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2010 MP so unreliable

D

digitalhen

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 10, 2006
221
64
Hi folks

(NB. The text below is not meant as a MP bashing thread - I'd really appreciate some advice or ideas!)

So, I'm running a Hexacore MP 2010, with 24GB of OWC ram, 3x 2TB drives (Blue + 2 Blacks) software raided together, 1TB bootcamp drive (Green), 240GB Vertex 2 SSD, hooked up to a 27" cinema.

The experience is woeful. I used to have my Dell 24" screen hooked up as a second monitor, but lately I've found that whenever that's in use everything on the screen and the mouse become very laggy.

This morning it beachballed to death while I was moving some mail around. Safari barely works, and the whole system grinds to a halt if anything Flash/Silverlight plays. The machine never sleeps without pleasesleep... basically, I can't rely on it to be available when I need it. Sometimes on shutdown it'll just restart instead of turning off.

I've tried formatting fresh, and this all still happening. So, some ideas:-

- Could it be Parallels 7 (I'm just running a clean XP install though)
- Perhaps go back to SL, and give up on iMessage etc
- Don't browse the web?? :mad:
- Could it be LogMeIn?
- Go to Windows 7, which is very stable on the box, and sleeps properly
- Reset the PRAM?

The machine is a household server, running things like AirVideo etc. While I DO use it for work, I normally work in the office, so it's mostly used for personal projects.

If you're interested in what I have installed, here's a snapshot: http://d.pr/YXQu

Overall, a very frustrating experience. I have a MBA 2011 11", and it's an order of magnitude more stable.

Thanks MR crowd.
 
Sounds like the SSD could be the issue (at least with the Mac failing to sleep). Is the firmware up to date on the SSD?
 
It may not be ideal, but a good restart, running of Onyx to clean up all the crap and a running of a disk permissions repair on the system disk might help things along?
 
digitalhen said:
Hi folks

(NB. The text below is not meant as a MP bashing thread - I'd really appreciate some advice or ideas!)

So, I'm running a Hexacore MP 2010, with 24GB of OWC ram, 3x 2TB drives (Blue + 2 Blacks) software raided together, 1TB bootcamp drive (Green), 240GB Vertex 2 SSD, hooked up to a 27" cinema.

What graphics card are you using?

The experience is woeful. I used to have my Dell 24" screen hooked up as a second monitor, but lately I've found that whenever that's in use everything on the screen and the mouse become very laggy.

Double check the Preferences for the display and ensure its not running at some funky refresh rate, i know my Display will act very strangely and sluggish running at 30 or 24 hertz. It may be defaulting to a setting that isn't optimal for some reason.

This morning it beachballed to death while I was moving some mail around. Safari barely works, and the whole system grinds to a halt if anything Flash/Silverlight plays. The machine never sleeps without pleasesleep... basically, I can't rely on it to be available when I need it. Sometimes on shutdown it'll just restart instead of turning off.

I've tried formatting fresh, and this all still happening. So, some ideas:-

- Could it be Parallels 7 (I'm just running a clean XP install though)

- Perhaps go back to SL, and give up on iMessage etc
iMessage is Beta still and might cause some problems

- Don't browse the web?? :mad:
- Could it be LogMeIn?
- Go to Windows 7, which is very stable on the box, and sleeps properly

- Reset the PRAM?
And reset the SMC

The machine is a household server, running things like AirVideo etc. While I DO use it for work, I normally work in the office, so it's mostly used for personal projects.

If you're interested in what I have installed, here's a snapshot: http://d.pr/YXQu

Overall, a very frustrating experience. I have a MBA 2011 11", and it's an order of magnitude more stable.

Thanks MR crowd.
Click to expand...


I wish I had a few hours to troubleshoot it to see if i could figure out why its acting like that. Sorry you havent had the best experience with it. hope you can get it resolved. The machine is new and powerful enough that it shouldn't have any of these issues.
 
I had a similar scenario in my 2010mp when one of the HDDs I had in a software RAID 0 array was slowly dying. The other symptom was clicking noises when booting. I had the system and applications on the SSD and all the user stuff on the array. The next thing that happened was that time machine refused to back up properly. I cloned the array with CCC (which found some bad areas it couldn't copy) and the reformatted the drives. The faulty drive died a few days later.

