Posts by Andrew Gomez40

I mean, give me a wall that can actually hold up when some idiot in a truck slams into it with a heavy-duty chain hooked to the bumper 🤷

Updating the UEFI actually knocked out two birds with one stone: my hard drive is finally being recognized, and Windows Update isn't acting up anymore. As for those other two headaches, I can't really give you a definitive verdict just yet—I need some more soak time to see how things shake out. On the bright side, a restart works perfectly fine now without any of those annoying freezes, and regarding the CPU usage... well, it’s hard to say for sure since I’m only glancing at the Activity Monitor every once in a while, but things definitely feel a bit smoother overall.

Honestly, I might just bite the bullet and do a clean reinstall of the OS down the road to wipe the slate clean and hopefully kill off whatever lingering issues are left.

Anyway, thanks a ton for the assist, your suggestions actually worked!😉

Thanks a ton for the deep dive response! 🙂
I’ve gotta weigh in on a few things here.

darkowl72 said:First off, you've got to look at the SATA settings. Those can seriously mess with a Hard Drive. When you're setting up a Hard Drive, you really ought to—some swear by it, others say you can skip it—switch the drive mode to SATA in the UEFI. If you want the lowdown on why, just go grab a coffee and Google "Hard Drive, SATA, TRIM."

I didn't actually install it myself—the folks over at the big-box retailer where I picked up the PC handled all that. Plus, this whole headache (the restarts, specifically the fourth one) didn't even show up right away; it wasn't happening when it was brand new.

But before all that, you should probably flash your UEFI to the latest version because it's likely that your current UEFI isn't even recognizing that 3TB drive. It's a total known issue—like, everyone knows those massive 3TB drives cause these exact headaches.

You hit the nail on the head there: the UEFI isn't seeing it either, and honestly, I haven't touched the firmware since day one. I'll get around to fixing that once I figure out how to actually pull it off without breaking everything. 😬

Antivirus software can be a real pain with Hard Drives too. For example, there are tons of reports about McAfee causing similar issues with constant Hard Drive activity and spiking the CPU usage. I won't guess, but once you deal with the UEFI stuff, maybe try disabling the antivirus for a bit just to see if things settle down.

This whole mess only started recently, and it seems to line up perfectly with the problems I'm having with my old drive. It might be a total coincidence, but this wasn't happening until about a month ago (right when the old drive started acting like it was dying). Who knows, maybe the Hard Drive is kicking the bucket too.
I haven't noticed anything weird coming from the antivirus side of things.

Is it possible I'm just working the drive too hard? I've had this setup running for about two years now. In those two years, I rarely ever shut it down, so maybe I just ran it into the ground and it's simply reached the end of its life. I mean, it hasn't been under heavy load constantly—it sits idle most of the night and a good chunk of the day—but yeah, the power stayed on. Now, whether that's actually relevant...

Sometimes the CPU just gets "stuck" due to UEFI settings, power plans, or whatever else, and it stays pinned at a super low frequency, making it act totally stupid and look like it's hitting 100% utilization.

The CPU isn't actually hitting 100%, but it's definitely pulling way more weight than what I'm used to (even with nothing open). Since it's a 4-core setup, two cores are working overtime while the other two are idling, which brings the total idle usage to about 25%. That doesn't sound like much on paper, but it sure does to me, because usually, it's sitting pretty at around 5-6%.

Look, it isn't exactly rocket science to just pop open your Activity Monitor and take a peek at the Threads—you really ought to be able to spot which specific little culprit is hogging all your CPU cycles, and then you'll finally know exactly what's causing all this headache...

The real problem is totally invisible; everything looks perfectly fine on the surface. If you check the Threads, everyone is sitting pretty at 0% usage.

