I am almost ready to go back to a PC

I've asked the hosts to remove your log content. Your name was in there way too many times. I saved a copy of it. Here is where I stopped reading:

You should definitely stop that download. The last thing in the world you want to do right now is any kind of update.

Your hard disk is too full and it is failing. Your backups haven't been working for some time. I'm a big fan of Time Machine, but its value is in backing up before you know you need it. You need it as a backup but you don't want to add anything else to your backup. Disconnect it.

Download Carbon Copy Cloner and make a clone of your hard disk. You said you had some kind of mystery failure on another drive. If those files are gone, go ahead and repartition that other drive and do a clone onto it. The clone might fail but it is worth a try.

Get a new internal hard drive, preferably much bigger than the old one considering it was full. I suggest reinstalling the operating system and all of your applications from scratch. You have been running on a dead hard drive for some time now. There is not much guarantee of data integrity. After installing the software, migrate your old user account but only migrate documents and data, no applications.

Things should work much better when you are done. Your motherboard was probably fine. It was likely the hard drive the whole time.

Let's assume that you have a problem internal harddrive.

You should install the OS on an exernal drive & boot from the external drive. This is a good thing to do to narrow down the problem anyway. Anything could be corrupted on the internal drive, so it is best to start from scratch in building the exernal drive.

If it wouldn't be too hard post back some problem log info without you name. You can use textedit to change to name to aaaa bbbb etc.

Robert

Dell Support Forums

When Spotlight, the search engine with the icon of my avatar on the left of my post which is on your upper right corner has not indexed a drive, its contents remain invisible to both Open/Save dialog boxes, and the Finder in many instances. To ensure your files aren't damaged or missing, use a Spotlight independent search tool such as Thomas Tempelman's FindAnyFile.

rjrathbun wrote:

Ok. You are telling me not run the download when it is finished. As a matter of fact stop the download of the update. I do not know where the files on my 1TB external drive went but it was clean. I am now in the process of copying all files and pasteing them on the external drive. Is this ok. I will download carbon copy if you think that is needed. Then I will clone to it. Do I have to clean the drive first becuase this where I am copying the file now ( about 1 1/2 hours to go - about 35 minutes into the copy and paste).

Yes. A common mistake people have when their computer starts getting flaky is to think that the cause is some random, unspecified "bugs" in the OS. They blame Apple and do nothing. The problems only get worse so they start complaining and start applying updates to an already shaky system. Results are never good.

When you have (or think you have) a failing hard drive, your only task should be to back up your files. Anything else you do puts your data at more risk. Furthermore, since you know (or suspect) a failure, you should never make any changes to any existing backup. Do this backup to some new location.

Notebook hard drives are particularly vulnerable to failure. All notebook hard drives in all machines (PCs and Macs) come from the same handful of companies. They are literally identical. They will start to fail at 2-3 years of age. Certainly, people may chime in here with reports of some notebook drives that lasted 10 years. That's great for them. All of the failures I've had in the past 10 years (at least 2 definite ones) have been at 2-3 years of age.

My most memorable failure was when my machine locked up, wouldn't boot, and started making a horrible grinding noise. Out of desperation, I smacked the machine on the side. The sound stopped and it booted. I dropped everything and backed up. This was before Time Machine days. My wife's HD failed recently and, with Time Machine, it was unevental.

I will not be able to get a new hard drive til I get back to the USA.

As rrcharles mentioned, you should be able to run from an external drive. Unless you are really out in the middle of nowhere, you should still be able to find a hard drive. There is a reason they fail in 3 years - they are dirt cheap and available everywhere. Swapping hard drives requires a small screwdriver and 5 minutes.

I looked at the time machine and it looks like it did back up last week . This is on another external drive.

I would be a little leery of that backup since you seem to have had a failure in progress for some time. It should be fine to restore documents from that backup, but I would feel better if you did a fresh install of the operating system and applications.

I have the programs at home in the states to reinstall them when I get there and buy another hard drive. All the programs except Aperture becuase this was placed on my computer by the IStudio here and they did not give me the original. ( I think they just installed fom the stores copy).

I dont know how to migrate my account after the installation.

Well, if you don't have everything you need, then go ahead and put your faith in Apple and do a full Time Machine restore on the the new hard drive. There is a risk of continuted flakiness, however. For the record, you can run "Migration Assistant" to migrate just your user account. In this case, just do a full Time Machine restore.

Do you have a USB flash drive handy? If so, you can use Apple's Lion Recovery Software to make that USB drive bootable. Install the new hard drive then boot from the USB drive and restore from your Time Machine backup.

Where are you located?

I'm in Canada.

One place I know delivers to most countries around the world compatible hard drives is http://www.macsales.com/ I would check them out.

rjrathbun wrote:

I copied ALL my files to an eternal drive use the copy and paste method. Do you see any problems with that method? The files look good and safe when opening them on my wifes computer. Most of my data consist of JPG pictures and Video footage.

Using a clone tool and/or Time Machine is best. Using copy and paste you may miss things that are hidden from the Finder. On the bright side, sometimes those files are the ones that cause trouble. Because they are hidden, they are hard to track down and fix.

If you copy entire directories, such as your entire home directory, then you will get everything inside that directory, hidden files and all. There is a risk that you or some software had squirreled away data elsewhere on the drive. When you get settled somewhere, a full reinstall of the OS onto a new drive and reinstall of applications should be all you need. Then if you manually copy your documents back over they should work fine. It will be more time consuming than either a clone or Time Machine restore, but it should work fine. That is how it always used to be done in the old days.

When you get the chance go back to a PC. It is easier to fix, use and in general a better buy then any Mac.

I use both and find the Mac just as hard to learn, not so much for me as I am a computer geek, breaks down just as often, hardware and software, and is not that User Friendly once it does give you troubles.

If they "Just Worked" as it is stated there would not be all the Mac forums with millions of posts for all different types of users.

Good Luck.

I don't know how to uninstall flvcrunch, but the author should know:

http://flvcrunch.awardspace.us/help/Help.html#Contact

I couldn't find any reference to fvcrunch, so I suppose this is probably what you were looking for.

Shootist, maybe easier for you, but Macs don't have a registry to edit. They also don't have codependent DLLs to deal with. Macs I've not found broke down anywhere near as often. I've never had to call an administrator to help my Macs, where lots of times in the office environment I need to call one.