I'm redoing my 20" iMac to give to my brother in law. This was my first Mac and has given me troubles the 2 years I've owned it. I love the OS, but the hardware isn't up to par IMHO.
Anyway, I was installing Snowleopard and everything went well and it had the green checkmark and said to restart. After it restarted it seemed to hang for a while and then gave me the flashing question mark with the folder. As I was powering up my netbook to see what it was, it restarted itself and went back to the install disk. I tried to verify disk, but it say it was going to take about 2 minutes, and sat there without moving for over 10. I tried to repair, but it did the same thing. So now I found the old leopard disks and will try it with them.
I'm beginning to assume that the Hard disk is about to fail. Although SMART says it is fine, it was as if my Mac was having a beach ball party and I was getting the pinwheels of death quite frequently. In the minimal research I have done, it seems as though a constant pinwheel could be an indication of a failing hard drive. Can someone please confirm or deny this?
I'm pretty tech savy and have seen video's on how to dissasemble the iMac to replace the HD. I could head down and pickup just a standard HDD and install it correct?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated as he is comming off a cruise tomorrow and it was going to be a surprise.
Thanks in advance.
*Edit*
Thanks for all the help! I went down and picked up a new Seagate 500GB 7200RPM HDD and installed it. All my worries are gone, thanks to the forum.
Anyway, I was installing Snowleopard and everything went well and it had the green checkmark and said to restart. After it restarted it seemed to hang for a while and then gave me the flashing question mark with the folder. As I was powering up my netbook to see what it was, it restarted itself and went back to the install disk. I tried to verify disk, but it say it was going to take about 2 minutes, and sat there without moving for over 10. I tried to repair, but it did the same thing. So now I found the old leopard disks and will try it with them.
I'm beginning to assume that the Hard disk is about to fail. Although SMART says it is fine, it was as if my Mac was having a beach ball party and I was getting the pinwheels of death quite frequently. In the minimal research I have done, it seems as though a constant pinwheel could be an indication of a failing hard drive. Can someone please confirm or deny this?
I'm pretty tech savy and have seen video's on how to dissasemble the iMac to replace the HD. I could head down and pickup just a standard HDD and install it correct?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated as he is comming off a cruise tomorrow and it was going to be a surprise.
Thanks in advance.
*Edit*
Thanks for all the help! I went down and picked up a new Seagate 500GB 7200RPM HDD and installed it. All my worries are gone, thanks to the forum.