I’ve already subscribed to this subforum 🙂
I’m dumping all three of my headaches into this one thread because, honestly, it feels like they might all be part of the same messy knot. Let's take them one by one:

1. My old drive finally kicked the bucket, so I swapped in a new one. I did everything by the book—SATA cable, power connection, initialized it, the whole nine yards—and it seems to be running perfectly fine. But here’s the kicker: for some reason, macOS (7) keeps treating it like an external hard drive. It’s a 3 TB drive with two partitions (1 + 1.72 TB), just a standard basic disk.
2. My CPU usage is through the roof. Task Manager shows that "System" is constantly hammering away, writing god-knows-what to the disk (my SSD, not the one I just mentioned).
It eventually settles down after a while, but when it starts acting up, it drags on for at least a solid half hour. It might not sound like a total catastrophe to some people, but when there's no obvious cause, it smells fishy to me.

Those first two issues are brand new.
The third one has been haunting me for a while now.

3. Sometimes, when I boot up or restart, right after that initial BIOS splash screen, macOS just gives up on loading. Everything just freezes mid-way, and nothing happens. If I force it off and then turn it back on, or just hit restart, it works perfectly fine. And it does this constantly—like, every other time I try to boot. For a while, I was naive enough to think it had something to do with some weird glitches with the DisplayPort 🤦 😁 (since it seemed to happen mostly when I'd restart after hooking it up to my TV), but that's probably just wishful thinking.

EDIT - adding a fourth one to the pile:
- Windows Update is sitting there offering me 92 (!) updates, which it tries to start downloading and then just sits at 0%. And stays there. And stays... This has never happened to me before.

I would appreciate any diagnosis or even just a shred of useful advice from the heavens! 😉

Man, I probably should’ve just swapped out the cable right from the jump, you know? Now I’m sitting here kicking myself because I’m worried it might already be too late to fix this mess.

Man, my drive just totally died during some data transfer. It’s throwing an I/O error at me. That’s pretty much it, right? Is everything gone, or is there actually some way to save my files?

Look, I honestly didn't even think of that, it completely slipped my mind! 😁
Thanks.

Great, now my USB drive is acting up too. Just when I’m in the middle of moving some files, it suddenly throws a fit and tells me the destination folder on the drive doesn't even exist anymore! It’s like the computer just decided to lose its mind mid-transfer.
I’m starting to wonder if this might actually be a motherboard issue? Because honestly, I don't see how a failing hard drive could possibly mess with a flash drive.

Alright, thanks, but what if they actually are? Look, I get it—a hard drive is just a disposable piece of hardware, but the data sitting on it? That’s priceless. Is there seriously no way to move my stuff without dealing with these pathetic, snail-like transfer speeds?

Man, my hard drive started acting incredibly sketchy yesterday.
It went from running perfectly fine to basically crawling through molasses in a single instant. That red activity light just went absolutely haywire, staying lit up constantly like it was possessed. Even opening the most pathetic, tiny little file takes like thirty seconds now, and folders are hanging for 15 seconds apiece. My boot time shot up to at least five minutes—and look, normally I’m booting in about 60 seconds because my macOS is installed on a Hard Drive, but clearly, this isn't the culprit here. It honestly feels like the thing is on its deathbed. Right this second, I'm frantically trying to move my most critical files onto a thumb drive, but I'm stuck with these agonizing speeds of maybe 208 KB/s.

Basically, the whole thing just chokes whenever I try to copy or load anything off it, though otherwise, it stays quiet and the light goes dark. Like I said, everything else feels totally normal since the OS is sitting on the Hard Drive, which is behaving itself just fine.

That drive is packed with everything under the sun, stuff I absolutely cannot afford to lose, so I'm begging for answers to a couple of things:
- Is it actually dead? This thing has been running pretty much non-stop for two years (I rarely shut the PC down, though it usually idles at night) without a single hiccup until now.
- Why on earth is the boot process so slow if the macOS is loading from the Hard Drive?
- How am I supposed to move hundreds of gigabytes over to an external drive when the transfer speeds are this criminally slow?

I'm not even losing sleep over the hardware itself. These things have a shelf life, and clearly, this one hit the expiration date. I'll just go out and grab a new one, easy peasy. But losing all my data? That would be a straight-up catastrophe, and right now, I have no clue how to rescue it when the speed is practically non-existent.

