Chosen Solution
My machine have had some sluggish and strange behavior lately. I have narrowed it down to the HDD, the disk itself or the disk interface. Symptoms Writes are extremely slow and sometimes stops completely during file transfers and normal operationReads are mostly normal, but opening programs like iPhoto is slowHDD is not making any strange or out of the place sounds. Tried Check HDD statusReturned normalFix / check permissionDidn’t work. Left it running for 8 hours, but no progress was made. I tried using disk utility and OnyX.Worked when doing it from the install DVD (thanks to mayer) Now, as to why the fixing and checking permissions isn’t working I’m just confused. If anyone has any theories about that, please share them with me. - solved, thanks to mayer As I see it the next logical step is to zero out the HDD and recover from my time machine backup. Or should I do a clean install? -rousp Update 1 Permissions now almost fixed. Got an error about an SUID file being modified. The file path referred to a file called ARDAgent. Any idea what that is? - Sorry, asked before trying google. It’s a known bug and can be safely ignored. I’m now testing to se if my read write issue was solved. Update 2 Fixing disk permissions seems to have solved this issue for me. Thanks for the help everyone!
Boot up from the installation disk to run your disk utilities, you might have been doing it from the utilities of the hard drive itself and that really doesn’t free up the hard drive. Check to see if you have at least 10% free hard drive space. You also may have developed some bad blocks or the hard drive may be failing. If the repair and permissions fix does not work from the installation disk, reformat and do a low level format using the “zero data” option, this will eliminate any bad blocks that may have developed. Then backup from the Time Machine and run Disk Utilities from the DVD again.
Sorry, asked before googleing. The ARDAgent file issue seems to be normal and can safely be ignored.
I have seen this many time, try using disk warrior, it can change the structure of your system files. That should fix your issue.
+1 for disk warrior, Ive used it several times, great tool. Try everything Mayer suggested first. If all the above suggestions are tried and the issue still persists, perhaps the smc could be reset? I once had an issue with a beat up Macbook where the SuperDrive was partially functioning, it would read discs okay but spun up VERY slowly, and was not able to burn discs, it would try, again spin very slowly, and eventually the burn would fail. Reset SMC and it the drive began functioning properly, much faster and could then burn discs at full speed. Anyways it worth a try if all else fails. To reset SMC, visit Apples link for instructions. Reset SMC Intel Macs
Try the beta software CCleaner for Mac. Makes repairing permissions a breeze and it’s been working nice so far. I have an A1226 machine (2007 Santa Rosa Mac Book Pro). I had to replace my hard drive once since it was damaged by a drop and made funny sounds. But give CCleaner for Mac a try.
