A Step Back: The possibility of Mavericks to Mountain Lion

As you can see in my signature line, I have a MBP 13" Core Duo 2.4 GHz with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of SSD.

Ever since I have upgraded to Mavericks from Mountain Lion, my computer has become one spinning wheel after another. It is as slow as a seven year itch!

If I go back to Mountain Lion, just exactly what will I lose other than the new keychain - which even though I use 1Password, I think the new Keychain is marvelous!

Thanks,

Sky Blue said:

If you haven't done it yet, backup all your data, erase your drive and do a clean install of Mavericks, then move your data back.

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For Mavericks, I hate to say this, but I did a clean install of Mavericks twice and I still suffer from lagging speed issues. It's real frustrating. I don't want to go back, but when you first crank up the machine, even from just "sleep," it is unusable for a few minutes. It has to get everything going again.

Sky Blue said:

Fair enough if you've already done it. You may want to wait until 10.9.2 (March?), to see if that resolves it, but if it's really unusable sounds like you may need to go back to 10.8.

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Yeah, I'm going over to the mother-in-law's house (damn it, Jim!) where I can download the earth in 10 minutes. My DSL doesn't do that.

Thanks for the consult guys.

Well, it is my personal opinion that the Core Duo 2 just isn't up for it with Mavericks. I reinstalled 10.8 and it runs like a mountain lion !!

Honestly, I agree. It almost sounds like something would HAVE to be wrong. But, if it runs like a solid machine with 10.8, I'm not sure we could draw that conclusion.

He folks, I think I found the problem.

TRIM

This is how I figured this out:
Back in the summer, I dropped my MBP and I put up with a cracked screen until early February. I used my wife's 2012 MBA 13" until my MBP came back from the repair guy I used on Staten Island, NY. Btw, it was fantastic service and took a week and a half to turn it around.

During that time, I became incredibly used to a lightening fast computer with an i7 processor.

When my computer came back, it was so slow, I couldn't bear it anymore. Remember, at this point, Mavericks is off of the computer and I'm back on 10.8.

It was like sludge.

I called support at Crucial where I got my SSD. I asked, "This has to be a RAM or SSD problem, how can I diagnose it." The guy essentially proceeded to blow me away. I've been around computers for 25 years and I've never heard of TRIM, evidently it's a feature for SSD drives.

As prescribed, I rebooted into my drive selection screen (holding OPTION) at reboot. If you leave the MBP at that screen, there can be no reading or writing to and from the drive(s), therefore the drive will internally activate TRIM and it will start "garbage collection." Garbage collection is simply getting rid of deleted files.

You have to leave this on the boot screen for 24 hours. It can be six hours at a time, but 24 or so hours (depending on how bad it is) will do the trick. I left mine on for an afternoon, played with it for an hour and was unsatisfied. Then I left it on over night, about 12 hours, and it was incredibly better. The next night, I left it on overnight again, and it runs like a beast.

I have successfully reinstalled Mavericks and have little to no issues with speed.

lssmit02 said:

As for Trim, this is a SATA command that lets the SSD know that a file has been deleted, and the cells associated with the file can be emptied. It works together with garbage collection to keep the drive's performance up, but does so without the need for idle time. Since Apple does not implement Trim on third party drives, you either have to rely on GC, as you have done, or use a method to turn Trim on for such drives. I personally use Trim Enabler, created by Cindori, a long time poster on MacRumors forums. Some people disagree whether Trim is necessary, but I personally use it.

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Thanks for the clarifications. I don't suppose myself to be an expert, I was just explaining it the best way I could.

As far as TRIM Enabler. I purchased this as well and for the long term find it a great tool to handle this issue.

Thanks again,