Resolved macbook pro i/o freezing repeatedly

[poiihy]

So I was watching Matthias Wandel and then suddenly Safari and Finder disappeared (but Opera Mail didnt)... so then I tried to reopen Safari and it bounced for a little while and then suddenly everything disappeared into a black screen (except the menu bar and cursor) and then the cursor switched to the spinning rainbow. The application that was selected was Opera Mail so it seems like Opera Mail was still working... I clicked the menu bar (the menu bar, as in, the bundle of stuff in the upper right corner including the time and wifi and stuff) and it disappeared (except for dropbox and spotlight)... I clicked spotlight and that disappeared... but dropbox worked fine... until i clicked preferences and then dropbox disappeared... so I had to force shut down and reboot, and it took a while to load but it seems to be working now.

It seems that all the apple software went kaput but the 3rd party software did not. I wonder what happened?
[doublepost=1457511186][/doublepost]It took a long time to login; it kept getting stuck, and it still is getting stuck; when trying to write this it froze for around a minute or two... weird.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Back, backup, backup.

 

[poiihy]

Back, backup, backup.

I do
[doublepost=1457557038][/doublepost]So this was last night and I had the problems of repeated freezing; now it is the next day and I still have the problems. It works, then it freezes, then it works...
When it's frozen I hear no hard disk drive activity.

Also here's something interesting. Whenever it freezes, I find "kernel[0]: disk0s2: I/O error." in the console. So something wrong with I/O

 

[T5BRICK]

Sounds like your HDD is failing. Time to upgrade to a SSD.

 

[poiihy]

I still have been having this problem... it works fine for a minute or two or three and then it freezes with no disk I/O (can be verified in activity monitor) and any program that tries to read or write to disk, freezes, for around a minute or two until everything unfreezes and things can read and write again.
I've checked S.M.A.R.T. status and all that stuff and hard disk drive seems to be fine.
I tried safe mode and the same problem is there.
I've been trying to get ubuntu livecd working but I remembered that Ubuntu 14 or 12 livecd doesn't work on my MBP, only Ubuntu 10 does but for some reason i couldn't get that to work...
so i just need to install some operating system and see for sure if it is hardware or not.
[doublepost=1457576846][/doublepost]

Sounds like your HDD is failing. Time to upgrade to a SSD.

No SSD unless everything else is fixed

 

[T5BRICK]

No SSD unless everything else is fixed

Put the HDD in an external enclosure and try booting from it. If it boots, then your SATA cable may be bad.

Chances are your HDD is failing.

 

[poiihy]

I tried all day trying to get some operating system working... finally i got Ubuntu 10 installed on the HDD. I had no problems with Ubuntu 10.04 running (no freezes). But I couldn't get Wi-Fi to work; I got the driver needed and it worked but it couldn't connect to my network (I tried ubuntu 10 a while before and had the same problem)... I tried updating to Ubuntu 12.04 but it didn't work
Well at least... Ubuntu 10 worked with no freezes.
I also did first aid on the partition map and OS volume and everything was ok.
So I booted into OS X and... SAME BLOODY PROBLEM!

So my hard disk drive appears to be fine, no problems in SMART status and no problems in first aid, other operating systems, the ones that work on my machine, work fine. Just this OS X is going ballistic even in safe mode. not sure if this is hardware or software. But I am pretty sure my HDD is not failing.
[doublepost=1457590432][/doublepost]

If it boots, then your SATA cable may be bad.

It already boots; that's not the issue.

 

[T5BRICK]

So I booted into OS X and... SAME BLOODY PROBLEM!

So my hard disk drive appears to be fine, no problems in SMART status and no problems in first aid, other operating systems, the ones that work on my machine, work fine. Just this OS X is going ballistic even in safe mode. not sure if this is hardware or software. But I am pretty sure my HDD is not failing.

It already boots; that's not the issue.

