C2D 2.93 MBP running slow

[Davidsilence]

I have a late 2009 MacBook Pro 17" C2D 2.93, 4gb ram 320gb 7200rpm hard drive . I'm a graphic designer running CS5 Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign etc working on large (500mb) PSD files with lots of layers.

Iv'e recently found my beach ball spinning a lot and program switching very sluggish, safari again very slow, finder much spinning ball. When streaming music as well spotify, soundcloud finding that when i'm doing anything processor intensive in Photoshop I'm hearing pops and very small sound drops.

Ive just done a clean install of Snow Leopard and reinstalled my apps. ran Hardware test - no problems, I have over 100gb free on my HD. but this has not solved the problem

So my question is this what can I do to to speed my machine up, will 8 gb ram help, or should i install a SSD drive via optibay as my superdrive is bust (no suprise there) or both

thanks for looking

 

[davidlv]

I have a late 2009 MacBook Pro 17" C2D 2.93, 4gb ram 320gb 7200rpm hard drive . I'm a graphic designer running CS5 Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign etc working on large (500mb) PSD files with lots of layers.
Iv'e recently found my beach ball spinning a lot and program switching very sluggish, safari again very slow, finder much spinning ball. When streaming music as well spotify, soundcloud finding that when i'm doing anything processor intensive in Photoshop I'm hearing pops and very small sound drops.
Ive just done a clean install of Snow Leopard and reinstalled my apps. ran Hardware test - no problems, I have over 100gb free on my HD. but this has not solved the problem
So my question is this what can I do to to speed my machine up, will 8 gb ram help, or should i install a SSD drive via optibay as my superdrive is bust (no suprise there) or both
thanks for looking

2 possibilities: 1. HD failure, prior to HD failure the disk will have to try to write files several times to get it done right and that can be the cause of stalls like you are seeing. 2. You are running out of RAM and the system is writing page outs, slowing down everything. Check Activity Monitor for page outs when you are seeing the issue, if that is high, you need more RAM.
Buying an SSD (expensive) will not solve the problem if the 320GB disk is about to go down (until you remove it). Try cloning the drive to a backup disk while it is still working or at least backup your valuable data soon.

 

[Davidsilence]

thanks

cant see any page drops but here is my activity monitor processes report could you be so kind as to take a look.
Hard drive failure could be an option
thanks

 

[Davidsilence]

it was faulty drive

so I downloaded a free copy of smart utility http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/smartutility.html and my drive was faulty as you said, so now i have a crucial 256 SSD and Its like my machine is brand new SSD is amazing, thanks for your help