"Indie" bands always end up being the absolute best.

Morgan Wilson7 said:The big headliners usually play the last day, so it’s no shocker that the crowds peak then.

Not necessarily. I mean, Florence was supposed to play on Tuesday. Plus, there's a headliner every single night! It was probably just a perfect storm of seeing Placebo, the weather being decent, and the fact that today is a holiday.

man, the chaos in front of the stage is insane, but what else were they supposed to do?
if they tried to fix things right there, the whole place would have been leveled by the crowd jumping around anyway.

Look, there are ways to handle this and actual solutions out there. But honestly? You just have to accept that this kind of madness is part of the deal. That's just how it goes.

What do you guys think—how many people actually showed up? I’m always so curious about how they even come up with those estimates.
They’re claiming there were 80,000 folks over the three days, which honestly doesn't sound like a total stretch to me. Yesterday was just absolute madness, easily looked like 25,000 to 30,000 people were packed in there, and even on Tuesday, the turnout was way higher than anyone anticipated, especially considering how much it was pouring.

Morgan Wilson7 said:The mud was actually pretty manageable, but honestly, thank God I wore my rubber boots 😁

And once again, we’re looking at a total organizational meltdown when it comes to the ground conditions... It’s "manageable" only because we’ve been conditioned to accept this nonsense, otherwise, there's no way it should have been allowed.
They really should have done some basic remediation on certain areas. Not everything, obviously—nobody is suggesting they pave the whole damn field over in concrete—and if you aren't prepared for a little chaos, then stay home and skip the festivals entirely, but seriously, they could have put in some effort here. Then again, expecting anything remotely competent from these organizers is basically just wishful thinking at this point.

It’s funny how the final day always seems to attract the biggest crowd. Yesterday was a complete disaster; even the cell service completely crapped out by the end. You couldn't send a single text message if your life depended on it. And don't get me started on the food—everyone was scrambling for rotisserie chicken like their lives were on the line. The mud was everywhere, just absolute filth, like something straight out of the trenches of World War I.

But all in all, it was a good time 😁
Truly 👍

vividraven7 said:So, look, you just head straight through the main entrance like everyone else. Most people end up tying their bikes to the trees right after they get inside, though I’ve seen some folks leave them hitched near the security checkpoint by the bridge before they even get through. Honestly, I actually saw a couple of people riding their bikes right through the middle of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival last night—I mean, seriously, how on earth did security let that slide? It was wild. But anyway, if you're looking for a spot, you can definitely find parking once you pass the main gate or even just before you hit that checkpoint by the bridge.

Look, don't get all worked up on me—I’m really not trying to be a pain in the neck or start some pointless argument here, but let's get our facts straight: the checkpoint comes BEFORE the bridge. It’s simple logic. You hit the control point first, then you cross the bridge. It's not rocket science. But hey, since you're a woman, I guess I'll give you a pass on being a little lost in space this time. 🤣 I'm just kidding! 😁 )

Honestly, seeing those cyclists hanging around the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is just pure chaos—they’re basically their own little crew at this point.

By the way, what kind of American track was Turner playing? I feel like I just threw my hard-earned cash straight into a black hole at the local casino. 😁

