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2012 Macbook Pro 13" very sluggish

P

petalino

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 21, 2010
224
25
So I just got a refurbished Macbook Pro 2012 with original 4GB of Ram and a 500GH HD..

Transferred all 105GB of files and settings from my older Mac Air 2010 also with 4GB RAM using Migration Assistant.

Now, despite the fact that the Macbook Pro has a biggger 500GB HD, while the Air has only120GB, the new Pro is running with interruptions.
When I take any action, like opening a folder or browsing the web the Spinning Beach Ball is always there for me, slowing everything down.

Made an appointment at the Genius Bar for tomorrow, to see if they can pinpoint the problem and maybe find a remedy to fix it, before I decide to return it.


However maybe members of this Forum can give me some ideas what can be going on, and if there is a way to fix it.

I know that the RAM is basic (only 4GB), but my Air has exactly the same amount of RAM and does not have these problems.
 
Your Pro is running off a hard drive, your Air off a SSD. Your Pro unfortunately appears to belong to a bygone era. Am surprised the Genius bar still services it. My best recommendation would be that you get a cheap SATA SSD in that MacBook Pro to replace the HD and bring it to 8GB RAM. It'll feel much better after that!
 
Kyjaotkb, I undestand.

However, I had several Macs already and neither one of them was as sluggish as this Macbook Pro including the white plastic case MacBook from eons ago. It also had minimum RAM and a standard spinning disc SSD drive.

This kind of sluggishness should not be happening.
Even if I just go to another forum at Macrumors, it can take 30-60 seconds before the spinning ball stops spinning and lets me proceed. This happens at almost every action I try to take: Browse the web, open folders or just type an email.

Could the HD be broken and this is the problem? Do hard drives just slow down and keep on going when defective?
Probably not. I am guessing that the HD can either broken and stops working; but can a HD be "slightly" broken and still function, but at a much slower speed causing the beach ball to spin often?
 
It also depends on what version of MacOS you are running. I would say anything after El Cap is written to require the speed of an SSD for optimum performance. However like others have stated you are coming from a SSD based machine to a HDD based one. You are going to notice a slow down and a fairly big one. You say that you've used other pre unibody Macs that didn't have that slowdown. Im guessing that wasn't recent or they were running pre Yosemite era OS X. I would also be surprised if Apple can do anything since it was declared obsolete a while back. If you plan on using this machine for any length of time I would highly recommend getting a SATA SSD which you can get for $50 these days and maybe up the RAM to 8GB. Those two things alone will make a massive improvement to performance.
 
The OS is Catalina. 10.15

And, yes I do plan to upgrade the RAM and maybe switch to a 500GB SSD, but I want to start with a computer that is running well as designed before I make any changes. This one seems to be a having a problem to begin with.
What the problem, I do not know.

I doubt that same Macbook Pro when bought brand new from Apple in 2012 would show same sluggishness problem straight out of the box. None of the applications I am using are out of the ordinary: read and compose email and browse the web. This Mac should be able to handle the tasks with ease, either today or in 2012.

To me this is like buying it brand new. Refurbished and ready to go.
 
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Yep, I'd agree that Catalina is not suited to your ancient spinning 500GB hard drive. These later Operating Systems (Catalina et al) are optimised for SSD storage, and not for the earlier kind of storage that you seem to have in your MacBook Pro 2012

Your perception of what 'should' work out the box is not a realistic one. There has been eleven years of serial, evolving complexity between what would work, new, in 2012 and what will work now as new. A brand-new 2012 machine would perform well with its then-current OS and software and would continue to do so for many years until beginning to be 'left behind'. That's why these machines are so useful even today: they are ideal for upgrading at home. YouTube videos will keep you right if you are not familiar with how to do such upgrades.

To get your laptop running like a champ, I would replace the hard drive with an SSD of the same size or larger, reinstalling all your software and the Catalina OS to take advantage of it. I would also increase your RAM to 8GB, though preferably 16GB, which is the maximum that 2012 laptop will accommodate.

