MBP 15'' early 2011

Reset PRAM and SMC, might help. The best solution to your problem is a Crucial or Samsung SSD. I have the high end early 2011 15" Pro with a Crucial M4 and it feels faster than my high end 15" Retina

aoaaron said:

How can i resolve the problem? looks like HDD or RAM? will apple cover this? whats the proces?

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Tough to say as you don't indicate which OS you're using but I doubt you have any hardware problems. Apple will most likely do a clean install for you but it will be quick and dirty.

Again, it could literally be anything but I doubt it's failing hardware.

BlueRaider said:

The best solution to your problem is a Crucial or Samsung SSD.

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That's right... just throw money at it. The free advice here is priceless at times

While the 4GB RAM that came standard in that laptop was plenty for SL, it doesn't leave any headroom for the latest versions of L & ML. Paging out to a 5400 rpm drive will slow things down quite a bit. As far as 10.8.2 is concerned, 8GB is the new 4GB. My wife's early 2011 cMBP-13 is pretty snappy running 10.8.2 with 8GB.

Assuming that you are still operating on 4GB, the first thing I would do is take it up to 8 or 16 as its so cheap to do these days. After you install it reset the PRAM and SMC. If that doesn't do the trick you need a clean install.

If you're still not completely satisfied after the clean install, then consider an SSD if you don't need lots of on-board storage, and either a Momentus XT or DIY Fusion Drive if you do.

All that can be done for somewhere in between $150 and $250, and your computer will be just about as fast as any decently portable laptop you can buy today.

Corsair 8GB or 16GB.
Used both and never had a problem.
I dont know the price in UK but here in the US, Corsair 16GB RAM is 50USD.

SSD, I still have my Crucial M4 but switching to OCZ Vertex 4.
I heard its one of the fastest drive.

Also if space is a concern, I suggest Optibay.
If you dont use the Optical bay or the DVD drive, replace it with a another HDD or SSD.
I have the SSD in main bay and 1TB HDD in my optibay.
Or get externals. I suggest Lacie 2TB Thunderbolt drives.

aoaaron said:

thanks for the advice guys, i'll go down the RAM route first.. then SSD I guess.

can you guys link me to some decent RAM/SSDs for the UK?

I am using mountain lion with 4GB of RAM yes.. its not great .

i need atleast 500GB which turns me off SSD... any decent priced drives?

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Not sure about the UK, but I paid $59 for 16GB of Corsair online (so no VAT equivalent either).

As for drives, if you need more than 500GB I would suggest either a hybrid drive (I use the Seagate Momentus XT) or a DIY Fusion drive using the optibay. The problem with doing that in our early 2011 cMBP-15s is that the optibay is known to have problems running Sata III drives reliably in the optibay. Basically, you can only count on Sata II from that bay, which would suggest that you should put the HDD there and the SSD in the main bay, which forfeits the SMS protection for the hard drive. That's not an optimal solution, but neither is the alternative of putting a SATA II SSD in the optibay.

aoaaron said:

Thanks, with Christmas coming up I'm going to try the suggested solutions.

My music library is around 80GB. My medical resources are around 150GB. so minimum HDD size I'd say does need to be 500GB.

I am not prepared to mess with the optical drive... just too much hassle for me IMO unless someone can provide a really easy guide.

Are there any good 500GB SSDs? 16GB of RAM sounds good and I'll try and find a UK provider. I'm prepared to spend around £150 to renew my laptops life.

I've found that the longer my MBP is on, or if it has to restore itself from a time when the battery has died, it is atrocious. Are you guys sure these fixes will do the business?


Also how exactly do I restore my mac? through time machine?

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If you want the fastest drive, get OCZ Vertex 4 or Samsung 840 Pro.
If speed isnt a concern but want a faster drive then HDDs and cheaper, get M4.
Or if you want a HDD instead of SSD (which I dont really recommend), get a Samsung Spinpoint 1TB.

I have the MCE optibay but they give a really nice instruction inside the box.
There is a lot of video on youtube if you search how to install them,
http://www.youtube.com/results?sear...0.0.102.695.7j1.8.0...0.0...1ac.1.h2c8jGZtsIw

You can use time machine or if you want to do a clean install,
get a enclosure for your SSD, go to recovery mode,
install OS, and just transfer the files you need from folders,
and get all the bookmarks, mails, etc fro you user/library.

Before spending any money try going through this post and doing every single thing on the list.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/13817005/

aoaaron said:

Are there any good 500GB SSDs? 16GB of RAM sounds good and I'll try and find a UK provider. I'm prepared to spend around £150 to renew my laptops life.

I've found that the longer my MBP is on, or if it has to restore itself from a time when the battery has died, it is atrocious. Are you guys sure these fixes will do the business?


Also how exactly do I restore my mac? through time machine?

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1. Not for 150 quid, and definitely not for 150 quid less the cost of the 16GB upgrade.

2. Sounds likely. If you want to see for yourself check your "Page out" count in Activity Monitor. If it's at all significant, you need more RAM, and you likely do because IME 4GB just doesn't cut it for 10.8.2. Bear in mind though that 16GB is probably overkill unless you run memeory intensive applications (like VMs).

A faster drive will definitely speed up your computing experience overall, but it's not what's likely causing your immediate problem (other than the disk access time when you "page out").

3. If I were you, I'd back everything up outside of TM and do a clean install.

hakuin said:

Before spending any money try going through this post and doing every single thing on the list.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/13817005/

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I'd add a clean install to that. Just clean install then use the combo update.