Scary moment with my Mac this morning

Mars Bar

Hi

This morning I turned on my 2012 MacBook Pro and I got a screen the same as the one below



Obviously I was :eek: as my Mac has been sluggish and I was getting increasingly annoyed with the number of beach balls I was seeing.

I went into recovery mode and ran a repair on the disk and it couldn't finish it for some reason. There must be a problem there. I hadn't done a back up since 2013 so thought I might as well start afresh with a clean install. Apple couldn't verify my mac () so I couldn't do that either. It froze again so I turned it off and left it. I came back to it and decided to go safe mode and I have gotten back in. I'm deleting my previous back up and starting again with time machine (my EHD isn't big enough to do another one on top).

Should I take this as a warning sign?

Mars Bar

It's gonna take years at this stage to do a time machine back up. 10 minutes to back up almost 2gb of stuff. My back up is 305 GB and that's without music.

Zcott

Are you backing up wirelessly?

Mars Bar

No, external hard drive is plugged in. I'm not gonna bother with TM.
I'm just dragging and dropping the stuff I really want and need to keep. It's much quicker.

Mars Bar

I restarted after putting everything I wanted on to my hard drive and it rebooted fine. I've tried running another verify on the disk and it freezes every time. I'm thinking a clean reinstall will have to be done.

Zcott

Can't do any harm - just make sure it's all backed up!

ZENER

Perfect time to consider an SSD methinks ??

Ken

Mars Bar

Well I ran another verify disk and it said it had problems so then I repaired. The repair said it would have be done through the recovery repair. I managed to get through all of that and I hope it has done the job. I'll give it another day or two and I'll see how it's performing. I really don't want to go through a clean install!

I'm stone broke at the moment and car insurance is up in two weeks so I can't afford to upgrade anything.

Mars Bar

The laptop has been chugging along alright but I've gotten a few "unapproved caller" messages and now the internet won't load.

Joe Doe

Only time I saw this on my MacAir was when the HD was full to the brim, once a few GB of space was set free, it resolved itself.

Mars Bar

Joe Doe wrote: »

Only time I saw this on my MacAir was when the HD was full to the brim, once a few GB of space was set free, it resolved itself.

My hd is far from full! 545 free of 748

Mars Bar

Well I turned it off and turned it on again and that appears to have fixed it for the moment.

Tokyo

Considering that you are always going to be wary of the hard drive now, I'd give serious consideration to an SSD upgrade down the line. Other than the reassurance that a new hard drive will provide, it'll be like a new machine when you boot it up...

Mars Bar

I think you're right. That'll be the plan for when I can afford it anyway.

Mars Bar

I think we're at the well and truly pooped stage now. Flashing folder with a question mark and then to the apple logo followed by the no universal sign and then shut down automatically. Can't get in to safe mood and can't reset the PRAM.