Hi all, this is my first post on this forum so I hope I'm doing it correctly. I'm writing because my MacBook is having some serious memory issues. The about this Mac screen shows my 750 gb hard drive as having over 670 gbs available. However, when I go into my disk utility it shows that I have 19 megabytes available and all other memory is being used. So my question is, where is all my memory going?? Nothing seems to be able to show me where that 600+ gbs of memory is going. My computer is running slow as can be despite my ram only using 2/8 gigs and there being little cpu usage. I'm sure the hard drive is to blame for the slowness, so I am desperate to clear up some memory. It's also worth noting that deleting applications has not changed the amount of memory available. No matter what I do I only have 19 mbs of memory available to me. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
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2012 MacBook hard drive memory problem
- Thread starter Kirkpaj
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Have you tried opening Activity Monitor and see what is actually eating up the RAM? It should specify what activity or task is causing this issue under 'Processor Name'. You can force quite the process if the culprit is a background app or similar.
Because OSX manages memory (as does Windows) it is often difficult to tell if performance issues are caused by memory limits.
A new feature of OS X is the Memory Pressure graph, described in the Apple support document here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5890.
Basically, if the memory graph shows Red, you need more RAM, if its Green, you are good. I suggest reading the article for more details, but the Red, Yellow, Green is a great visual tool to help guide where you might be seeing problems.
Depending on your model, I have personally found Macs suffer more from hard drive access speed than memory limits, so an SSD, if your Mac does not have one, has a huge impact. Consider upgrading to SSD if you see sluggish system performance overall (beachball, apps open slow, slow video buffering, etc).
In addition, I would suggest running a diagnostic test or even a clean install (last resort) if all else fails.
Because OSX manages memory (as does Windows) it is often difficult to tell if performance issues are caused by memory limits.
A new feature of OS X is the Memory Pressure graph, described in the Apple support document here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5890.
Basically, if the memory graph shows Red, you need more RAM, if its Green, you are good. I suggest reading the article for more details, but the Red, Yellow, Green is a great visual tool to help guide where you might be seeing problems.
Depending on your model, I have personally found Macs suffer more from hard drive access speed than memory limits, so an SSD, if your Mac does not have one, has a huge impact. Consider upgrading to SSD if you see sluggish system performance overall (beachball, apps open slow, slow video buffering, etc).
In addition, I would suggest running a diagnostic test or even a clean install (last resort) if all else fails.
There is a little confusion in the thread because you are referring to storage space as memory. Sounds like your question is only related to disk storage space used and not memory (RAM).
When in Disk Utility, what volume/drive do you have selected in the left when you are seeing the 19MB of space available? Make sure you are selecting the lower Macintosh HD volume when you are looking at that space readout. If you are selecting to upper section above Macintosh HD, it will show the whole disk full like you are describing because it is filled by the core storage volume on the disk and this is normal.