Beachball of death

[Web Designer]

My trusty MacBook Air 11.6" mid 2011 that has served me so well has started giving problems.

Originally the SSD was nearly full and also full of trash I didn't need at which point the beachball of death started to appear.

I wiped everything and did a fresh install which was problematic as the install kept freezing, but eventually got it to work and the third attempt.

All seemed well until the beachball of death appeared again and again. You can't do anything now without it happening after about a minute.

I am now wondering if the SSD is on the way out and if it is worth repairing?

Any thoughts or observations would be very welcome.

 

[0983275]

Since you've reinstalling and the issue still appears, SSD is probably on its way out.

Still got Apple Care on the machine? (I guess not, probably expired by now since it's a 2011 model)

 

[drsox]

My trusty MacBook Air 11.6" mid 2011 that has served me so well has started giving problems.

Originally the SSD was nearly full and also full of trash I didn't need at which point the beachball of death started to appear.

I wiped everything and did a fresh install which was problematic as the install kept freezing, but eventually got it to work and the third attempt.

All seemed well until the beachball of death appeared again and again. You can't do anything now without it happening after about a minute.

I am now wondering if the SSD is on the way out and if it is worth repairing?

Any thoughts or observations would be very welcome.

Try booting from an external drive. If you still have the problem then it's something on the motherboard. IMO not worth repairing. Can you downgrade the OS and see if the problem goes away ?

My 2011 MBA still goes fine but it's on Mavericks.

 

[Newtons Apple]

Sounds like a bad SSD for sure. Have you run any tests to test it?

 

[Web Designer]

Funny you say that Newtons Apple as today I booted from my old MacBook Pro disk which I had swapped out purely for a bigger drive a couple of years ago.

I have run the usual disk utility stuff but nothing untoward shows up.

Whilst it was slow, it did not seem to have the beachball of death.

I have also tried rolling back the OS X but that is tricky as there is a hidden partition on the drive that I can't delete and is setup for Mavericks :-(

That leads me to suspect the SSD. A replacement from OWC is going cost around £150 so I need to decide if it worth it. Thinking I might install a bigger drive and keep hold of it.

I was about to eBay it before the mishap!

 

[drsox]

Funny you say that Newtons Apple as today I booted from my old MacBook Pro disk which I had swapped out purely for a bigger drive a couple of years ago.

I have run the usual disk utility stuff but nothing untoward shows up.

Whilst it was slow, it did not seem to have the beachball of death.

I have also tried rolling back the OS X but that is tricky as there is a hidden partition on the drive that I can't delete and is setup for Mavericks :-(

That leads me to suspect the SSD. A replacement from OWC is going cost around £150 so I need to decide if it worth it. Thinking I might install a bigger drive and keep hold of it.

I was about to eBay it before the mishap!

If you can boot from an external drive then there are ways of getting the OS to install as Mavericks. As you have an old MBA (Probably originally on Lion), you should be able to install any OS from Lion to Yosemite. My guess is that Yosemite is overloading the old MBA (just a guess).

 

[Newtons Apple]

Funny you say that Newtons Apple as today I booted from my old MacBook Pro disk which I had swapped out purely for a bigger drive a couple of years ago.

I have run the usual disk utility stuff but nothing untoward shows up.

Whilst it was slow, it did not seem to have the beachball of death.

I have also tried rolling back the OS X but that is tricky as there is a hidden partition on the drive that I can't delete and is setup for Mavericks :-(

That leads me to suspect the SSD. A replacement from OWC is going cost around £150 so I need to decide if it worth it. Thinking I might install a bigger drive and keep hold of it.

I was about to eBay it before the mishap!

If you go that route, SSD drives are getting cheaper and cheaper.

 

[motrek]

If you can boot from an external drive then there are ways of getting the OS to install as Mavericks. As you have an old MBA (Probably originally on Lion), you should be able to install any OS from Lion to Yosemite. My guess is that Yosemite is overloading the old MBA (just a guess).

Many people have reported that Yosemite works well on that same configuration. The problem isn't Yosemite.

 

[drsox]

Many people have reported that Yosemite works well on that same configuration. The problem isn't Yosemite.

OK then.