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Did I slow my mac?

lieb39

lieb39

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 17, 2005
284
0
Melbourne, Australia
Hello everyone,

I've got a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro 15" with
4GB RAM (2x2GB)
1TB Samsung 5400rpm Internal drive

The hard drive is a recent upgrade - I did a fresh install on that. Ever since that, my mac has been slowwww. Whenever playing music - itunes - maybe some iphoto, the mac slows right down and freezes occasionally. Is this all due to the slower hard drive? Previously I had a 500GB 7200rpm drive in there - and it was much faster.

Is there any apps I can use to figure out the exact slow point of my computer? I love the 1TB space but hate the lack of speed right now...

Thoughts?

Thanks
Daniel
 
Dude you just said it in your post man. You went from a 7200rpm down to a 5200rpm drive, 72>52 You downgraded speed for more memory.
 
But the platters in a 1tb disk are denser so the heads don't need to move as far to read/write data. So it shouldn't have made that MUCH of a difference.

Did you fresh install everything else and not do a clone or time machine?
 
tjb1 said:
But the platters in a 1tb disk are denser so the heads don't need to move as far to read/write data. So it shouldn't have made that MUCH of a difference.

Did you fresh install everything else and not do a clone or time machine?
Click to expand...

Fresh install.

Is there a tool or a boot cd I can use to figure out the slow things here? Or looking at something already?

It's def slower.

Thanks
 
From most tests that I've seen, many 7200rpm disks provide very little real speed improvements.

If I were you, I would just re-install OS X because basic operations like multitasking while playing iTunes should not slow down an 2.66 MacBook Pro. It might cause an old MBA with its 1.8-inch PATA drive to stutter though but not a 2.5" 5400rpm disk.
 
There are a couple of things that could slow your mac down.

When you do a fresh install, you lose all your cache so some things may run slower but not significantly.

I find 7.2k RPM vs 5.4k to be a fairly significant difference but the data density of the platters on higher capacity HDs tends to make them slightly faster than a lower capacity so that would negate the speed loss somewhat. Again, not significant enough.

If your computer is freezing, something is wrong. A 5.4k RPM drive isn't thaaat slow.
 
A couple of thoughts

If I were you, I'd test the speed with an external drive (USB2 or FireWire). First, I'd make an exact copy of the system volume using Carbon Copy Cloner. Then I'd select this copy to boot from, and try to use it for a while. How does it feel? It should run reasonably well. If the original drive is slower, I would go for a complete reformatting.

A few months ago, an Apple tech told me how decisive formatting can be. For instance, a drive that was originally formatted for Leopard won't run as smooth as it should with Snow Leopard, unless you do a deep reformatting. Maybe your 1TB drive has been formatted somehow before?

Otherwise I assume you repaired your volumes with DiskWarrior didn't you? A clean software OS X reinstall could do the trick if you'd been installing many weird things, but you know that already.

Also, you may have memory problems if you added extra memory from a third party: recently my MacBook started to freeze wildly after 3 years of good work. I ran the Apple hardware test from the original disk, and indeed one of my 2GB chips was dead. I removed it, put back an original Apple 1GB, and all's well again. Now running at 3 instead of 4 GBs.

Finally, maybe you'd be better off going back to your original 500 G drive and use external drives for space.

My 2 cents.
 
Is it the 2009 model? Probably the ol 1.7 firmware wreaking havoc. It shows up when you replace the hard drive. You may have to roll the firmware back.
 
BobbyCat said:
If I were you, I'd test the speed with an external drive (USB2 or FireWire). First, I'd make an exact copy of the system volume using Carbon Copy Cloner. Then I'd select this copy to boot from, and try to use it for a while. How does it feel? It should run reasonably well. If the original drive is slower, I would go for a complete reformatting.

A few months ago, an Apple tech told me how decisive formatting can be. For instance, a drive that was originally formatted for Leopard won't run as smooth as it should with Snow Leopard, unless you do a deep reformatting. Maybe your 1TB drive has been formatted somehow before?

Otherwise I assume you repaired your volumes with DiskWarrior didn't you? A clean software OS X reinstall could do the trick if you'd been installing many weird things, but you know that already.

Also, you may have memory problems if you added extra memory from a third party: recently my MacBook started to freeze wildly after 3 years of good work. I ran the Apple hardware test from the original disk, and indeed one of my 2GB chips was dead. I removed it, put back an original Apple 1GB, and all's well again. Now running at 3 instead of 4 GBs.

Finally, maybe you'd be better off going back to your original 500 G drive and use external drives for space.

My 2 cents.
Click to expand...

I may consider going back to the 500GB. But first I'll do a Apple hardware test and look into DiskWarrior.. Haven't used that.

Tried repair permissions a few times and I verified my disk..


Other than that I guess there isn't much else to do eh?

Thanks,
Daniel
 
lieb39 said:
Hmm More information on this? It's indeed a 2009..

Cheers
Click to expand...


Do a search there are pages and pages regarding the problem. I am willing to bet that if you put your original hard drive back in it will work fine. If you want to change hard drives in that machine you will need to roll the firmware back.
 
lieb39 said:
I may consider going back to the 500GB. But first I'll do a Apple hardware test and look into DiskWarrior.. Haven't used that.
Click to expand...

Of course you have to run DiskWarrior from another volume or disk; it will only check the consistency and integrity of the software, but it's a must have anyway.

lieb39 said:
Other than that I guess there isn't much else to do eh?
Click to expand...

Sure you could also reopen the MacBook Pro and check that you attached everything back as it should, clean the dust and so on... :eek:
But it looks like Sydenham has a good point, the firmware version could be the culprit.
 
So after looking for the instructions I finally found out how to downgrade - did it, and I'll report back on the findings. Hopefully it's all fixed!

Cheers
 
lieb39 said:
FYI : Here's the instructions.
Click to expand...

Interesting thread, amazing. Sometimes things can get really strange, even on a Mac! Let us know if your problem's solved.

I also wonder if these firmware issues are still a pain for newer models. Is SATA II ok and safe now?
 
Did you ever find a fix to this? I also came across this problem but have a early 2010 Macbook 5.4, posted on apple forums but havent got any replies. I am guessing downgrading the firmware is the only solution for this but it does not seem a logical thing to do. Mean while I have put back the 250GB Seagate drive and will probably sell the Samsung if I don't find a fix.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2763669&tstart=0
 
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