Looking at your setup, I'm sure you have a backup solution. But I would be very suspicious of a faulty HDD.
 
digitalhen said:
The experience is woeful. I used to have my Dell 24" screen hooked up as a second monitor, but lately I've found that whenever that's in use everything on the screen and the mouse become very laggy.
Click to expand...

Definitely check your disks. If your problem persists between installs that's suggestive.

You could try running Activity Monitor and looking for processes using a lot of CPU but you have CPU & RAM in spades so my money would be on I/O. I have the hex with 16GB & an SSD boot disk. But a lot of my data is on HDD's and every time this machine is slow it's because it's hitting the HDD.

Try running iotop,

sudo iotop 2>/dev/null

and see if you can find something amiss.

I can confirm I had intermittent display problem with the 2010 using the 5770 gfx card. It improved with 10.7.3 but, since then, I've also switched back to a single 24" CD. I've had more graphics issues under Lion than Snow Leopard so it might be the driver not the card.

Matt
 
mattmower said:
I can confirm I had intermittent display problem with the 2010 using the 5770 gfx card. It improved with 10.7.3 but, since then, I've also switched back to a single 24" CD. I've had more graphics issues under Lion than Snow Leopard so it might be the driver not the card.

Matt
Click to expand...

Thanks [to everyone] for the excellent suggestions.

My Vertex 2 firmware was one version old, so I've upgraded that through Bootcamp. I've plugged my Dell back in as well (it's a bit silly that I have to coddle the computer to work properly, so I'm just going to will it to work :cool:)

Let me have a bash at the other suggestions and see where it gets me.

(Yes, have backups. SSD -> Time Machine, Array -> 'intelligent' rsync snapshots on to a RAID5 server with a custom script)

----------
Impede said:
I wish I had a few hours to troubleshoot it to see if i could figure out why its acting like that. Sorry you havent had the best experience with it. hope you can get it resolved. The machine is new and powerful enough that it shouldn't have any of these issues.
Click to expand...

Thanks, will try SMC too.

Display card is the 5870. Dell is at 60Hz, no other funky options available, but a good check to have done.

Has anyone seen any slowness from having iStat Menus 3 in the mix? I tried having it not on there, but no improvement.
 
Did you run the Apple Hardware Test (AHT) to check logic board and other components are okay? Is the Hexacore original Apple or a DIY-Upgrade ( perhaps been done the wrong way and thus e.g. leading to an overheating CPU under load)?
 
Neodym said:
Did you run the Apple Hardware Test (AHT) to check logic board and other components are okay? Is the Hexacore original Apple or a DIY-Upgrade ( perhaps been done the wrong way and thus e.g. leading to an overheating CPU under load)?
Click to expand...

It's a real "i paid too much" hexacore, but will add the AHT to my to do list. thx!

(i wish i'd read about the cheapo hexacore upgrades before i bought it)

I've averaging about 46C for CPU1 with a measured (by iStat) 32C ambient, with 10% average util. Seems pretty reasonable to me. Fans are essentially idling.
 
Last edited:
Unplug all the disks bar the SSD boot disk.

Software RAID has always been extremely flaky, and your running two different types of disk which isn't ideal either!!
 
The first red flag I saw was two blacks and a blue in the same RAID. Put only the blacks in RAID and leave the blue by itself, and I bet all your troubles go away.
 
wonderspark said:
The first red flag I saw was two blacks and a blue in the same RAID. Put only the blacks in RAID and leave the blue by itself, and I bet all your troubles go away.
Click to expand...

This is a good possibility.

Only use the exact same kinds of disks in a RAID. Any deviations and you could possibly have problems.
 
Run console and check system.log for error messages. This is a good place to start when trying to debug flaky hardware or software.

+1 on the suggestions above regarding not raiding dissimilar disks.
 
digitalhen said:
Thanks [to everyone] for the excellent suggestions.

My Vertex 2 firmware was one version old, so I've upgraded that through Bootcamp. I've plugged my Dell back in as well (it's a bit silly that I have to coddle the computer to work properly, so I'm just going to will it to work :cool:)
Click to expand...

Lord knows how out of date the firmware is on mine. I'm tempted to check but "If it ain't broke, ..."

Matt
 
Just adding I have an "official" hex with no problems mentioned. I payed less than the HP of same spec when I bought. HP was $125.00 more:D
Your specific setup or you got a lemon. Leaning towards lemon as you state:

"This morning it beachballed to death while I was moving some mail around. Safari barely works, and the whole system grinds to a halt if anything Flash/Silverlight plays. The machine never sleeps without pleasesleep... basically, I can't rely on it to be available when I need it. Sometimes on shutdown it'll just restart instead of turning off.

