Snow Leopard becoming very slow

rezatayebi · Dec 6, 2010, 03:18 AM

I bought a 17 Macbook pro four months ago. It was fine the first days. But it has become very very slow and hard drive makes a lot of noise.
It takes like 10 seconds for spotlight to find stuffs.
I used Disk Utility and a 3d party app to make sure there's nothing wrong with the hard drive.

Is there a way to fix hard drive slowness without having to format the Snow Leopard?
If I use Time Machine to back up Snow Leopard on an external hard drive, then format Macbook pro's hard drive, and then bring back files to it using external the hard drive, is it going to have any effect?

Hellhammer · Dec 6, 2010, 03:23 AM

Try SMC and PRAM resets first. After that, do a clean install of OS X, it should help if it's software issue

rezatayebi · Dec 12, 2010, 05:13 AM

I did a Repair disk and it helped a little. However spotlight is still almost useless.
I really like to know the answer to this question:
If I use Time Machine to back up Snow Leopard on an external hard drive, then format Macbook pro's hard drive, and then bring back files to it using external hard drive, is it going to have any effect?

Hellhammer · Dec 12, 2010, 05:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rezatayebi

I did a Repair disk and it helped a little. However spotlight is still almost useless.
I really like to know the answer to this question:
If I use Time Machine to back up Snow Leopard on an external hard drive, then format Macbook pro's hard drive, and then bring back files to it using external hard drive, is it going to have any effect?

Possibly because all system files will be replaced and they are likely the cause of the issues

simsaladimbamba · Dec 12, 2010, 05:45 AM

Just out of curiosity, how much HDD capacity is left out of the whole HDD capacity (example: 82GB free out of 500GB)?

rezatayebi · Dec 12, 2010, 06:35 AM

Thanks a lot Hellhammer. I'll back up everything and reformat the hard drive.
There's about 150GB free space out of 500GB.

celticpride678 · Dec 12, 2010, 09:56 AM

It might be a little late now, but do you have a Boot Camp install?

rezatayebi · Dec 13, 2010, 08:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by celticpride678

It might be a little late now, but do you have a Boot Camp install?

No it wasnt late. Turns out Boot Camp caused the problem.
Last night we got a brand new 27 iMac and after installing Windows 7 all of sudden Spotlight went crazy.

Since Windows 7's partition is NTFS Spotlight gets confused.
I added Boot Camp partition to "prevent spotlight fom searching these locations" in system preferences and that solved the problem.

Doing the same in MacBook Pro solved the slowness problem.
Thanks

Dec 6, 2010, 03:18 AM	#1
rezatayebi macrumors regular Join Date: Apr 2007	Snow Leopard becoming very slow I bought a 17 Macbook pro four months ago. It was fine the first days. But it has become very very slow and hard drive makes a lot of noise. It takes like 10 seconds for spotlight to find stuffs. I used Disk Utility and a 3d party app to make sure there's nothing wrong with the hard drive. Is there a way to fix hard drive slowness without having to format the Snow Leopard? If I use Time Machine to back up Snow Leopard on an external hard drive, then format Macbook pro's hard drive, and then bring back files to it using external the hard drive, is it going to have any effect?
	0

Dec 6, 2010, 03:23 AM	#2
Hellhammer Demi-God (Moderator) Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Helsinki, Finland	Try SMC and PRAM resets first. After that, do a clean install of OS X, it should help if it's software issue __________________ SSD Editor for AnandTech You can also follow me in Twitter!
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Dec 12, 2010, 05:45 AM	#5
simsaladimbamba macrumors Core Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: in front of it	Just out of curiosity, how much HDD capacity is left out of the whole HDD capacity (example: 82GB free out of 500GB)? __________________ This is not
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Dec 12, 2010, 05:13 AM	#3
rezatayebi Thread Starter macrumors regular Join Date: Apr 2007	I did a Repair disk and it helped a little. However spotlight is still almost useless. I really like to know the answer to this question: If I use Time Machine to back up Snow Leopard on an external hard drive, then format Macbook pro's hard drive, and then bring back files to it using external hard drive, is it going to have any effect?
	0

Dec 12, 2010, 06:35 AM	#6
rezatayebi Thread Starter macrumors regular Join Date: Apr 2007	Thanks a lot Hellhammer. I'll back up everything and reformat the hard drive. There's about 150GB free space out of 500GB.
	0

Dec 12, 2010, 09:56 AM	#7
celticpride678 Guest Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Boston, MA	It might be a little late now, but do you have a Boot Camp install?
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