12" PowerBook G4 Slows To A Crawl In Leopard

[CC_333]

OK, so I got a nice, new-to-me 80 GB IDE hard drive from some guy on LEM Swap.

I install it on my recently refurbished PowerBook G4 12" (which was running very well in Tiger with a spare 40 GB drive), and it is so slow with the new drive it's practically useless.

I reinstalled Leopard several times to no avail. I replaced the data cable with no improvement.

I benchmarked and surface scanned and examined inside and out the new drive, and it checks out fine (and it benchmarks rather fast, which is odder still).

Any ideas? I'm stumped.

c

 

[sos_nz]

Might not be a bad drive - Leopard (10.5.x) is significantly more resource intensive than Tiger (10.4). Many more GUI elements and other embellishments in play.

You're wanting a gig of RAM for Leopard.

 

[CC_333]

It has 1.25 GB RAM, and it's actually not slow, per se, although the net result is; it's a symptom of something deeper than low memory, I think.

It seems to freeze sporadically when accessing the drive, which results in lots of beach balls and non responsive buttons.

I know it's not quite the same, but the installer, when booted from an external FireWire drive, runs perfectly, and the graphics move relatively smoothly when they move. I haven't tried Tiger with this new drive, but I have a funny feeling that it'll behave similarly.

This isn't just normal slowness, I guess it was a bad choice of words.

c

 

[TheMacGuy]

Sounds like a possible bad HDD. Although, normally when a drive gets ready to die, it's slows down, not speeds up.

What are the specs on the drive?

 

[coius]

I third on the hard drive. My reasoning:

I had a toshiba laptop come to me. The system was unbearably slow. Windows 7 took over 45 minutes to boot. I tried to reload, all the same. Did some Diagnostics on the hard drive:

Failed. Thousands of read/write errors. Toshiba drive dead (I have 6 of these Toshiba 320GB HDDs that have read/write errors. All are from the same time, around the flood that hit asia, and all of them are DOA out of warranty).

Replaced with even a slower, lower capacity WD Blue 160GB HDD and the laptop is back up and running. Much faster than 45 minutes (ok, well 2.5 minutes to get from the Windows Logo to logged in, and about 3.5 total from Windows logo to usable and apps launching. I scaled back the login startup items and it brought it down from about 4-5 minutes)

In short, replace the hard drive. 40GB at probably 4200RPM is gonna be slow to begin with, but my guess is you are having read/write errors. Techtool pro with a bad block check will verify this. Checked the SMART status under Disk utility lately? It might have a warning or Failed status (it would highlight in red at the bottom)

 

[CC_333]

How can the HDD be going bad when it passes every test I've tried with flying colors?

I'll try Tech Tool and see what that says.

If it does turn out it's bad, maybe I should get a refund?

It's a Seagate 4200.xxx at 80 GB, I think. I don't know anything beyond that.

c

 

[uniserver]

it's sounds to me like you are in the beginning stages of needing a reflow on GPU.

what speed is the cpu, and what GPU is in it?

 

[CC_333]

Why?! It's a new-used logic board, and it works perfectly when running from other disks. I did speculate that it could be RAM failure (because something similar happened to my MacBook Pro a few months ago, and it turned out the RAM was bad), but somehow it doesn't quite seem like bad RAM is the problem (it doesn't kernel panic, for one thing).

How could a GPU issue cause this?

One thing is that it's the same regardless of whether it's hot or cold.

c

 

[uniserver]

I'v had (4) 12" g4 power books in the past, they are known for needing a gpu reflow,

Those lifting balls causes all kinds of wacky issues.

Tiger and leopard hit the GPU differently when clicking on things in the GUI.

For one thing leopard is more gpu demanding.

oh one more thing, when a hard drive starts to go through a self destructive state, it will try and re-map stuff, that can lag you down. I would download "smart reporter" and have look at the smart status. It will tell you all kinds of information about the hard drive you normally can't see.

