Spinning Rainbow wheel lasting longer than usual?

The computer would seem to display a need for both more hard disk drive free-space and chip RAM. And to make a backup of your important files to a device that can hold an archive, is a good idea. There may be a pending failure of the internal hard disk drive, as time goes on and it works hard keeping up with temporary swap and virtual memory files, the resources available to the system and applications appears scarce.

You could do some preliminary troubleshooting and see about basic system repairs that should be commonplace as part of owning this kind of system, even though many users don't do anything until the computer fails and then somehow manage to be surprised. Or upset. Emotions after the fact don't fix things anymore than they will before untoward things happen.

Preventative maintenance could also include acquiring suitable hardware and software to make and use a compatible externally enclosed hard disk drive that supports Mac OS X clones, and make a complete backup that can power the computer should the internal drive fail. A second boot device with custom system inside, so you could clone back to the computer that copy and also perform hard drive maintenance if or when needed. You can repair or fix bad sectors of a hard disk drive, for example, if the correct tools are used; this can include the need to secure erase (overwrite drive content with zeros) then reformat, + install new system.

'Spinning wheel issue' has been around awhile,

& are several things that can be the cause...

Generally indicating a processor intense activity

but can be a symptom of excessive read-writes

to the hard disk drive of temporary files or VM

activity where there isn't enough free space for

the OS X to turn around in or applications to run.

And partially a symptom of insufficient RAM.

• Spinning Beach Ball of Death:

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html

• Troubleshooting with Activity Monitor:

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/activitymonitor.html

Since the hard disk drive and free space is akin to more RAM, since Virtual Memory is an automatic part of the OS X that allows it to get by with less than optimal system resources, having enough is essential. My computer drives (100+GB) are about half-empty. In my old iBook G4 (mid-2005) w/ 40GB HDD, it is half full. This means when the system calls for 30GB Virtual Memory, it is screaming for free-space. But then I also have 1.5GB chip RAM in the computer so the fans don't run, it doesn't get hot, & the drive isn't racing much.

My MacBook has 2048MB RAM in two chips, and 160GB HDD capacity, less than half full. Runs quietly and no beachball. However my G4 1.5GHz Mini has only 60GB free space and one 1024MB RAM chip. So its fan runs at times, and I know due to Temperature Monitor software the thing can get hot. Mostly due to VM files.

The activity in your computer may be due to just this sort of thing, but do not dismiss the possibility of other issues; the aspect of troubleshooting an issue is to seek out possible answers, sometimes by elimination. A few won't go away, or since symptoms may relate to another cause of the trouble, they may be false leads.

At some point, if the computer is getting older and is a portable, it should see a new replacement hard disk drive and that is an opportunity to upgrade in size to a larger capacity drive. While looking into that, see what kinds of SATA HDD units are available. Usually a fair replacement can be ordered from OWC, and ask if your computer could benefit from a faster spin-rate HDD. And consider getting an upgrade in RAM chip capacity.

Hopefully this helps a bit. You may consider looking into the OS X 10.5 Leopard discussions area to see what other people say about this kind of issue. The link above covers a bit of ground, but there are others.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

I have suffered from viewing the rainbow wheel since I bought my MacBookPro 5 years ago. Been on tech support more often than I can remember, had the hardware checked (no problem found) and re-set the computer by erasing the hard disk 3 times. The wheel keeps appearing. I am a light user and have only used 74% disk space. 185 of 250 GB

Apple has never mentioned to me that the spinning wheel is a sign of disk fatigue and that this may indicate a failing hard drive. Luckily it has not yet crashed, but it sure is annoying, because the issue does not occur all the time, but when it does occur it is sure annoying.

This particular model is also the fisrt Apple computer, which I had continuous issues with in terms of strange behaviour, which most of the time could get easily fixed by a technician. But since the extended warranty has expired, this becomes an additional expense.