MacBook running slow

Hemps

Hemps

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My MacBook Pro 2012 is running terribly slow, I upgraded from Mountain Lion to Mavericks and didn't do a clean install.

But for an i5 with 4gb rams it should run much smoother, takes ages with spanning ball to open finder or even an app.
If I'm copying from network then its really sluggish.

I have a 750gb 7200rpm 2.5 and a 128gb ssd Agility 3 Drive available?

Would it make a big difference and fix my speed issues , i'm assuming its the 5200 rpm drive?

Only apps open all the time are Skype, messages, team viewer,remote desktop , finder, safari and mail.
 
Last edited:
Have you run disk utility on the drives to make sure they're fine?
 
Ran disk utility, clean my mac, did some reset thing when powering the mac on which sped it up but its back to sluggish again.
 
Check what startup items are also running - I remember I had Android File Transfer installed and it bogged it right down.
 
1. Start the Mac. Keep Apple + R in before the logo. Release. It will go into recovery mode. Run disk utility (repair disk + repair permissions).
2. Reset the SMC, can't remember to combo, but it is something like Apple, Shift, Option + power button . Release. The Mac will reboot twice.
3. Reset the PRAM. Same as one, but keep in Apple + P + R

Download Onyx (for the specific OS X). Run and let it clean up all the crap.

Ensure that you have approx. 10% disk space free.
 
Hemps said:
My MacBook Pro 2012 is running terribly slow, I upgraded from Mountain Lion to Mavericks and didn't do a clean install.

But for an i5 with 4gb rams it should run much smoother, takes ages with spanning ball to open finder or even an app.
If I'm copying from network then its really sluggish.

I have a 750gb 7200rpm 2.5 and a 128gb ssd Agility 3 Drive available?

Would it make a big difference and fix my speed issues , i'm assuming its the 5200 rpm drive?

Only apps open all the time are Skype, messages, team viewer,remote desktop , finder, safari and mail.
Click to expand...

Dude my new notebook felt terrible with the 5400rpm drive and its an i7 with 16GB of ram.
Slapped a 256GB ssd in and its unbelievably fast now.
7200rpm wont make much difference but I had a 120GB agility 3 in my last notebook and it was fantastic.
 
thanks guys ill try those reset tricks but think ill goto SSD soon i reckon.
 
Rocket-Boy said:
Dude my new notebook felt terrible with the 5400rpm drive and its an i7 with 16GB of ram.
Slapped a 256GB ssd in and its unbelievably fast now.
7200rpm wont make much difference but I had a 120GB agility 3 in my last notebook and it was fantastic.
Click to expand...
While I agree a SSD is faster a 5400rpm drive shouldn't be giving him beach balls.
 
Hemps said:
Recently saw a 1TB fusion drive for 4k
Click to expand...

Are you sure that's not a hybrid drive? A fusion drive is when you combine a ssd and a hdd into a single logical drive. You would replace your CD/DVD with the SSD - that plus your 750gb 7200 rpm hdd would give you a fast 878gb drive.

I've done this in my 13" 2011 MBP and have been very impressed thus far.
 
bwana said:
Are you sure that's not a hybrid drive? A fusion drive is when you combine a ssd and a hdd into a single logical drive. You would replace your CD/DVD with the SSD - that plus your 750gb 7200 rpm hdd would give you a fast 878gb drive.

I've done this in my 13" 2011 MBP and have been very impressed thus far.
Click to expand...

Yes. That is a SHDD. It works quite well in Macs. I installed one. But 4k is a bit steep IMO.
 
bwana said:
Are you sure that's not a hybrid drive? A fusion drive is when you combine a ssd and a hdd into a single logical drive. You would replace your CD/DVD with the SSD - that plus your 750gb 7200 rpm hdd would give you a fast 878gb drive.

I've done this in my 13" 2011 MBP and have been very impressed thus far.
Click to expand...

Way too expensive for a Hybrid drive.

But this machine doesn't sound healthy at all.
 
creeper said:
Yes. That is a SHDD. It works quite well in Macs. I installed one. But 4k is a bit steep IMO.
Click to expand...

I've got a 500gb Seagate Momentus XT in my laptop - combining it with a 120gb SSD made everything even faster. :)

SauRoNZA said:
Way too expensive for a Hybrid drive.

But this machine doesn't sound healthy at all.
Click to expand...
No, it doesnt.
 
OP try creating another user account and see if you have the same problems when logging in there after a reboot.

Should be easy to figure out if it's the machine or the user account that is the problem and we can work from there.
 
@Hemps; when you say your MBP is sluggish. Is that overall (i.e. even with non network related apps)? or only with apps that use the network?

IMO the most common reasons Macs become sluggish are:
1. Network - faulty or buggy kext (OS X drivers) -- occasionally using an older kext can resolve this.
2. App issues; occasionally some apps can get a little out of hand due to corrupted .plist files (metadata / configuration), software bug, inter-app conflicts (locking, ...)
3. Hardware issues; for example: intermittent RAM failures, Hard drive read / write errors, ....

I recently was having major performance issues (sluggishness) with a 2010 iMac -- after a bit of fault finding the solution was to replace a faulty hard drive -- which btw passed every disk test I threw at it; specifically no problems were highlighted by disk utility

In the end the only way I finally isolated the problem was looking at the IO performance of the drive vs. expected performance -- which clearly showed the drive was having issues.
 
I had a similar problem after upgrading to Mavericks. Turned out (after checking activity monitor and some googling) that it was some sort of incompatibilty issue with Chome add-ons, which were using almost 1gb of ram...

check out the activity monitor, you might come across some gremlins there...

Mavericks has been the most unstable upgrade yet, i regret upgrading before all the kinks have been ironed out
 
Running system diagnostics, will then try some of the other suggestions.
 
[)roi(];11973603 said:
@Hemps; when you say your MBP is sluggish. Is that overall (i.e. even with non network related apps)? or only with apps that use the network?

IMO the most common reasons Macs become sluggish are:
1. Network - faulty or buggy kext (OS X drivers) -- occasionally using an older kext can resolve this.
2. App issues; occasionally some apps can get a little out of hand due to corrupted .plist files (metadata / configuration), software bug, inter-app conflicts (locking, ...)
3. Hardware issues; for example: intermittent RAM failures, Hard drive read / write errors, ....

I recently was having major performance issues (sluggishness) with a 2010 iMac -- after a bit of fault finding the solution was to replace a faulty hard drive -- which btw passed every disk test I threw at it; specifically no problems were highlighted by disk utility

In the end the only way I finally isolated the problem was looking at the IO performance of the drive vs. expected performance -- which clearly showed the drive was having issues.
Click to expand...

Well to start, startup time is 1min21seconds
Then spinning beach ball:
startup items are Skype, mail and team viewer, tried removing all startup items and it still starts at exactly same time of 1min21seconds.

After it has started I try load up say a .numbers file of a couple pages and the beach balls just spins, spins, spins and then it opens.

After it has opened try Safari, wait, wait and it opens, not instant like in Windows.
 
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