2010 Mac mini, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB memory. Snow Leopard 10.6.8
For the past several weeks, my Mac mini has required periodic hard restarts. At first, I chalked it up to some crappy free card game apps I d/l'd from the App store. But even after banishing them, the problem persisted.
Essentially, the computer freezes and the mini doesn't recognize command-option-escape to shut down the offending program. At that point, I go for the power button.
I have an external hard drive (1 TB Seagate GoFlex) with three partitions. One for backup and the other two for sometime expansion. I've used Disk Utility and Drive Genius on the external partitions and the internal hard drive and nothing remarkable has turned up. Occasionally, it calls for permissions to be repaired, especially after a hard restart. One attempt to erase my backup partition failed; Disk Utility seemed to be lost in an endless loop.
I reinstalled Snow Leopard yesterday, which seemed to improve things -- that is, the mini didn't hang on normal use. Erasing the backup disk went through fine, and the first backups of my internal hard disk went as they should.
But this morning, Time Machine was still working on a backup since 11 p.m. last night. At first, TM worked in the background while I could still fetch mail, etc. Finally, the computer ceased functioning and I needed a hard restart again.
After the restart, TM completed that backup and moved on to others since.
TM might not be the problem. But I'm wondering if my index of files could be corrupted. Is there anyway to check?
Any other possiblities?
For the past several weeks, my Mac mini has required periodic hard restarts. At first, I chalked it up to some crappy free card game apps I d/l'd from the App store. But even after banishing them, the problem persisted.
Essentially, the computer freezes and the mini doesn't recognize command-option-escape to shut down the offending program. At that point, I go for the power button.
I have an external hard drive (1 TB Seagate GoFlex) with three partitions. One for backup and the other two for sometime expansion. I've used Disk Utility and Drive Genius on the external partitions and the internal hard drive and nothing remarkable has turned up. Occasionally, it calls for permissions to be repaired, especially after a hard restart. One attempt to erase my backup partition failed; Disk Utility seemed to be lost in an endless loop.
I reinstalled Snow Leopard yesterday, which seemed to improve things -- that is, the mini didn't hang on normal use. Erasing the backup disk went through fine, and the first backups of my internal hard disk went as they should.
But this morning, Time Machine was still working on a backup since 11 p.m. last night. At first, TM worked in the background while I could still fetch mail, etc. Finally, the computer ceased functioning and I needed a hard restart again.
After the restart, TM completed that backup and moved on to others since.
TM might not be the problem. But I'm wondering if my index of files could be corrupted. Is there anyway to check?
Any other possiblities?