MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro 5,1 suddenly very slow startup

[Jethro!]

About a week ago my workhorse MP 5,1 starting having very slow startups, taking maybe 4-5x as long to start up, and the startup itself was odd e.g. taking a long time to show the desktop background pattern. I'm also getting occasional spinning beachballs for no apparent reason (got one just writing this post), and some "system freezes" where everything locks up for 10 to 20 seconds, then goes back to normal. Otherwise everything behaves normally.

I suspect my boot hard drive could be going bad, but both Disk Utility and DiskWarrior report all the drives ok (SMART status also ok). Rember reports all RAM is ok.

Any ideas what could be going on here?

 

[bsbeamer]

Install DriveDx. Reports a lot more drive issues than anything else.

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.

binaryfruit.com

 

[Jethro!]

Install DriveDx. Reports a lot more drive issues than anything else.

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.

binaryfruit.com

Thank you. DriveDx reported that the drive is failing, so it confirmed my suspicions. Backing up now. Appreciate it!

 

[defjam]

SMART is, IME, completely useless. It's likely your drive is starting to fail.

EDIT: Looks like you posted the cause as I was responding.

 

[bsbeamer]

For anyone who comes across this in the future, DriveDx does more than report SMART data. Uses databases and tons of health indicators to give drive health scores and metrics for many indicators. Install BEFORE there’s any problems and it alerts when something isn’t right. Right up there with Carbon Copy Cloner as must haves.

 

[h9826790]

My understanding, if SMART says your drive is failing, then 99.99% it is failing.

But if SMART says normal, it doesn’t mean your drive is really normal.

SMART is good as an abnormal indicator, but not normal indicator.

 

[MIKX]

About a week ago my workhorse MP 5,1 starting having very slow startups, taking maybe 4-5x as long to start up, and the startup itself was odd e.g. taking a long time to show the desktop background pattern. I'm also getting occasional spinning beachballs for no apparent reason (got one just writing this post), and some "system freezes" where everything locks up for 10 to 20 seconds, then goes back to normal. Otherwise everything behaves normally.

I suspect my boot hard drive could be going bad, but both Disk Utility and DiskWarrior report all the drives ok (SMART status also ok). Rember reports all RAM is ok.

Any ideas what could be going on here?

if you really want help tell us . . . .

what brand, model your drive is . . .

is it a spinner HDD ? An SSD ?

What size is it ?

If it is a spinner HDD . . . how old is it ?

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My 'signature' is at the bottom of this post.

Having a 'signature' saves us having to ask you these questions.

saves macrumors.com's bandwidth.

 

[Jethro!]

if you really want help tell us . . . .

what brand, model your drive is . . .

is it a spinner HDD ? An SSD ?

Spinner HDD. Per bsbeamer's suggestion, DriveDx reported this boot drive is failing, so I've pinpointed the problem. Thanks for responding.
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My understanding, if SMART says your drive is failing, then 99.99% it is failing.

But if SMART says normal, it doesn’t mean your drive is really normal.

SMART is good as an abnormal indicator, but not normal indicator.

Right. SMART reported this drive as functioning normally, when in fact it is not. Not really sure how smart SMART is.