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Getting spinning wheel a lot on early 2011 MBP, thinking about adding SSD

M

maw4bc

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 11, 2009
149
0
When I originally bought my 2011 MBP, I put a 1TB hard drive in it. One thing I have noticed is that I get the spinning wheel a little too often. Most of the freezes seem to occur with Safari for some reason.

My question is if I get something like an Optibay and put in an SSD to hold my OS and programs will that make my MBP quicker and incur less spinning wheels?

I have researched a bit about how to use the Optibay stuff but is it a pretty easy process?

Thanks for the help.
Mike
 
My question is if I get something like an Optibay and put in an SSD to hold my OS and programs will that make my MBP quicker and incur less spinning wheels?
Click to expand...

It'll make things quicker, but it's impossible to say if your spinning wheel problems will go away in Safari because you don't know what the actual problem is.

Installing an Optibay-type cradle is simple enough if you've worked with computer parts before.
 
Yeah I am up to date on everything.

It really is just a bit annoying more than anything. I also have problems with my bluetooth. I connect my MBP to my 27in ACD and use the bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. They seem to connect and disconnect often which causes some lag too.

I have always put in my own RAM and HDD's in my macs. You make it sound as if it will be that simple. Which is a relief.

How many GB's is the OS? How big of a SSD should I get? I am really only looking to put the OS and some other programs on the SSD and keep all my music/photos/video on the HDD.
 
maw4bc said:
Yeah I am up to date on everything.

It really is just a bit annoying more than anything. I also have problems with my bluetooth. I connect my MBP to my 27in ACD and use the bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. They seem to connect and disconnect often which causes some lag too.

I have always put in my own RAM and HDD's in my macs. You make it sound as if it will be that simple. Which is a relief.

How many GB's is the OS? How big of a SSD should I get? I am really only looking to put the OS and some other programs on the SSD and keep all my music/photos/video on the HDD.
Click to expand...

I would check and see if your running out of RAM. But I have a 240GB SSD and I have a fair amount of space left. I believe the OSX Lion is roughly 8GB or so maybe a little less. I would say that if you got a 240 or 256 you would probably be okay. You may have to move some of your lesser used media over to an external HDD but you can buy an enclosure for your original HDD and use that as an external, thats what I did.
 
Medic278 said:
I would check and see if your running out of RAM. But I have a 240GB SSD and I have a fair amount of space left. I believe the OSX Lion is roughly 8GB or so maybe a little less. I would say that if you got a 240 or 256 you would probably be okay. You may have to move some of your lesser used media over to an external HDD but you can buy an enclosure for your original HDD and use that as an external, thats what I did.
Click to expand...

I have 8GB of RAM. I am wanting to do some kind of Optibay because I don't want to carry around an external.
 
The I would recommend an intel, samsung, crucial or OCZ SSD, the optibay transition is really that difficult its just a matter of getting the kit. I would put the SSD in the actual HDD slot and move your HDD over to the opti-bay. I have an Intel 520 and 8GB of RAM and I never get a spinning beach ball ever. I can't recommend Intel highly enough its truly a fantastic product it was so simple to setup and configure and it has a 5 year warranty. You definitely won't regret getting an SSD I have to sy it was a great choice that I made and I haven't looked back.
 
Medic278 said:
The I would recommend an intel, samsung, crucial or OCZ SSD, the optibay transition is really that difficult its just a matter of getting the kit. I would put the SSD in the actual HDD slot and move your HDD over to the opti-bay. I have an Intel 520 and 8GB of RAM and I never get a spinning beach ball ever. I can't recommend Intel highly enough its truly a fantastic product it was so simple to setup and configure and it has a 5 year warranty. You definitely won't regret getting an SSD I have to sy it was a great choice that I made and I haven't looked back.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the help! How much was your Intel?
 
maw4bc said:
Thanks for the help! How much was your Intel?
Click to expand...

