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Level 1

77 points

Strange Mac HD Crash incident

A bit of background information. When I tried to boot the Mac Pro as usual on April 18 I was presented with the following, which I have never seen before. Unfortunately the only way to present this is with a camera shot, so please excuse the lack of quality. As a matter of fact, never have I seen this particular window - OS X Utilities.

Since I have three clones of my Mac HD Sys&Apps, I started up on BootClone-1. I had work to finish and couldn't find time to track down the possible cause(s) of this issue, although I did try a couple of approaches , all to no avail.

On April 18, determined to find a fix, I used Disk Utilities from BootClone-1 to try to clean up the Mac HD partition on my master drive. Disk verification showed as “OK”. Permissions verification showed a couple of problems, so I ran permissions repair. I then repeated these steps to make sure the results were the same in each case. I was going to post this on the 18th, but decided to erase the MadHD partition on the master drive and clone back from BootClone-1. Another reason for doing this was to somewhat defray that partition, using the clone process. I had noticed that Mac HD on the master drive was, according to Drive Pulse(Disk Genius), about 40% fragmented, so it seemed like a good way to possibly cover both issues. Below are the screen shots for the Disk Utility tests. Since the test results seemed to be good I assumed that the problem might reside within the OS. I have been using the Mac HD partition on the master drive since with no boot problems. That is, until this morning. Again, the same initial boot screen, except this time it reverted to BootClone-1 to boot on. Of course that took one step out of the procedure, but I am now faced with the same issue I had less than a week ago. My Mac HD on the main drive will not boot. I can work from the clone, but when one of these drives goes down I also lose an activation on one of my apps, since the clone does not carry that activation with it, something I didn’t realize until this happened. One thing that came to mind this morning is the fact that when I initially erased the Mac HD partition in preparation for the clone, I didn’t erase with all zeros as I probably should have. Is it possibly that there might still be a piece of software residing on the disk that is preventing a proper boot? I would like to somehow recover that disk, if only long enough to deactivate one app in case it crashes again.

Well there, I think I have been able to put this in a somewhat logical order, and probably far too wordy as well. If anyone has a guess as to the possible cause of this it would greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Gary

Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), 3-1TB HDs, 2-2TB HDs, NEC PA271W

Posted on Apr 23, 2015 10:01 AM

Best reply

John Galt

Level 10

141,988 points

Posted on Apr 25, 2015 5:17 AM

Is it possibly that there might still be a piece of software residing on the disk that is preventing a proper boot?

"Disk Genius", perhaps.

Don't use such garbage. Don't bother "defragmenting". All such utilities can possibly accomplish is to accelerate a hard disk's eventual failure through needless wear. At best, they are an absolute waste of time. Drag them to the Trash or use their uninstaller utility, as appropriate.

Hard disks are inexpensive wear items. As long you have a reliable backup strategy, you should discard a hard disk at the first sign of failure. To learn how to use Time Machine readMac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac - Apple Support.

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19 replies

John Galt

Level 10

141,988 points

May 11, 2015 8:26 PM in response to Garnick

For some reason this site isn't sending email notifications reliably again... it's been an ongoing problem.

Anyway, to remove "Checkmate" or TTP try researching its documentation, here: http://www.micromat.com/index.php/productmanuals. I don't have specific instructions. If its removal instructions do not work due to an incomplete uninstallation attempt, leaving the app no longer installed, it may be necessary to install it again for the sole purpose of immediately uninstalling it.

Can you think of any logical reason to occasionally leave the Mac Pro on overnight?

None, since if everything is working properly simply letting it sleep according to your preferences in Energy Saver should be sufficient. If you have a need to access it remotely, for sharing purposes for example, selecting Wake for network access will cause it to wake for that purpose, after which it will return to sleep.

In what is now the very distant past OS X performed certain maintenance tasks in the early morning, so leaving it running during that time had that element of justification. It has not been necessary to do that for many OS X versions now, so let it sleep.

There is no reason to completely shut it down either, unless you do not plan on using it for a long period of time. A sleeping Mac uses less energy than a night light.

John Galt

Level 10

141,988 points

May 11, 2015 8:29 PM in response to lllaass

Thank you lllaass. I did not receive an email notification to this Discussion since my previous reply. This one still says "following". I have given up trying to figure it out.

Garnick Author

Level 1

77 points

May 12, 2015 6:32 AM in response to John Galt

Hello again John,

The fact that I haven't bother you for a while may have led you to believe that I have solved the initial problem, which in essence is true. After I removed one of my BootClones from the Home Mac Pro and cloned that to the Mac HD volume on the work Mac Pro things have been working properly. I did notice that when I shut down last Saturday it completed the task very quickly, perhaps 15 seconds. Usually now it takes approx 30-40 seconds to completely shut down. When I started up yesterday it got stuck, not able to find the boot drive. Eventually I shut down manually and it then started properly. Last evening it shut down properly and this morning no problem. Due to all of that I believe the initial issue has been solved, although I'm still not sure what that issue was based on.

Thanks for the heads up as far as "Checkmate" is concerned. I had already been in touch with the support group at Micromat and they sent instructions on how to uninstall Checkmate properly. Aside from a widget that monitors many activities as well, I believe there are no other such app running in the background. I plan on uninstalling that widget as well as soon as I figure out how to do that. I can certainly turn it off in the Dashboard, but not sure that actually uninstalls it completely. From this point on I'll be using only Activity Monitor for such information.

On the topic of shutting down the computer before I leave work and at home as well when I have finished with it for the day: All of that stems from and incident I had a few years ago when I was still using a G5. I had left it on overnight so the maintenance tasks could run. When I arrived the following morning I could hear a loud noise long before I opened the door. The fans were running full blast and it sounded like an aircraft ready for take off. Of course the grey screen and all, with no indication of why this had happened. I shut the machine down and let it sit for a while, then started with no problem. Turned out it was some sort of Kernal Panic, and the Kernal was not the only thing panicking when I first arrived. Ever since that very disturbing situation I have always shut down the computers before leave. Other than what you have mentioned on that subject, can you think of any reason not to shut down. I imagine a Kernal Panic can still occur, whether in sleep mode or not. Is that correct?

It seems I was mistaken in the believe that certain maintenance tasks would still run in the early morning hours if the computer is on. So I suppose my next question it outdated. What app would you suggest for running maintenance routines manually. On the X-lab site they suggest using Terminal, and have supplied the proper text to enter for that task. They also suggest that Cocktail is a good app for running the scripts without using Terminal. In your opinion, is this also outdated information? From what you have written, that would seem to be the case.

Thanks again for the reply John.

Gary

nkh

Level 1

79 points

Nov 23, 2015 10:49 AM in response to Garnick

Hi Garnick,

I'm interested in the instructions Micromat provided for uninstalling Checkmate! They say there's an uninstall option in the install program... but where's that program to be found? I've written for something a tad more explicit... but have not yet gotten a reply! 😟

Strange Mac HD Crash incident