Newbie looking into my macbook

I'm back to looking at my 08 macbook. It runs slow, stalls and leaves me hanging aggrevatedly when using firefox to browse. it especially seems to dislike using gmail and youtube. It will have the busy wheel, and often just fail to respond. It's getting worse over time, by not letting me type for like 3 minutes long of the Wheel. My photos seem to also extremely aggrevate it. first i couldnt use the photos, then preview. then gmail started crashing the browser. then use of youtube and/or gmail. now even gmail in text version stalls the whole system keeping that busy wheel turning.


So I got the idea to try some tests. I tried running Mac OSX Console app and looking thru the log for errors. There was plenty of stuff but I don't know what I'm reading. I am sure it has errors. Then I used Disk Utility app to verify disk. It said my disk was OK.

Then the link a friend gave me
http://www.chriswrites.com/2012/02/how-to-health-check-your-macs-hard-disk/
linked to a NovaBench diagnostics test. I DL and ran it. It went smoothly until after completing the 'Hard Drive Speed' test where it freezes and fails to continue with testing. My only option there is to cancel. Rerunning the test provides the same output/result.

It has small lag with RAM/mem but it seemed to go thru that fairly quickly enough and it did complete the entire testing.

Does this seem like it might be the HD? Will simply replacing my current (original) HD with an Upgrade to the HD to 500GB Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid HD help with my mac problems. (Where running gmail interferes with entire system operation and also the youtube but especially any of that combination together).

Are there any more test you can recommend me to try? I am an absolute newbie but I know there is something wrong with my macbooks function. I love my macbook and would love to figure out whats up and then how to fix it. Its a durable reliable computer.

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer. I also had recently reinstalled the entire OS with original disks, and it took like an entire day to load it all up. the first time i did this and got firefox on it, the whole thing crashed. this second time it's been working since july, although perfomance is just getting competely impossible now. please help. i dont really know what i'm doing, but i'm tech minded, can follow directions, and learn so i hope to have some feedback and get to work on it. thank you..

Thanks minifridge..

minifridge1138 said:

It sounds like your hard drive is failing.
If it is the original drive, then I would suggest replacing it now while you can still get the data off of it.

That is what I thought but no tests come back showing its failing. Is that commonplace? Everything 'checks out'. I did the Apple Hardware Diagnostic off the boot disks, but it said everything was fine (did the extended cycle). I assume it checks Ram and logic boards, and HDs.

I tried the SMART Utility program and it crashed with the error upon startup--unable to even bring up the drives though. It isn't consistent either, because for a while the Preview program totally failed to open. But I went into the iPhoto program and pulled out the original pics to desktop again, then tried to open them into preview and they worked. Also the delays I mentioned with gmail, youtube, using firefox, are now no longer in effect (although I hear the whole drive spinning very noisily whenever I try playing a youtube video). It's working too hard.

Is the only way to pinpoint such hardware problems to try installing different (read new/well-functioning) pieces? And is the testing such as diagnostic software ever incorrect in its analysis?

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