I picked it up from best buy for $340 and the best part was I was able to buy in store and install it the same day which is always awesome. Newegg has it for $330, you can get the intel 330 for $219, thats a 180 GB or an intel 320 $269. Another great option is the Samsung 830 256GB $269. All of those prices are from newegg I would avoid Cruical as a lot of people have problems with them, especially when it comes to firmware. I have never had a single problem with the Intel, and the 520 series which is their newest under went 1 year of testing and development before Intel released it and they back it up with a 5 year warranty.
 
Newfiebill said:
Here is the one I installed. I have found that I'm getting no beach balls and I didn't have to sacrifice my DVD drive or HD Space. The Drive is 6GBS SATA III, it's pretty fast at loading system and apps.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST750LX003/
Click to expand...

Didn't realize they made hybrids. I already bought a 1TB HDD and swapped when I bought the computer. So I am wanting to keep that in there. Looks like I will go with the Optibay option. I will do some research on some SSD. Sounds like I would be ok with keeping the SSD space pretty low though. say 64 GB or something? I have 500GB used of my 1TB so far, but that is mainly music/video/photos.
 
Getting a lot of beach balls isn't normal behaviour, and while an SSD may mask the problem, I would personally try and fix the issue first.
 
maw4bc said:
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Well the obvious place to start would be to check you have enough ram, though I assume you have 4GB which is usually plenty for most people. Check in activity monitor to see how high your "page outs" are.
Another thing I'd try is setting up a new user and seeing if the beach balls still occur, if they do it may be a hardware issue.

You could also try running the apple hardware test (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US), fixing disk permissions and/or running maintenance scripts with a program like onyx. Back up of course before trying anything.
 
yusukeaoki said:
Safari freezing?
Did you install 10.7.4 and Safari update?
Click to expand...

I found this thread from some searching..... I have that same issue.

I was kept getting beachballs in safari and everything felt too slow on a 3.5 quad i7 + 4gb ram...

I disconnected my peripherals (including my external screen, and mainly- I thought that my bluetooth mouse and keyboard that seemed to be slowing down something.

Could any of those peripherals slow down anything? My laptop has felt fine since I disconnected everything since I even went and restarted my laptop to run the hardware tests and it all came back clear.

I do wish I have an SSD since I just have a 750gb 7200 HD. :rolleyes:

I need to figure how to figure out my issues when I have all my peripherals all plugged in since I usually have everything plugged in unless I'm not at home.
 
OverSpun said:
I found this thread from some searching..... I have that same issue.

I was kept getting beachballs in safari and everything felt too slow on a 3.5 quad i7 + 4gb ram...

I disconnected my peripherals (including my external screen, and mainly- I thought that my bluetooth mouse and keyboard that seemed to be slowing down something.

Could any of those peripherals slow down anything? My laptop has felt fine since I disconnected everything since I even went and restarted my laptop to run the hardware tests and it all came back clear.

I do wish I have an SSD since I just have a 750gb 7200 HD. :rolleyes:

I need to figure how to figure out my issues when I have all my peripherals all plugged in since I usually have everything plugged in unless I'm not at home.
Click to expand...

USB is known to slow down computers since they consume CPU power.
But even if I use 3 USB, I dont really see a difference.
My 500GB 7200rpm runs fine without SSD.
3.5 i7!? o_O
 
Installed an 128gb crucial m4 in my old MacBook Pro (early 08) and had no beachball since just till yesterday:
The system run out of diskspace because Lion needed an 18gb (!) swapfile (so Lion needed more than 22gb ram for Photoshop and Chrome). Most beachballs are a sign of terrible memory management or a slow hdd. Either will be resolved with a ssd.
 
yusukeaoki said:
USB is known to slow down computers since they consume CPU power.
But even if I use 3 USB, I dont really see a difference.
My 500GB 7200rpm runs fine without SSD.
3.5 i7!? o_O
Click to expand...

rofl, my mistake, I meant 2.5 i7. I should have paid attention when I made my post. :D

I actually don't have any USB peripherals plugged in. (only sometimes with my iphone connected) I only use FW for my external drive.
 
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