Computer crashes and loses hard drive when iMac goes into sleep mode

[asauterChicago]

So I original posted this over in the OSX forum:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/837749/

However, I figured I would post it over here because it seems to be more of a hardware issue with the iMac, since I've gone through two fresh installs and reformats of Leopard at this point. Here's the original posting and my follow up test. Just wondering if anyone can shed some light on the issue I'm having:

So, I just had the original 300 GB hard drive fail in my aluminum 24" inch iMac running the latest update of Leopard. I wasn't able to save it using diskwarrior (diskwarrior said it was some sort of mechanical failure) but I was able to recover most of the data from it by booting from an external hard-drive.

So I went out and purchased a brand new Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB drive. The install went fine, it found the drive partitioned it and installed Leopard successful. Then is crashed and disappeared when I left it alone to run all the software updates. I came back and the computer was stuck on "Restart Required" after downloading all the updates. I went to hit restart now, and the system just hanged, wouldn't do anything. So I hard powered down the system and restarted it. It came up with nothing, just stuck on the White Screen of Death. So I plugged the external drive back in and booted from it. Mac OSX couldn't find the drive and diskwarrior would crash if I tried to run it. I tried to boot up from the OSX start-up disk and it couldn't find the drive either.

So I took the case apart and made sure all the connections were solid and the drive was mounted correctly. Everything looked fine so I plugged it in and it started up fine. Finished the updates and the iMac ran great.

So I thought maybe it was overheating, so I've installed smcfancontrol and started to monitor the temp of the drive. I also took the mac apart again and sucked out any dust in the fans or vents. The drive never goes over a 105 F, so it doesn't seem to be overheating.

However, this is where the problem is consistent: everytime the iMac goes into sleep mode, it crashes and the iMac is unable to find the hard-drive again. Unless I unplug it completely for 5 minutes or so. Once I unplug it, it finds the drive and operates like a champ.

I think maybe there's an issue powering the drive back on? Anyone have any ideas?

And my follow up posting later that day:

So I ran some tests just to see if was an overheat issue, hard drive malfunction, or sleep issue. I decided to start encoding a video, pulled up Word, Power Point, Excel, started downloading all 6000 mail messages off my server (I never delete my e-mail :-/), also started installing iLife 09, and pulled up a bunch of webpages in Firefox with multiple tabs.

However, I shut off all sleep mode options on the hard drive. I let it run for an hour and came back. Everything is fine, hard drive isn't locked up and smcfancontrol shows the hard drive running pretty hot (115 degrees) but not so hot I'm worried. So it's definitely something to do the hard drives going into sleep mode and not powering back on. It's also weird that I have to leave the computer completely unplugged for 10-15 minutes before the drive is recognized again.

So turning off sleep seems to be my work-around, however, this shouldn't be a long term solution. I'm worried that there is a bigger issue with the iMac, but I'm not sure what would cause this. I've been a PC guy for years, this was my first Mac, and honestly I don't know enough about the inner workings to narrow this down. I would assume this would have to do with the motherboard in some way? But I'm not sure how you would even test it.

 

[bolen]

Have you found any other solutions for this? My dad's iMac 24" (2 yrs old) does the same thing since a couple of days ago, sleep and when it wakes it's crashing and losing the hard drive.

I've already re-installed Leopard once the first time it happened, now the second time it happened I managed to boot it up.

It does sound like a hardware error since re-installing doesn't help, but I somehow thinks it has something to do with a recent software upgrade. Maybe upgrading to Snow Leopard can help?

 

[waldo21]

Same problem

I am also having the same problem. It started happening for me on my iMac about a month ago.

 

[Hellhammer]

Repair you permissions and check your HD for errors with Disk Utility. If there is no errors, it shouldn't be a software issue but to be sure about that, reinstall OS X. Moreover, in your energy saving settings, have you set the HD to go into sleep mode as well or have you just let them to run 24/7. You could try letting them run all the time (uncheck the box) and see if that helps

 

[devianter]

any news ? just ordered a black caviar 1tb :X i hope i will not have the same issue

 

[ADent]

Another reason I gave up on sleep. It would work for awhile then something would change and crash often.

My mini only uses 20-25W, so not a huge deal to leave it running. I do set the screen to turn off.

 

[Mr Bow]

Me too. Under 10.5 my mini sometimes wouldn't go to sleep automatically, tried all the usual things up to a full reinstall. Once upgraded to 10.6 it sometimes wouldn't wake up from an automatic sleep, tried all the usual things up to a full reinstall.

I gave up on automatic sleep and just sleep it manually at the end of each day. Zero issues with that.