com/Activity%20Monitor.html
http://www.scsc-online.com/Bad%20Hard%20Drive%20Signs%20and%20Symptoms.html
Although you have an SSD, I was surprised to see a post on MacRumors where someone used Scannerz on a system that was having problems that sounded similar to yours. Scannerz found bad cells in the SSD. The owner is replacing the SSD under warranty. He also found his cable was bad. Talk about bad luck!
If I had a link to it, I'd post it but I don't. You could go to MacRumors and search their forums for "Scannerz" and I would think you would find it. Like some of the other posters in that thread, I though SSDs were supposed to automatically correct bad blocks, but apparently that applies only to sectors that have depleted their write ability.
Hope this helps.