(I did just this to my wife's 2012 MacBook Pro though we're sticking with OS Mojave for now. Will probably upgrade eventually to whatever is the latest OS it can run, though not just yet. She was delighted at the results.)
 
I have a 2012 MBPro, and recently "tuned" it up. 500 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM, new install of Catalina, along with a new battery. No sluggishness there. It's ready to sell...!
Yes, I think you have a failing hard drive, but probably not to the point where it will pass a diagnostic test.
If an original drive, 8 years old, at least. And, the operating system is now optimized for best performance with an SSD.
Even if the hard drive was new, the performance will just be "OK". Swapping that drive out to an SSD will make all the difference. 4GB RAM will be OK, but upgrading that will also be noticeable, particularly if you also upgrade to SSD.
 
If the Macbook Pro has a platter-based hard drive, it's going to be SLOW.
There is NO WAY to "fix" this, other than by replacing the platter-based drive with an SSD.

The RAM is "too low", as well.
You need 8gb.
Easy to replace when you have the back plate off to change the drive.

The Apple genius bar cannot help you, because they're going to tell you the MBP is "too old", "obsolete".

You've got to fix these things yourself.

The drive can be changed easily with the right tools
Phillips #00 driver.
TORX T-6 drive (to take the "bosses" off the side of the drive.

For RAM, you need to replace the 2gb DIMMs with 4gb DIMMs.

Then it will perform MUCH better.
 
petalino said:
I doubt that same Macbook Pro when bought brand new from Apple in 2012 would show same sluggishness problem straight out of the box.
Click to expand...

Nope it wouldn't. However that drive may now be 9 years old and slows with age contrary to you assumption of "probably not". You say refurbished, refurbished by whom? Is it a new drive? (I'm betting no). Also the OS is much more demanding than it was 9 years ago too.

As other stated - replace the drive with a SSD and that will be a HUGE performance jump. Adding more RAM also helps.
You are lucky, this was one of the last Apple products where it was somewhat easy to upgrade.
 
Im amazed we have a post about a 2012 laptop running sluggish in 2021. Thats 9 years ago unless this is a bumped up thread. Honestly im more curious to know who is selling a 9 year old laptop and calling it refurbished. This is something one would never hear on the PC side of things.
 
petalino said:
Could the HD be broken and this is the problem? Do hard drives just slow down and keep on going when defective?
Probably not. I am guessing that the HD can either broken and stops working; but can a HD be "slightly" broken and still function, but at a much slower speed causing the beach ball to spin often?
Click to expand...
Yes, they can. Before failing, there are several mechanical components inside an hard drive which can wear, lubricants dry out, and rubber parts that gets too hard or too soft or sticky, and small shocks over the years can cause the heads to scuff the surface. They have to work more to do their job, reading or writing the same spot several times, relocating data from worn out ones, etc.
Add to that the little RAM, forcing the OS to swap continuosly, and you get a death sentece for an old HD.

First replace it with an SSD, they're so cheap nowadays people shouldn't even think about it. You should see an incredible boost with that alone. You can also put 8 GB of RAM, but it won't make that much of a difference.
 
petalino said:
Kyjaotkb, I undestand.

However, I had several Macs already and neither one of them was as sluggish as this Macbook Pro including the white plastic case MacBook from eons ago. It also had minimum RAM and a standard spinning disc SSD drive.

This kind of sluggishness should not be happening.
Even if I just go to another forum at Macrumors, it can take 30-60 seconds before the spinning ball stops spinning and lets me proceed. This happens at almost every action I try to take: Browse the web, open folders or just type an email.

Could the HD be broken and this is the problem? Do hard drives just slow down and keep on going when defective?
Probably not. I am guessing that the HD can either broken and stops working; but can a HD be "slightly" broken and still function, but at a much slower speed causing the beach ball to spin often?
Click to expand...

