MacPro So Slow. Reinstall?

[Jopling]

My MacPro has been so extremely slow the past month or so and it seems to stall every couple minutes when I'm doing simple things like ichat, mail, itunes, safari. Is there any way i can reinstall the OS without having to back up all my files? Just rewrite all the system files? Or is my only option to just use migration assistant to move 400gb of data?

[MisterMe]

It sounds like you may have filled your hard drive beyond 90% of its available capacity. MacOS X needs at least 10% of its hard drive to remain free so that its virtual memory system can operate properly. What is the capacity of your hard drive?

[IJ Reilly]

The 10% free space thing is kind of a myth. If you've got 5GB unused, that should be plenty, no matter how large the drive.

Reinstalling is the last thing to try, not the first. How often do you restart the Mac?

[FF_productions]

How much ram do you have? Do you run any background applications like SETI /Folding?

Mac Pro and "Slow" just don't belong together.

[Jopling]

I have 4gigs of ram and I have 2 500gb drives, which means on my one drive only 80% was being used. I dumped a bunch of stuff so I have 300gb free on my primary drive now, but its still going pretty slow. I restart about once every other day and I don't running any folding apps. Right now I have Growl, synergy, ichat, safari, mail, itunes and address book running. Activity monitor says im only using less than 1% of my cpu.

[snickelfritz]

Disable Growl and Synergy, then test the system for a while to see if the problem clears up.

[IJ Reilly]

Do you notice any change in performance after the restarts?

Try creating a new "virgin" user. Log into that account and see if the performance issues persist.

Also, you should check your login items in Accounts.

[miniConvert]

Also, can you post your paging stats from Activity Monitor?

[Jopling]

I ditched the Safari Beta and things seem close to normal again.