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jwolf6589

macrumors 601
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
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I have a MBP 2012 with a 5400 RPM Hard drive. Running TTP and Disk Utility indicate thee is no problem with the drive, however booting up and launching big apps such as MS office seem to take a while. Is this normal behavior for a hard drive based system and why everyone has moved to SSD?
 
I have a MBP 2012 with a 5400 RPM Hard drive. Running TTP and Disk Utility indicate thee is no problem with the drive, however booting up and launching big apps such as MS office seem to take a while. Is this normal behavior for a hard drive based system and why everyone has moved to SSD?

Yes pretty much, hard drives are slow that simple
 
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If it's the cable failing then the end result is that the drive won't mount at all (due to broken/damaged traces), not slow performance. SATA, like most internal connector standards either work at full speed or not at all.
 
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Put an SSD into it.
It will make A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE.

You won't understand until you do it.
Go to ifixit.com to see how it's done (easy-peasy).
Be sure to use THE RIGHT TOOLS (Phillips #00 & TORX T-6).
 
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Put an SSD into it.
It will make A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE.

You won't understand until you do it.
Go to ifixit.com to see how it's done (easy-peasy).
Be sure to use THE RIGHT TOOLS (Phillips #00 & TORX T-6).

I need to save my money.
[doublepost=1506449235][/doublepost]
Yes pretty much, hard drives are slow that simple

Windows runs better with conventional hard drives.
 
OP wrote:
"I need to save my money."

Very well.
You can have your current speeds, or, you can spend a little money (not much) and have MUCH FASTER speeds. As always, it's your choice.
You were complaining about "speeds".
I told you how to fix it.

You can buy a 256gb SSD for around $80. That will run as well as anything else.
If you have more than 256gb of "stuff", put the old drive into an external USB3 enclosure and use that, too.
 
OP wrote:
"I need to save my money."

Very well.
You can have your current speeds, or, you can spend a little money (not much) and have MUCH FASTER speeds. As always, it's your choice.
You were complaining about "speeds".
I told you how to fix it.

You can buy a 256gb SSD for around $80. That will run as well as anything else.
If you have more than 256gb of "stuff", put the old drive into an external USB3 enclosure and use that, too.

I have 500GB of stuff. The problem seems to be when I install a new OS or reboot for the first time. Right now the Mac is fast and apps are opening and responding quickly.
 
From experience, a defective MacBook Pro SATA cable can result in slow performance on these models. The signal is degraded but not completely broken, and the drive will record a number of Interface CRC Errors as it retries sending and receiving data. SMART Utility reads the SMART data from the drive and warns the user if any Interface CRC Errors are recorded. If there are, replace the cable.

It seems much faster now since I have booted up so I doubt its a hard drive cable.
 
It seems much faster now since I have booted up so I doubt its a hard drive cable.

Many of the 2012s with bad SATA cables we have checked in have had sporadic behavior where the system will slow down dramatically, then temporarily run normally, then repeat the process over again, and eventually the cable just gives out. Quite a few customers have mistaken this for App or OS corruption and have tried reinstalling Apps or the entire OS, which obviously does not fix the issue if it is a cable (or physical disk) failure.

I agree 100% SMART verification is the way to go - it's not perfect, but in many cases it not only predicts HDD/SSD failure, but can predict the SATA cable failure as well.


From experience, a defective MacBook Pro SATA cable can result in slow performance on these models. The signal is degraded but not completely broken, and the drive will record a number of Interface CRC Errors as it retries sending and receiving data. SMART Utility reads the SMART data from the drive and warns the user if any Interface CRC Errors are recorded. If there are, replace the cable.

Werd. :D
 
Many of the 2012s with bad SATA cables we have checked in have had sporadic behavior where the system will slow down dramatically, then temporarily run normally, then repeat the process over again, and eventually the cable just gives out. Quite a few customers have mistaken this for App or OS corruption and have tried reinstalling Apps or the entire OS, which obviously does not fix the issue if it is a cable (or physical disk) failure.

I agree 100% SMART verification is the way to go - it's not perfect, but in many cases it not only predicts HDD/SSD failure, but can predict the SATA cable failure as well.




Werd. :D

Disk Utility and TTP say the SMART is fine.
 
Disk Utility and TTP say the SMART is fine.

The built-in SMART of macOS does not do a good job of predicting drive failure or alerting the User to SMART errors - the thresholds it uses must be different from other Apps I use. At least up through Sierra, macOS would report failing drives as 'Verified' and not alert the User to any trouble with somewhat startling regularity. (Even the more sensitive/user-accurate SMART programs don't always detect this.) I am not familiar with TTP?
 
The built-in SMART of macOS does not do a good job of predicting drive failure or alerting the User to SMART errors - the thresholds it uses must be different from other Apps I use. At least up through Sierra, macOS would report failing drives as 'Verified' and not alert the User to any trouble with somewhat startling regularity. (Even the more sensitive/user-accurate SMART programs don't always detect this.) I am not familiar with TTP?

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