corrupt hard drive due to word document

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corrupt hard drive due to word document

Brand new Mac Book Pro, Lion just crashed while writing a MS Word letter with photos added. First the Auto save started having problems, then my computer reported that the disc was full. Then MS Word spun in place and froze and then the Disk Utility went beserk when I tried to repair the computer. I had to restore the system but luckily it did allow me to Clone Back Up before it totally crashed. Not fun! There is a problem.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5), Rebuilt IPhoto, Checked QuickTime,

Posted on Dec 13, 2012 6:43 PM

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Answer 1

Reegor

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Mar 29, 2013 9:00 PM in response to rfeiler

This is a long-lasting and severe problem which has been discussed extensively in this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3504333?start=150&tstart=0

which is up to 178 messages. The basic problem is that when you have:

A large Word document

AND are running Time Machine, i.e. it is turned on even if not active;

THEN

Use of MS Word can corrupt your file system in various ways. I believe this is still true under OS 10.8.2 and I assume under 10.8.3. The corruption is quite serious - quite often Disk Utility refuses to repair the disk and tells you to reinstall everything, as happened to you.

I switched to Nissus Writer Pro instead of Word. Many people instead turn off Time Machine when working on a Word document. I recently tried to get away with working on a small Word document, but I got "caught."

Other factors appear to make the problem more likely: Using an SSD; having Word Auto Save turned on. But these are not necessary conditions. Good luck to us all. Maybe most of the world avoids large Word files?

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