Did Mavericks break my HDD and if should I upgrade and how?
Here is the situation. I have an early 2008 iMac. When upgrading to Mavericks I think my HDD failed during the reboot. It froze during the shut down and I had to hold down the power button to turn it of. When I turned it back on I got the blinking ? folder icon. I restarted with option held down an it booted into recovery. Disk utility didn't see the HDD and only saw my time machine drive and lie 1.6 GB of my HDD. I needed to leave so I shut it down and when I returned I turned it on and 10.8.5 booted up like normal. I tried to install Mavericks again and this time it got all the way through the restart and it started to install. Then a screen came up that said my HDD was damaged and needed to be erased and restored. I went into disk utility and it saw my HDD but I couldn't figure out how to erase it (I've never done it before and I wanted to make sure I did it right. I shut it down and figured I would look up how to do it and then do it right. When I came back and turned it on disk utility couldn't see the HDD anymore. It only saw my external time machine backup. I tried resetting several times in various configurations. I only could ever boot into recovery when my external was hooked up. I called Apple and was directed to try a few more things. Ultimately they said that I need to replace my HDD. It seemed strange that this all coincided with upgrading to Mavericks and I initially thought that it caused my problems. Now I think it just exposed a problem that was right around the corner (though I'm open to suggestions if someone thinks my current setup can be saved).
I am now looking for a new HDD. If I'm going to do this I figure I might as well upgrade. I'm considering a few options.
Option 1. Replace my 500 GB HDD with a larger capacity HDD.
Option 2. Replace my 500 GB HDD with a smaller capacity SSD
Option 3. Replace my 500 GB HDD with a larger capacity SSHD.
Option 4. Replace my 500 GB HDD with a larger capacity HDD and my optical drive with a small SSD and attempt to create a fusion drive. (I would like to know if this is possible and fairly easy. Has anyone done this on an early ;08 iMac?)
The options are listed in opposite order of my desire (meaning I would prefer option 4). I have read a few things regarding option 2 that say this will cause my fan to run constantly. I don't want that. Will option 3 allow for normal fan operation? What unforeseen issues will come up? What options am I not considering? I figure I can do any of these options for about $200 or so. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Is this a good question?
2 Comments
I have a mid 2007 iMac that I installed Mavericks on several months ago. Everything seemed to be operating normally until recently. The only change I made was buying Civ V from the app store and deleting my previous version that used Steam. I typically leave my computer in and leave programs open incl. Civ. I maxed the RAM about a year ago.
Recently I found the computer took longer to start up and heard odd noises. I brought it to the Genius Bar for diagnostics. Everything passed and the genius said that it wasn't worth sending for further examination or repair as Apple wouldn't have replacemt parts available. 2 days later the hard drive failed and I am using the bootable backup that is attached.
I am opting to replace the HD to a 3 TB drive and am just waiting on the parts.
I figured I didn't have much time left but was surprised how quickly it died. I do wonder if Mavericks had anything to do with it
by a26cf035
Probably not. The lifetime of a HD is about 5 years. Many last longer but like old dogs and old cars it's because of the care they get and that they had good genes to start with (When you build things as complicated as a HD each part has a tolerance specification normally you get parts that are "in spec for certain values of in and they last around 5 years but sometimes you get better builds with more, or practically all the parts made the way they were specified - and you get a lot longer life. a26cf035- For future reference you posted a Question in the place where only Answers belong. Please use the add comment link'' to the O.Q. or Answer.
by originalmachead