I've tried formatting fresh, and this all still happening. So, some ideas:-"

Bad memory or even jacked board/ processor. Does the proc bench out normally?
 
telequest said:
+1 on the concern about putting unlike disks in RAID0

My setup is pretty similar yours, except my software RAID 0 has two 1TB Blacks.

And everything hums along just fine.
Click to expand...

I knew shouldn't have tempted fate..... #1 of the Blacks (about a year old) has suddenly developed bad sectors and this thing is working even less well now.

It's time to start pulling data from my backups & I think I'll be avoiding the software raid after this.
 
digitalhen said:
I knew shouldn't have tempted fate..... #1 of the Blacks (about a year old) has suddenly developed bad sectors and this thing is working even less well now.

It's time to start pulling data from my backups & I think I'll be avoiding the software raid after this.
Click to expand...

There's nothing inherently wrong with a software RAID 0... I have three WD Blacks in a software RAID 0 to capture uncompressed HD and it works fine.
 
goodcow said:
There's nothing inherently wrong with a software RAID 0... I have three WD Blacks in a software RAID 0 to capture uncompressed HD and it works fine.
Click to expand...

I will be running 2x1TB Green in RAID 0, and then 2x2TB separately in the new configuration forced upon me :))), so the proof will be in the pudding.

Thanks again for all the help thus far guys.
 
Why on earth are you running RAID 0 on GREEN drives!? They are like the WORST possible drives to RAID 0 on.

Secondly, do you need RAID 0? What are you doing that requires > 100MB/sec read/write?

Don't bother RAIDing, it is a complete waste of time *unless* you *need* the performance day in day out and have a SET of regular backups...

RAID isn't the be all and end all and I've lost data from a RAID1 array...
 
Heh, they're actually not bad when you wdidle them. This is temporary so I can restore from my backups in one shot and as quickly as possible, giving me an extra copy of my data in flight again.

Long term I'm going to go back to 2TB x 3 (but no raid) plus the boot camp.

----------

That does raise a question. The black drive "bad guy" had 4 bad sectors in smart. I thought they had capacity for reassigning sectors?

Should I RMA or just zero and format, starting again as a solo drive?
 
I would start by throwing a simple HD into your system and put your OS flavor on it. Run that for a while and see how it goes. I am not so keen on OWC memory or SSDs, so your memory might need testing.

I would also get a hardware raid card, software raid is NOT OK... there are lots of great solutions.

Offload some of the home serving to a NAS box like Synology if you can, that way you don't have to buy the raid card and you can migrate some of your HDDs to it. Synology also uses less electricity and I haven't had to reboot mine in 6 months :D

Don't worry about logmein, parallels, or anything like that

Its your config...or bad hardware.

Wish I was there to troubleshoot as well

digitalhen said:
Hi folks

(NB. The text below is not meant as a MP bashing thread - I'd really appreciate some advice or ideas!)

So, I'm running a Hexacore MP 2010, with 24GB of OWC ram, 3x 2TB drives (Blue + 2 Blacks) software raided together, 1TB bootcamp drive (Green), 240GB Vertex 2 SSD, hooked up to a 27" cinema.

The experience is woeful. I used to have my Dell 24" screen hooked up as a second monitor, but lately I've found that whenever that's in use everything on the screen and the mouse become very laggy.

This morning it beachballed to death while I was moving some mail around. Safari barely works, and the whole system grinds to a halt if anything Flash/Silverlight plays. The machine never sleeps without pleasesleep... basically, I can't rely on it to be available when I need it. Sometimes on shutdown it'll just restart instead of turning off.

I've tried formatting fresh, and this all still happening. So, some ideas:-

- Could it be Parallels 7 (I'm just running a clean XP install though)
- Perhaps go back to SL, and give up on iMessage etc
- Don't browse the web?? :mad:
- Could it be LogMeIn?
- Go to Windows 7, which is very stable on the box, and sleeps properly
- Reset the PRAM?

The machine is a household server, running things like AirVideo etc. While I DO use it for work, I normally work in the office, so it's mostly used for personal projects.

If you're interested in what I have installed, here's a snapshot: http://d.pr/YXQu

Overall, a very frustrating experience. I have a MBA 2011 11", and it's an order of magnitude more stable.

Thanks MR crowd.
Click to expand...
 
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