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My iBook G4 is almost four years old. (The battery is less than a year old.) It seems to get very hot very quickly. Should I be concerned? I have some strange things occurring that on a pc would indicate a possible virus (very slow to respond, having to "force quit" applications, when going from one application to the other getting partial screen fill-in before the full screen fills in, etc.). Should I be concerned about a potential hard drive crash?
Having too much on the hard disk drive could cause sluggish performance
and other issues; and an older hard disk drive may be getting tired and as
it ages, some times these run a little hot. How much free space remains?
Also, if your computer does not have very much chip RAM installed, the
hard disk drive also is used by the system as a source of virtual memory;
so that means when there is a demand requiring more RAM, the hard drive
is required to spin and work alot harder. Having little or no remaining "free
space" on the drive, if it is getting more than 70% full, can be a problem.
Could be the hard disk drive may be wearing out, depending on age and
wear factors (how machine was used, configured, etc) at about four years.
An idea would be to single-click on the hard disk drive's icon and use
Get Info to see what it says the capacity and free space are; or use
System Profiler and see what the hardware profile on the HDD says.
If you have booted from the OSX installer (current to system on Mac)
and ran Disk Utility from the menu option there, but not installing anything,
you can have the Disk Utility "repair disk" and also see if the SMART status
is Verified; and sometimes if there is an error message or notice here, that
says something to the effect the drive is failing, then that's a good bet.
Archive your important stuff you've saved on the computer to an external
device, be it a blank optical disc media or an external hard disk drive; and
then if the drive fails, you will have only lost the last bits of new stuff. Some
kinds of files cannot be dragged/dropped to copy fully to an external; but
many of the work in progress items can be. System files often require cloning.
Overheating could be caused by an air vent being blocked by a piece of clear tape,
or overworking the hard disk drive due to it being too full and the lack of free space
for the system to function properly; and also a lack of real chip RAM installed, so
the (limited) free space on the hard disk drive would be used for virtual memory
as well as compete with open applications and system demands, for its use.
And perhaps a few other causes.
Also, if you do routine maintenance, such as an 'interface utility' like OnyX can
help you accomplish relatively easy (choose Automation and select check boxes)
several things that should be done every so often; including repair disk permissions.
(OnyX is a free running software from Titanium Software, a download) similar items
are out there, by different names; they can help the mac run better; but not fix
worn out or hardware or damaged system files. For just a basic 'repair disk permission'
choose Disk Utility from utilties folder (under GO in Finder menubar) and choose it;
click on hard drive icon choice and that can help a little. To start the computer and
hold the Shift key down until you see the desktop form and then after a time, it may
say SafeBoot, you will have to login (in 10.4 or later) and then run Disk Utility>
repair disk permissions; once done, restart the computer normally. This may help
the sluggishness somewhat, too. There are no viruses behind the issue you have.
