iMac hard drive fail - what steps to prevent in future?

Question

iMac hard drive fail - what steps to prevent in future?

I am working on an extensive video editing project on FCP7 on a 2011 iMac with 3.4GHz i7 and 8GB RAM running OSX Lion 10.7.5. I am editing very large pro res video files for a feature-length documentary. All media is stored on external hard drives.

Several times before, my iMac would freeze and not reboot. All times before, resetting the PRAM seemed to solve the problem.

Today, while exporting a 30min sequence, the spinning beachball got stuck. I noticed that Time Machine was running at the time, and I attempted to stop Time Machine in Preferences (it was not yet in process of transferring data--I tried stopping time machine before in a similar manner, and it seemed to speed up my computer). Now the entire computer froze. I manually turned off, and tried to reboot. This time, after holding down Command (⌘), Option, P, and R, nothing happened. I turned off and tried again, and this time the new computer setup screen appeared, and I am attempting to restore from time machine.

How do I know why my iMac HD failed this time, and how do I move forward from here?

Is my iMac HD compromised, or is it some type of software/OS problem?

How do I prevent future crashes/fails?

Should not run any other programs while editing in FCP7? Should I not run Time Machine while editing?

Thank you in advance, and please pray for my time machine full recovery 🙂

Final Cut Pro 7, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Apr 11, 2014 12:20 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 11, 2014 12:42 AM in response to play it smart

A freezing computer is not a good sign. If you’re working on huge files when it freezes, I’d recommend adding more RAM, 8GB seems a little cramped.

I’d also recommend having more than only one backup and using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to make regular cloned backups. Get a hard drive repair utility like Disk Warrior for when things go wrong.

Keep Activity Monitor running during huge edits so you can keep an eye on memory and CPU usage. You may see a pattern to the freezes.

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Answer 2

Apr 11, 2014 8:56 AM in response to play it smart

First, EVERY hard drive will fail. It's just a question of when. There's not much you can do to prevent the physical failure of the drive that I know of, besides making sure the computer runs as cool as possible. IMac's tend to run hot and that's probably gonna have some effect on the life expectancy of the drive.

As far as the problems that can happen which are not related to the physical failure of the drive.

Make sure you keep at least 20% free on your startup drive.

As Mark said, having a bootable clone is a really good idea. Here's a user tip all about cloning your startup drive.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-2494

I highly recommend Disk Warrior. It's saved my life a few times.

http://alsoft.com/

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