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Replaced HD in 2006 iMac, but things are weird..

Thrash911

Thrash911

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 14, 2006
297
4
Jutland, Denmark
Hello,

Like others have done, I have just upgraded my internal HD in my iMac from 250Gb to 1Tb (Samsung Spinpoint F1 - HD103UJ). The HD was replaced without incident, hardware wise. It partitions, formats and reports correct size. But then the trouble starts..

The HD stalls a lot. Like, every once in a while all HD activity halts for anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds. Sometimes, the whole system locks up for a short time. The beachball appears a lot while it does this too. Then it loosens up again, until it stalls again a few minutes later. It does not happen that often, if there is very little HD use. All this is, of course, totally unacceptable.

I have tried to restore my system from a SuperDuper! backup. Then I tried to restore from my Time Machine backup. Lastly, I tried a fresh install of Leopard. No matter how I install, it is always VERY slow (because it stalls a lot). I have also tried to force the drive to 1.5 Gigabit (SATA-150), but that did not change anything. I also tested the drive thoroughly with SAMSUNG's official ES-Tool, and the drive is all OK.

I am out of ideas. Can the SATA controller (1.5 Gigabit Intel ICH7-M AHCI - supports AHCI v1.10) in the old iMac simply not handle a disk that large?

Anybody have any thoughts on this?

EDIT: SuperDuper! backup from old drive took 1h 40m. Restore from that backup to my new drive took over 4h..
 
localoid said:
The problem is probably related to SATA 1.5Gbps operation. Is there no jumper on the drive to force it to operate at SATA 1.5Gbps vs. SATA 3.0Gbps?
Click to expand...

I actually have not tried it with the jumper. In the manual it said to do do that with SAMSUNGS's software, so I did that. I will try to do it with the jumper instead, to see if that changes anything..
 
Ok, that was worth a try.. I seemed fine at first, but then it stopped responding, and the beachball appeared again. This time I waited for several minutes, before it loosened up again.. :(

But thanks anyway. ;)
 
Honestly, it sounds like a bad drive. I've had the pleasure of experiencing a few on their death beds, and they all behaved that way in the beginning. I would get it exchanged.
 
why not try to ask mac service center how to install it am sure they got the idea.:)
 
wchua24 said:
why not try to ask mac service center how to install it am sure they got the idea.:)
Click to expand...
Good idea. There is an Apple shop in a nearby city (50 km away). I'm going to that town anyway on Sep. 5th. I'll pop in and hear what they have to say. I have been there before, they are very nice people. I know I could phone them, but I'd feel better if I was there in person.

My little project is on halt now. Gonna test the 1TB drive on my girlfriends PC, in a real Windows enviroment. I kind of hope the drive screws up there too, so I can exchange it... I have put the original 250Gb drive in for now, and put the machine back together. An iMac sure is much nicer to look at, when it is fully assembled.. :p

I'll report back, in case someone should be interested to hear about it.
 
I have now been to the Apple shop, and had a little talk. He could not offer any personal experience on the subject. But it was also his theory, that the limit was 500Gb, because that was the biggest drive offered with these models.

As for the 1Tb drive, it worked just fine in the Windows enviroment. So, I guess it's all about limitation on that iMac. :(

If anybody here has successfully installed a drive bigger than 500Gb in the white 2006 iMac, please come forward.. ;)
 
interesting thread, was just thinking about upgrading the HD in mine. better not get more than 500 GB
 
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