Is there a known issue with the G5 Desktops (Pre-intel chips) burning up Hard drives?...

There are no known issues with G5's damaging hard drives.

There is nothing, hardware wise, that would cause repeat damage of a hard drive.

As well, your symptoms do not demonstrate that the issue is the hard drive.

Occasi onally it not start up and run the fans high, but I would manually power it off and re-start it and it usaully came on.

Forced shutdowns would compound directory damage. If left unchecked, cumulative directory damage will render a machine incapacitated.

Use of Disk Utility to run repair protocols on the directory is all that is needed to prevent severe issues.

However, these issues are not hardware; only software and data related.

There are a couple known issues with logic board problems, primarily degradation of solder connections at RAM slots and the memory controller.

Other known (historic) issues involve the processors or power supply.

Its not a ram issue

The single most common issue.

How do you know?

You're question - Is there a known issue with G5 Desktops- Absolutely!

Apple from the iMac, G3, and G5. Put out the biggest pieces of junk on the market with hardware you could imagine, the cheapest they could get. But "mostly the motherboard", which they control.

If you visit this forum from time to time as I do. You'll see the exact same posts as you've made over and over, with the G5.

Their operating systems have been good and reliable. But terrible with working with hardware, drivers, and good hardware which basically made the microsoft operating system far superior to use with hardware vendors.

The advantage with a old Mac was you didn't have to deal with virus issues etc., in itself was great. But now? Who cares, Apple ain't doing much of anything.

Um, to the 'G5s were junk' question, uh, no. Mine is still running flawlessly. The ONLY problems I ever had were the loud fan issue, which - from extensive searching online - appears to have been a networking problem with USB devices. Installing hard drives were relatively easy (not as easy as later mac pros) but never did I have problems with the drives once they were in, formatted etc.

You are clueless!????

My G4 MDD PowerMac with OS X 10.5 Leopard is STILL working like a champ. 10 years later!!!!!

This was my main Mac and it ran pretty fast and pretty well for its operational life.

Never, EVER, had an issue with this Mac or any of my previous Mac.

I am regularly using a 2009, 27 inch screen iMac, now, and I am more worried about this Mac making it past 5 years, let alone 10 years. The previous generation aluminum iMacs have a lot of reliability issues and heat related, premature component failures.

My older Macs never exhibited any type of component failures. I even let a friend temporarily borrow my heavily upgraded beige G3/G4 upgraded Mac from 1997 running OS X 10.3.9 about a two years, ago.

That Mac had also ran flawlessly. These Macs may have run slower, but the point is they worked and ran and accessed today's Internet. Almost 15 years later! They were all in good condition and good working order.

Jacumba wrote:

You're question - Is there a known issue with G5 Desktops- Absolutely!

Apple from the iMac, G3, and G5. Put out the biggest pieces of junk on the market with hardware you could imagine, the cheapest they could get. But "mostly the motherboard", which they control.

If you visit this forum from time to time as I do. You'll see the exact same posts as you've made over and over, with the G5.

Their operating systems have been good and reliable. But terrible with working with hardware, drivers, and good hardware which basically made the microsoft operating system far superior to use with hardware vendors.

The advantage with a old Mac was you didn't have to deal with virus issues etc., in itself was great. But now? Who cares, Apple ain't doing much of anything.

Piffle from beinning to end.

G5 iMacs were (still are) very reliable, and I have never before seen any post suggesting that a G5 can damage a hard drive!

The symptoms you describe point towards overheating, i.e. temperature control.

japamac wrote:

Its not a ram issue

The single most common issue.

are you thinking a bad ram issue (leading to possible data corruption on the drive),

or a not-enough-ram issue, (causing increased virtual memory usage and wear on the drive)

or maybe both?

f you're sure the RAM is good, try the Hair Dryer trick...

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13240047#13240047

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3061091?answerId=15223603022#15223603022#15223603

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2620983?answerId=15499912022#15499912022#15499912

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3175959?answerId=15613068022#15613068022#15613068

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3270112

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3287993?answerId=16053892022#16053892022#16053892

No power light at all...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3692775?tstart=0

It can show on any G5, and even many other computers & electronic devices of the period.

http://www.macintouch.com/reliability/pmg5.html

http://lowendmac.com/ppc/power-macintosh-g5.html

And see this last one in particular...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3507385?answerId=16781690022#16781690022

Heat gun better...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3916312?tstart=0

There are so many RAM related issues possible that I just can't buy a patent "it's not a RAM issue".

Of the two that you suggest, the bad RAM, as in corrupt data producing RAM, would be a lead suspect.

Of course, testing ALL RAM in Single User Mode with Memtest is the surest way to clear or confirm that suspicion.

I don't think there is any hard drive issue at all, save the directory corruption due to hard shutdowns.

The biggest problem is found within all those links that BDAqua posted.; solder issues due to early RoHS implementation in the G5's logic board.

Bad solder allows RAM communication to be broken, prior to use or during use. This is, I believe, a common cause of the can't wake from sleep or a user awoken from sleep by G5's in C-130 military transport mode.....

I own a G5 Quad and never had any ram issues where I needed to use a hair dryer.. I think Apple said the dual-core and Quad Late 2005-2006 G5's were the more reliable of the bunch. Yes, the Quad has an LCS which possibly could spring a leak, but I have yet to suffer from any problems with my G5.

I beg to differ on G5 reliability.