Hi Guys, I run into this wierd issue.
Bought a used Mac Pro 3.1 a while back. it's a 2 X 2.8 model with a HD2600XT and 1GB RAM. First thing I did was more RAM. I got 12 GB in pairs in there now. I did a fresh install of 10.10. I notice the computer will lag a bit every once in a while as if if got hang up on a disk access or something. I was hoping 10.11 would help...Guess I was wrong. I also upgraded the video to 5870 hoping that would help. It didn't help much.
I was kind of living with it. It's only doing that every once or twice in a hour. Then it started to get worst in the last 6 months to once every 5-10 min. Started running activity monitor. The CPU load is always from less then 1% to about 27%. Memory used is only about 3GB out of 12GB. Not much Disk activities or Network activities. The system should be running very smoothly with these loads.
In the last 3 weeks or so, it got worst again. Every characters I type it freeze with a beachball for a few seconds. Reboot helped. But it would start doing that again in a few hours.
My Mac pro 1.1 with 2 X 2.66(4 cores) running 10.11 is smoother then the 3.1 with 8 cores. I got another Mac Pro 3.1 with 10.11 as well(I still like 10.10 better). It's running fine.
I swapped the RAMS between the two Mac Pro 3.1 already. So it's not the RAM or the riser card.
The computer is sitting in an unheated garage right now at -4C so I don't think it's temperature. I have also blown all the heatsinks and fans clean with a spray can.
Any idea or guesses on what's wrong? I am thinking of pulling the heatsink apart next and put fresh thermo-paste on them.
Thanks for any suggestion in advance.
I would guess a bad drive (maybe not even a drive that is being used, but it hanging the bus) or drive cable.
It's a Mac pro. There's no drive cable.
I have 2 drives, Drive 2 is 3GB, contain all the data and constantly backed up and swapped between 4 drives.
Drive one had been backed up and swapped/rotated a few times as well. I can swap both drives with the other Mac Pro 3.1 and the problem stay with this one. I even run without the optical drive a one point to see if that changes any thing. Still the same.
The only thing remain unchanged are the mainboard and CPUs, PS and Case. I doubt the PS and case would be a problem. So it remain the board and CPUs.
Would an IDE cable without optical drive attached still cause problem?
Thanks
Im in love with your content and also gain some knowledge from your blog.
Hi! I have a Mac Pro 3.1 with El Capitan, 24GB of RAM, and a 2TB SSD. The drive was cloned from a 1TB HDD that was about to die, and since that time there have been a lot of issues that have popped up. Mostly freezes in illogical places like Finder and iTunes and generally being way slower than it should. Sometimes simple operations will really seem to tax the machine, and the fan will get really loud.
I tried to run Apple Hardware Test but it couldn’t be found. Members of Mac-forums indicated that my system was probably incompletely copied. I reinstalled it but the problems persist.
I do have a computer guy I trust, and enough money to pay for repairs if needed, but I’m beginning to wonder if getting another machine altogether would be better. Before I take it in to the shop, do you know of anything I could do myself?
It sounds like the 2TB hard drive is failing in another way. You don't always get bad sectors... sometimes they just get slow like this.
I would try another hard drive- really an SSD at this point, and see if it persists.