Mac OS X forum: Format: Mac OS Extended (journaled)

Doing an Archive and Install on the disk would have no effect on the way that it is formatted.

Probably the only way to get this back to Journaled, if it ever was in the first place, would be to format the disk and then reinstall the OS.

Without a superb backup, Time Machine or CCC, this is a project that you should not attempt. ALL your data will be destroyed during the re-formatting

P

Sounds to me like a HDD on the way out. And as a quick aside, what is it with all the original Mac Pro questions lately?

Anyway... I'll try and combine some things from this post and your other one.

First off, journaling will NOT speed up your computer. If anything, it will slow it down a little. The reason you want it on, is because it adds a layer of fault tolerance to the filesystem, making it far more likely that it can recover from some error.

The fact that you cannot add journaling to the drive, and the fact that you have numerous volume issues, slow running system, suggests to me that the drive is on its way out. Sadly, AHT doesn't really do much more than test the SMART attributes on the drive. I repair Apple systems all day long, and the number of drives I've replaced because SMART says it's failing can probably be counted on one hand. I've long since lost track of how many failing drives I've replaced in general however. And half the drives that SMART says are failing, work just fine. I've even had some pass more extensive testing included in the big boy tools ACMTs get to play with.

The good news is, your system takes your standard 3.5" SATA drives, and it's VERY easy to replace in a Mac Pro. You just pull the tray out, undo some screws, swap drives, redo the screws, slide the tray back in. Shouldn't take more than 5 minutes.

So, since the drive is at least in question, this could be a good excuse to upgrade. CS5 is likely going to want a sizable chunk of that 250GB drive you have. Not to mention the stuff you'll likely be working on with CS5.

The suspect drive could become a scratch disk for CS5 to use. That way, if it fails, it's just a bunch of temporary files that won't really be much of a loss. And as long as it keeps working, it'll help speed up CS5 a little, since it can store temp files on a different drive from the one it's installed on.

Otherwise, find some tool that can do checks for slow read/writes and even a full surface scan of the drive, and I bet it will tell you it's failing.