I don't even know where to start with this one, honestly, because it feels like I'm shouting into a void sometimes, but here we go. You ever have those moments where you just look at the way things are going and think, "Is everyone actually sane, or am I just losing my mind?" Because that’s exactly where I’m at right now. It’s like when you’re driving down a highway in, say, Ohio, and suddenly everyone forgets how a blinker works and starts treating the lanes like they're just suggestions rather than actual rules, and you're sitting there gripping the steering wheel wondering if the entire world has collectively decided to stop using common sense. That's what this feels like. It's exhausting, really, dealing with this level of nonsense constantly, but I guess someone has to call it out, right? So, yeah, let's get into it. I can't even begin to tell you how much this whole situation gets under my skin! It’s like when you’re driving down a highway in Chicago and some guy in a lifted truck decides he owns the entire lane just because he feels like it—it's pure, unadulterated chaos. I was sitting there thinking about it, and honestly, it's just ridiculous. You look at the way things are being handled now, and it's nothing like how they used to be back in the day when people actually had a shred of common sense left in their heads. It's all just one big, messy headache that nobody seems to want to fix, which is exactly why I end up ranting like this in the first place!
Look, I wasn't even there for day one, but like I said before, Frank Turner absolutely eats Florence for breakfast. Seriously, just pour one out for Florence at this point—just give it up, because if you haven't actually witnessed Frank live, then honestly, what are you even doing? You’re missing out big time. I feel for anyone who hasn't seen him yet, though I guess I can't complain too much since I've managed to catch him three times now, which makes the FOMO hit a little less hard. 🙂

Honestly, The Moose just completely blew it—they took a group of people who actually had potential and turned them into absolute nothing.

Look, Frank is solid, but Nutini? He’s just not built for those massive stadium stages. He belongs in an intimate club setting where you can actually feel the vibe, not lost in some sea of people at a mega-festival. Honestly, he lacks that big-stage energy. FFS, I didn't even catch the setlist—did they actually end up performing? 😁

EODM was an absolute blast, and honestly, Rudimental was such a massive, pleasant surprise—they absolutely crushed that whole drug-fueled, high-energy set of theirs. Now, Mike Skinner’s DJ set was definitely interesting, even if the guy went a little overboard with those grating dubstep segments (seriously, is that actually the worst genre to ever exist?), but hey, he’s a solid DJ regardless. At the end of the day, music taste is totally subjective anyway.

Honestly, I’m actually shocked at how many people showed up today, especially considering this relentless rain we're getting. It's way better than the turnout we saw last year or the year before that—those previous years were a total washout, literally and figuratively. And don't even get me started on the ponchos; you'd think a little rain would make things easier, but no, the resellers are out here asking for absolute insanity, quoting prices that are just plain ridiculous. It’s no wonder you can’t find any of them left sitting on the shelves at Target.

Robin Rodriguez5 said:What do you mean he isn't? The guy is headlining massive arenas all over Europe and hitting basically every major festival out there.

Good for him, I guess. But honestly, I couldn't care less about any of that.🤷

swiftmoose20 said:just fire them all

I can pull up plenty of other examples if you really want to go down that rabbit hole. Just head over to the official website and see for yourself.

Rebecca Roberts8 said:How cold is it out at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival grounds? And what's the deal with Tuesday—are we looking at a total washout or just some light drizzle? I’m guessing umbrellas aren't gonna cut it.

Look, we are absolutely screwed this Tuesday. We're talking heavy rain, wind, and enough mud to swallow you whole up to your knees. And don't even think about getting warm tomorrow night because those desert nights near the lake get chilly fast. You better pack long sleeves—actually, just pack two layers, seriously.

The organizers have banned umbrellas, which is just classic, and these geniuses haven't even realized they could be making a killing selling those cheap disposable ponchos for $1.75 a pop. Man, I miss the days when Verizon used to hand them out for free...

vividraven7 said:Look, I don't get why you're trying to lecture me here, especially since I already told you I basically left my fairy tales tied to the bridge railing during the last few festivals—and honestly, probably even the ones before that...

I’m not lecturing you, I’m just pointing out that once you pass that bridge, you’re officially inside the festival grounds—meaning you've cleared security.
Just because you managed to slip through doesn't mean everyone else is going to have that kind of luck. Honestly, I'm still scratching my head wondering how they even let you in in the first place.

Or maybe you're talking about that bridge over by the camp in the college town? Because if that's the case, that isn't even part of the actual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival entrance.

vividraven7 said:You can't just wander into a festival with a fairy tale! If it were me, I'd leave mine tied up to a bridge right by the security checkpoint just to be safe.

Look, if you aren't even allowed through the gates of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, how on earth are you supposed to reach the bridge that's tucked deep inside the grounds?