If you don't want to try a basic troubleshooting step, that's fine, but the issues you're describing sound like a failing HDD.

 

[poiihy]

If you don't want to try a basic troubleshooting step, that's fine, but the issues you're describing sound like a failing HDD.

I didn't say I don't want to do it, I just haven't done it yet

 

[poiihy]

Ok today i have booted from the hdd externally and the problem seems to have gone away... but wait... no, it hasn't! Looking in Activity Monitor, I find that I am still getting freezes, just short ones, with a kernel disk I/O error in console with each freeze.

So I am still having this problem, just much less of it. Failing HDD? Could be... but there are no funny sounds nor errors in the S.M.A.R.T. status, and Ubuntu works fine on it. I think it may be the OS, but to be sure I need to try other operating systems on it. Ubuntu doesn't really work on my machine but maybe Linux Mint or Ubuntu MATE will work.

 

[poiihy]

Ok so i looked at S.M.A.R.T. status in Ubuntu... here's something interesting; there are two bad sectors
So perhaps those two bad sectors contained data that the OS needed so now the OS is a little corrupt...
Also I tried running self-test but it said "FAILED (Read)"; I don't know what that means, did the self-test fail or did the OS fail to read the self-test?
So I need to install a new OS or something and it should be alright
If only the wifi in Ubuntu 10 worked, then i'll be all set already.

 

[kschendel]

The self-test failed. In my opinion, that drive is on the way out, and the sooner you replace it the better off you'll be. Failures are usually progressive; it's rare to see a couple failures and no more after that. (not impossible, just rare.)

 

[T5BRICK]

So I am still having this problem, just much less of it. Failing HDD? Could be... but there are no funny sounds nor errors in the S.M.A.R.T. status, and Ubuntu works fine on it.

I've had a failing HDD work fine in Windows but not OSX, and the other way around. I've had them show good S.M.A.R.T. status when they were actually bad. I've had good drives fail without any drama. Typically they die for good when trying to reformat and reinstall.

It's also possible that you've got a failing SATA cable, but if the problem persists when you've got the drive in an external enclosure, it may be the drive itself.

 

[poiihy]

oh well, that sucks...

I won't replace it just yet as it still works, I'll use it until it finally fails completely.
So I think what I will do is... I will dump the Ubuntu partition and try some other distro until I find one that actually works, so I can use my machine. I'll find out if more problems occur while using it.

 

[poiihy]

Ok so what I did was not what I said I thought I was going to do.
I tried Linux Mint but had the same problem so i came to the idea that anything based on the latest version of Ubuntu will not work, so I wanted to try Debian but it didnt work from USB but realized that I can use CD but then I couldn't find the external optical drive (which i am sure I put back but it mysteriously disappeared and can't be find ANYWHERE) and my internal drive doesnt work (again -_-) and I also realized that it would probably also be a pain to get working... so I came to the idea that linux is no go on this mbp.
So I was going to just erase and reinstall OS X but before doing that I just re-install OS X (the re-install that just overwrites the system files but leaves all your stuff intact) but that did not solve the problem, if anything maybe made it worse (i gave up while being stuck at login) so I went ahead to erase it and re-install OS...
Erasing was a bit of a pain as it wouldn't erase in the recovery OS booted from it so I took the drive out to erase it with another computer... though later realized I couldve just use the OS install...
So today I have zeroed out the hard disk drive (via terminal as apple has really dumbified down disk utility, though it looks nicer) then I installed a fresh install of OS X.
And guess what; it works a treat! No freezing problem or anything like that. I will need to restore my data from tmb and hopefully it wont screw up again.
Perhaps it is nearing end of life but at least i am still getting use out of it

 

[poiihy]

Well I restored my data and everything's back to normal

Edit 6/10/2019: The hard drive is still working perfectly fine to this day, but as of earlier this year I now use an SSD for my main drive (HDD is now in optibay).
Oh BTW, there are no bad sectors now; I think they went away after zeroing the drive.