Including how many hours are on the drive. And Bad sectors.

here is what my drive looks like on my work computer.

smartctl 5.41 2011-04-06 r3314 [i386-apple-darwin9.8.0] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Caviar Blue Serial ATA family
Device Model:     WDC WD5000AAKS-00V1A0
Serial Number:    WD-WCAWF1168138
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 1ad04ccd6
Firmware Version: 05.01D05
User Capacity:    500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Wed Apr 17 14:46:40 2013 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x84)	Offline data collection activity
				was suspended by an interrupting command from host.
				Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (  25)	The self-test routine was aborted by
				the host.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection: 		( 7800) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: 			 (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
				Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
				Suspend Offline collection upon new
				command.
				Offline surface scan supported.
				Self-test supported.
				Conveyance Self-test supported.
				Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)	Saves SMART data before entering
				power-saving mode.
				Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)	Error logging supported.
				General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time: 	 (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 (  93) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities: 	       (0x303f)	SCT Status supported.
				SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
				SCT Feature Control supported.
				SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   142   139   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       3883
 4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       824
 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   066   066   000    Old_age   Always       -       24878
10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       364
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       156
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       667
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   108   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       35
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24852         -
# 2  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24758         -
# 3  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24758         -
# 4  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24737         -
# 5  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24736         -
# 6  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24710         -
# 7  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24709         -
# 8  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24709         -
# 9  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24691         -
#10  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24668         -
#11  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24666         -
#12  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24666         -
#13  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24663         -
#14  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24663         -
#15  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24571         -
#16  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24570         -
#17  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24570         -
#18  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24569         -
#19  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24568         -
#20  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24548         -
#21  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%     24547         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
   1        0        0  Not_testing
   2        0        0  Not_testing
   3        0        0  Not_testing
   4        0        0  Not_testing
   5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
 After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

 

[sos_nz]

How about slapping 10.4 on the drive in question? While this won't definitively answer the question, it'd be interesting. That said, you should have enough mac to run Leopard without the symptoms you're describing.

 

[CC_333]

you should have enough mac to run Leopard without the symptoms you're describing.

Agreed.
I will try Tiger later tonight.

Thanks!

c

p.s. It's kind of cruddy that it might need a GPU reflow. Any volunteers, by chance?

 

[uniserver]

as you know there are ways of doing it, youtube " powerbook reflow " lol

 

[CC_333]

Hi,

'

Well, good news! It's not a GPU issue! (at least, I don't think so).

For some reason, it doesn't like the drive. Booted from an external FireWire drive, it runs exactly as one might expect Leopard would run on a 1.33 GHz G4 (I'm typing this from it, in fact; I couldn't do that before!)

So, I guess I'll have to find another hard drive for it.

The one I have in here now seems to work OK as a non-boot drive, and there's no impending signs of failure (so far), so I might just use it for backing up non critical stuff.

Thanks!

c

 

[uniserver]

what did "smart reporter" have to say about it?

 

[CC_333]

I don't know. I'll check it out in the morning.

c

 

[CC_333]

Well, I can't find anything wrong with the cruddy hard drive, so I put in the 60 GB drive from my first PB G4 12" (long deceased ) ), and it's working fine now, if not a bit sluggishly (simply because of the drive's slowness, nothing severe).

So, I'll probably leave it as is for now, and find a better, faster drive eventually.

c

 

[TheMacGuy]

Try tuning Leopard for the G4s. I have found that disabling v-sync and enabling Quartz 2D Extreme helped, along with disabling Dashboard and making the menu bar non-transperant. I also used monolingual to delete all the unneeded languages and Intel binaries, which freed up some, but not much, hard drive space.

My 1.42GHz 14" iBook chugs right along on Leopard with the few tweaks. Adding the extra 1GB of RAM really helped.

 

[CC_333]

TheMacGuy: I'll try that, but it's fine on Tiger for now, so I think I'll just let it be (and try installing Leopard when I get a newer, better, faster, and NON-DEFECTIVE drive installed.

Also of note is that Leopard absolutely flew (relatively speaking) when booted from a FireWire drive that had Leopard installed, and Tiger is working beautifully on the internal drive, so I'm inclined to think that the logic board is perfectly healthy, and it was in fact the hard drive which was causing me so much grief.

I think the "bad" drive is still OK for storage of noncritical documents, though. I ran it through all sorts of tests, and nothing came up, so maybe it's simply incompatible with the PowerBook. Is that even possible? I though a drive was just a drive for the most part, and practically any drive would work.

c

 

[TheMacGuy]

Some Macs are pretty finicky with their HDDs. Look at the Cube. I had the original owners HDD in there for a good amount of time until I upgraded the iMac to an SSD and moved the original 80GB from the iMac to the Cube. A 40GB Seagate Barracuda wouldn't work in it, it wouldn't even recognize it for formatting.