12 Gb Mac slow - DiskWarrior found errors

[mikeytheo]

My wifes Mac was running OS X with 12GB of Ram. Intermittently it began taking a long time to respond. Then the colored spinning wheel became a regular feature. I dont know Macs so thought the simplest solution may be an upgrade to Yosemite. The upgrade was fine, but the issues persist.

I ran Disk Utility and found nothing, however DiskWarrior found the following damaged data. Would this indicate the problem - or if not, is the result a concern - and if so, can it be repaired?

Many thanks.

DiskWarrior scanned the disk named "iMac" checking all files and folders for damage and potential compatibility problems.

Disk: "iMac"
The Property List data was checked in 18,890 files.
The Resource Data was checked in 6,806 files.
The maximum Folder Depth on this disk is 26. This does not exceed the maximum recommended depth. Location: "Desktop"

File: "Localized.rsrc"
Detected that the resource header is damaged and cannot be repaired
Location: "iMac/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Microsoft Messenger.app/Contents/Resources/ Norwegian.lproj/"

File: ".com.cocoastuff.apple.plist"
Detected that Property List data is damaged and cannot be repaired. Malformed tag on line 1
Location: "iMac/Library/Preferences/"

File: "windows.plist"
Detected that Property List data is damaged and cannot be repaired.
Location: "iMac/Users/Deahna/Library/Saved Application State/ com.ImagineerSystems.mocha4ae_adobe.savedState/"

File: ".InstallOptions67.plist"
Detected that Property List data is damaged and cannot be repaired. Unexpected character at line 1
Location: "iMac/Library/Application Support/"

File: ".AppOptions67.plist"
Detected that Property List data is damaged and cannot be repaired. Unexpected character at line 1
Location: "iMac/Users/Deahna/Library/Application Support/"

Explanations:
Folder Depth: This number indicates how many folders are nested inside each other. If a disk contains only three folders and Folder A is inside Folder B and Folder B is inside Folder C, then this disk has a maximum folder depth of three. Folders nested too deeply can cause software compatibility problems.
Property List: This is a standard file format for storing data and is often used to store preferences. The names of these files normally end with a .plist file extension. Corrupt property list files can cause system instability.
Resource Data: This is an older file format for storing data and was often used to store preferences. The names of these files normally end with a .rsrc file extension. Corrupt resource data files can cause system instability.
Time: 25/11/14 8:03:59 PM DiskWarrior Version: 4.1.1 - RY806934

 

[TheBSDGuy]

I can think of several possibilities:

First, possibly the drive itself is damaged, which would cause some files to become unrecoverable or problematic. Bad blocks on an HD or SSD often cause the spinning beach balls to show up. I use Scannerz to check my drives and SSDs for those types of problems. They have a low cost version available that I don't personally care for named Scannerz Lite, but it would allow you to know if there were problems (and that's about all the "Lite" version will tell you). The full version can check for bad cable problems that could cause those problems as well. Disk Warrior checks for bad index files and mismatched file contents, whereas Scannerz looks at the actual media. The two are almost perfect complements of one another.

Second, you had an index corruption of a fairly serious nature that might have been caused by something like a sudden power outage or shutting the system off suddenly during boot. The latter seems to cause index problems because the file system isn't in a stable state as the system is booting up. I've found that you can literally trash drive indices by starting the system and then suddenly force powering it off before the booting process really gets started. If you did an upgrade on the existing system, and it sounds like you did, then it's quite possible the updating process may not have looked at or checked for any problems that pre-existed on the system, hence the problems would persist. A re-format and clean install would likely fix the problem if this is the case.

Third, there are some file system incompatibilities between Yosemite and previous releases of OS X. I doubt this is your problem but if you look at a Yosemite volume using any OS earlier than Mavericks it will not be able to recognize some of the files fully because of the way Yosemite uses compression in some of the data being stored in resource forks because Mountain Lion and earlier versions don't understand the type of compression being used. For this to occur you would have to be working on the volume likely in target disk mode and evaluating it with a system using Mountain Lion or earlier.

Hope this helps.

 

[mikeytheo]

Many thanks for the response.

Yes the fuseboox threw the power out a few days ago which you have picked in one, however the lagging was occurring well before then.

Will run the suggested software on the disk and see what it reveals.

Cheers.