[Ti] Lengthy Startup Time

[Kynan Shook]

That's not necessarily true - although it's possible that it's looking 
for something on the network (and I've seen this happen), it's also 
possible that it's beachballing because it can't read part of the disk 
(and I've seen this happen too, quite a bit).  In fact, I would 
consider this to be more likely.  Generally, there doesn't need to be 
much disk activity while looking for a network resource.  I'd expect 
disk activity to taper off after a minute or two as other parts of 
startup finish loading.

Instead, I expect that it's repeatedly trying to read a block on the 
disk that isn't accessible.  This is especially the case if you hear a 
repetitive loud clicking - not the normal soft clicking that 
accompanies normal disk access, which also tends to not have a very 
regular pattern.  I'm talking like one loud click from a couple times 
each second, to once each couple seconds.  But this isn't always 
present.

Anyway, go out and buy a new hard drive and back everything up.  You 
might not be able to get everything (like the OS) off the disk, seeing 
as how some of it may already be unreadable.  I'd recommend backing up 
your most important documents first.

The SMART feature was developed for a reason - to warn you *before* 
your drive fails that it is expected to fail in the near future because 
its performance has been dropping rapidly in one of any number of 
metrics.  It's not very useful if you just ignore its warnings.

Chris Olson <chris.olson at astcomm.net> writes:
> On Mar 16, 2005, at 3:51 AM, Wilcox, Jeffrey S. LCDR (VFA37) wrote:
>> The SMART features say the drive is "failing" which has me obviously
>> concerned.
>
> Well, I don't know about your drive, but the S.M.A.R.T. status has
> nothing to do with your long Finder startup times.  Finder is trying to
> locate a network resource during startup that's either not available or
> misconfigured.  Turn off your Airport card and unplug the ethernet
> cable, then make a new "Location" with a static IP address, but give
> the machine no address.  Now, log out and log back in.  If Finder
> starts up immediately, then you've just verified what I stated above.