Mini > Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB and 4GB ram upgrade = fail. Anyone have issues?

[gabs]

Hello, first off thank you for reading this. I usually find out what I need through searching, but can't find anyone else having problems of this sort with this mini upgrade.

I just bought a 4GB memory kit and a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB for my spanking new mini.

After installing everything the Mini crashes randomly in the form of a flickering garbled screen and speaker noise. So I was just wondering if anyone else has had (heat) issues with this drive, or had similar crashes and found the source of their problem.

When the upgrade parts are installed the mini crashes after a while when running idle. It does not crash in single user mode, so Memtest OS X, and Apple Hardware tester shows no errors (no bad ram??).

With the stock parts back in everything runs fine (no hardware errors), nor when booting from the Seagate mounted externally (no corrupt files).

I'm thinking it could be one of three things.
1. Heat issue with drive
2. Faulty memory, despite 4 green runs of memtest os x.
3. Upgrade fail, and downgrade success. (loose connection)

Cheers,
Gabs.

 

[lamerica80]

Hello!

I have the exact same setup as you and no issues what so ever. I do get the occational static speaker noise (see different thread) but apperently thats not to uncommon with macs.

I downloaded temperature montior and its running around 55 C while wathing a 720p movie and downloading in the background.

The center of the underside of the mini is extremely hot to touch after a day of running but i guess thats normal.

My guess is youve got some fauly hardware. I bought the kingston 2x2gb kit and apparently a previous batch has issues with random shutdown.

Good luck!

 

[fhall1]

Time to be scientific about it and play process of elimination. If you've put the original HD and RAM back in and everything's fine, try swapping out just the Hard Drive.

If everything is fine with the new hard drive in place, try putting the new RAM in...if everything still works, chalk it up to installer error the first time around. If the new RAM causes errors, pull out one of the new DIMMs and try again (with half the RAM of course)...if everything works it seems to point to the DIMM you pulled being bad. If it still fails, pull the DIMM you have installed and replace it with the one you pulled previously. If everything works, it points to the DIMM you just pulled being bad.

 

[gabs]

I have the exact same setup as you and no issues what so ever. I do get the occational static speaker noise (see different thread) but apperently thats not to uncommon with macs.

I downloaded temperature montior and its running around 55 C while wathing a 720p movie and downloading in the background.

The center of the underside of the mini is extremely hot to touch after a day of running but i guess thats normal.

My guess is youve got some fauly hardware. I bought the kingston 2x2gb kit and apparently a previous batch has issues with random shutdown.

Thanx, good to hear I didn't buy incompatible hardware. My temperature readings where the same, hot on the underside and cool on the inside. Come to think about it, it crashed even dough temps where low, so as fhall1 sais it's time to get scientific...

Time to be scientific about it and play process of elimination. If you've put the original HD and RAM back in and everything's fine, try swapping out just the Hard Drive.

If everything is fine with the new hard drive in place, try putting the new RAM in...if everything still works, chalk it up to installer error the first time around. If the new RAM causes errors, pull out one of the new DIMMs and try again (with half the RAM of course)...if everything works it seems to point to the DIMM you pulled being bad. If it still fails, pull the DIMM you have installed and replace it with the one you pulled previously. If everything works, it points to the DIMM you just pulled being bad.

I'm going to try from scratch with the new drive. Format it and install from CD. I don't trust that Clone tool I used to begin with. And then continue as you suggest.

Thank you, I'll post back with my findings...

 

[gabs]

Jupp, one of the DIMMS in the kit was faulty. Returning it and getting a new one. Thank you for your input.