It could be a failing HDD causing the slowdowns. Try booting off an external USB disk. If the slowdowns resolve, there’s your issue. A 64GB USB disk costs little, and can determine if a dying drive is causing your issue.
 
Reading the several replies I got to my question,

I can assume:
that the combo of late 2012 Macbook Pro with factory specs (500GB HD and 4GB RAM) and Catalina OS, will always cause the same sluggishness no matter what I ask or pray for (I don't pray)?

This will not improve until I change the HD to SSD and increase the RAM, right?

And I want to thank all members who tried to solve my problem. THANKS!
 
The 2012 MBP should not be that slow, even in that basic configuration. I use that very model computer, upgraded to an SSD and 16gb ram, for photo editing, raw conversion, and some video editing. It is still a very capable computer.

Now, to your problem. It is possible the hard drive is failing. It is also possible the SATA cable connecting the hard drive to the computer is failing. This is a known issue with this model. The symptoms you describe fit. My test for this is to remove the hard drive, put it in a USB3 enclosure and boot from that enclosure. If it runs normally its your SATA cable. A replacement cable runs about $14.

Of course if you can return the MBP, that may be your better option. They should have sold you a working computer :)
 
justashooter said:
The 2012 MBP should not be that slow, even in that basic configuration. I use that very model computer, upgraded to an SSD and 16gb ram, for photo editing, raw conversion, and some video editing. It is still a very capable computer.

Now, to your problem. It is possible the hard drive is failing. It is also possible the SATA cable connecting the hard drive to the computer is failing. This is a known issue with this model. The symptoms you describe fit. My test for this is to remove the hard drive, put it in a USB3 enclosure and boot from that enclosure. If it runs normally its your SATA cable. A replacement cable runs about $14.

Of course if you can return the MBP, that may be your better option. They should have sold you a working computer :)
Click to expand...
 
This is the answer to the question I was looking for: Is it possible that just upgrading the OS to Catalina could cause such problems with an older Mac?

Of course I did not own this Macbook Pro before I bought it with Catalina installed, so I have no idea how it performed with the previous OS's.

Thanks, justashooter.
 
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One more thing you should be aware of.
The 2012 MacBook Pro (unibody) had a "weak part" -- the internal ribbon cable that connects the hard drive to the motherboard.
It can wear internally and it will "get flaky" -- that is, communication between the drive and the motherboard will become sporadic, causing the computer to freeze, be unresponsive, etc.

The cable is cheap and easy to replace.
Go to ifixit.com to see what's involved and get the part number.

Your internal drive might be ok (if it's platter-based, it's still going to be slow), and only the ribbon cable is bad...
 
petalino said:
Reading the several replies I got to my question,

I can assume:
that the combo of late 2012 Macbook Pro with factory specs (500GB HD and 4GB RAM) and Catalina OS, will always cause the same sluggishness no matter what I ask or pray for (I don't pray)?

This will not improve until I change the HD to SSD and increase the RAM, right?

And I want to thank all members who tried to solve my problem. THANKS!
Click to expand...

A HDD will be slow, but shouldn't be 45 secs of beachball slow. Try an external boot and see if it resolves the issue.
 
Hold option on startup to enter the bootloader, then select an alternate disk. Depending on how much of the HDD you use, and how big of a flash drive you buy, you could clone the HDD onto the external meduim and then boot onto it using the menu explained above. It's straightforward on a pre T2 Mac.
 
petalino said:
Reading the several replies I got to my question,

I can assume:
that the combo of late 2012 Macbook Pro with factory specs (500GB HD and 4GB RAM) and Catalina OS, will always cause the same sluggishness no matter what I ask or pray for (I don't pray)?

This will not improve until I change the HD to SSD and increase the RAM, right?

And I want to thank all members who tried to solve my problem. THANKS!
Click to expand...
Short answer for both questions: YES. That Mac should be fine with an SSD.
 
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