Interesting. I have a ST9500420AS, is it the same drive? Mine is loud but I don't have any issues with it.
Does anything show up in the console during/after this occurs? /Applications/Utilities/Console.app
Also, if you can make the problem re-produceable, you could try fseventerhttp://www.fernlightning.com/doku.php?id=software:fseventer:start, or even a simple command into the terminal (lsof > ~/Desktop/open_files.txt
) to figure out what might be going on.
It almost sounds like it might, might be a hardware problem rather than software, but we may as well rule out the latter first.
Hard to answer, not because of technical difficulty - but psychology. ;) So I will take the answer a bit easy...
A. The simple way
Make a Time Machine backup (if you do 1st times will get a full backup) so you will be able to restore anything that you created on the Mac. For this, you will need:
- one external HDD (big enough), connect it
- go to System Preferences
- use this external HDD as Backup disk for the Time Machine
B. As A. but with a bootable Time Machine HDD
For this, you will need:
- one external HDD (big enough)
- your OS X install DVD
- turn off Time Machine, if you have it on
- connect HDD
- insert install DVD
- start /Applications/Utilities/DiskUtility.app
- select your external HDD
- go to "Restore" Tab
- into "Source field", drag your Install DVD
- into "Destination", drag your external HDD
- triple check (so DON'T ERASE YOUR INTERNAL HDD!)
- press Restore and go to have a lunch
- after the restore, exit Disk Utility
- eject Install DVD
- go to System Preferences and enable Time machine
- select your external HDD as BackupDrive
- Make a full Time Machine backup
With the above, you get a BOOTABLE Time Machine HDD. When things go wrong, you can hold down Alt when your Mac is booting and select this HDD for BOOT and restore from it without needing the install DVD (faster restore).
C. Want even more?
Make working copies of your HDD. Like above, you will got a BOOTABLE external HDD, but not for install purpose, but for working from it. So, you can boot it and continue work as from your internal HDD.
For this you can:
- get a donationware: CarbonCopyCloner, or
- make a normal install into external HDD, boot it, and use the MigrationAssistant.app to migrate data from the internal HDD to freshly installed external HDD
Do you know that paranoia is the right state of the system administrator's mind?
Do B and C - So you will need two external HDD's. It is the best, because you can drop your backup HDD from the table, and after this crash-test, the drive will be probably unusable (broken). :) Anyway, for this solution, you need to not crash-test both drives.
With this, you will be able to WORK immediately (from the external drive) and restore from the Time Machine (from the second external HDD).
Know Murphy?
- Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. (Hang up Murphy!)
- Your upgrade will fail (but usually it doesn't)
- Your backup will fail too (but usually you don't need it)
- so... take it easy ;)
Ps:
Here are more ways, e.g.: over the network from the command line with rsync
command, etc. etc...
YOU REALLY WANT TO READ
Best Answer
Iâm going to resume them by memory, so future edits will probably fix all the mess I might type now. :)
The file structure of OS X resembles a typical Unix/Linux operating system (which in fact is the root of it all), albeit with some âAppleâ differences. Some of those differences have aliases to keep the âunixâ heart happy, but some are simply modified to be used as such.
In short here are the major âfoldersâ in your file system:
Ok and whatâs with this /Users thing?
The Users folder contains your âhomeâ. You have easy to identify folders (i.e.: if you canât identify what Music, Documents, Movies, Downloads, Desktop and Pictures are for, then the problem might lie elsewhere), but at the same time, there are notable âduplicatesâ. What? Yes. You have a Library and an Applications folder here too!
I believe youâre already guessing what is all this about. Yes, all application settings that are for the user only will go in here (to ~/Library). That means that, although OS X will first look at /Library, if you install a (for example) browser plug-in in your ~/Library (instead of /Library), it will be found, but only by you. My ~/Applications folder is barely empty, it contains some Steam (games) in there, apparently they go there and not /Applications. (I just checked, i didnât know that, so go figure how often I use my homeâs App folder).
update: Apparently this Application folder in your home directory doesnât exist by default, but you can always create it and drop applications you want to keep for yourself. If you have no permissions to install stuff in /Applications, you can always use a private copy of an app in your ~/Applications folder.
Things not mentioned above that you might have
âŚand I quote:
So there it is, this is more or less the OS Xâs file hierarchy. Donât drink and drive around it, itâs more fragile than what it looks.