OS X has started to forget things recently, such as WiFi passwords and iTunes information. Is this the initial stages of a hard drive failure? I've had one before on my PowerBook then 3 months later it died.
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Could be, or it could be a data corruption issue unrelated to hardware failure. You could check your hard drive's SMART status in Disk Utility. That's not definitive, of course, and you should always back up your data. These days I use an online backup provider, but Time Machine is also quite good.
emgee
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I'm with the others in saying this isn't likely to be HDD related. Hard drive failures don't result in your system forgetting so much as your system crashing. Errors, failure to boot, not functioning at all, hard freezes, crashes, these are all signs of hard disk failures.
Missing profile information or settings is not.
music2myear
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Not remembering passwords could be If Mac code signing is tampered with, what might fail? - Super User.
Have you moved .apps? Some (particularly bundled) applications have serious problems with that. I've found that iTunes halts randomly, Activity Monitor crashes after starting, System Profiler won't start at all, etc.
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The problem sounds like the computer's physical brain is OK, but its "behavior" has been affected by a solvable mental problem. Like music2myear says, it's not hard drive related at all. I suspect an unlikely mac virus, some legit program applying changes on your behalf, or someone ticking on things settings that sound like stop remembering my passwords now inadvertently.
I don't have OSX, so I'm not sure if the iTunes problem is separate. You may also want to check that you're entering the same user and password and not on someone else's settings, as the computer remembers different things for different "masters"
Ensure in your Apple Menu's \ System Preferences that you didn't make a change disabling your password management tool. It's called the Apple Keychain
Vlueboy
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