Hangups and hard freezing late '08 MBP

[xbox4me62]

I have a late 08 unibody macbook pro with a 2.4ghz core 2 duo. I upgraded the ram from 2gb to 8gb and the hard drive from the original 5400rpm 250gb to a 500gb 5400rpm hitachi deskstar (aka deathstar).

When I first put in the new hard drive everything was okay, no noticeable speed decreases. I ran it for about a year and installed Lion recently and everything was still okay.

But during these past two weeks I've noticed that the computer has becoming gradually slower opening large files. And just in general when browsing through finder. Editing 1920x1080 video files straight from my 7D in Final Cut have also been a nightmare. If I have itunes playing in the background while editing pictures in lightroom the music will stop and I will get the beach ball for about 2 seconds. Editing just 8mp jpegs causes hard freezes now. Just a month ago I was editing 18mp raw files just fine.

I'm assuming its something with my hard drive or maybe just the lightroom catalog. Even though it's not a fast drive I know it shouldn't be this slow. The disk permissions are good, and I have verified the disk and it is okay. When editing in lightroom with itunes in the background I have just over 5gb ram free so ram isn't the issue. Would getting a new (possibly faster) hdd solve my issues?
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[Naimfan]

The symptoms you're describing are consistent with a failing hard drive, though it could be a number of other things also.

If you still have the original 250 GB HD, try swapping that back in. If that helps, then you need a new drive (and make sure you have everything backed up!). If not, try replacing the RAM, because it's possible that's the problem also.

There have also been reports that Lion is still buggy and it's possible you're seeing bugs.

My best guess, however, would be the hard drive, because you're describing symptoms that seem to getting worse as you'd expect with a drive failing.

And yes, a 7200 RPM drive would help (I'm guessing you need storage at a reasonable cost or I'd suggest at least considering a SSD).

Hope that helps.

 

[bb426]

The symptoms you're describing are consistent with a failing hard drive, though it could be a number of other things also.

If you still have the original 250 GB HD, try swapping that back in. If that helps, then you need a new drive (and make sure you have everything backed up!). If not, try replacing the RAM, because it's possible that's the problem also.

There have also been reports that Lion is still buggy and it's possible you're seeing bugs.

My best guess, however, would be the hard drive, because you're describing symptoms that seem to getting worse as you'd expect with a drive failing.

And yes, a 7200 RPM drive would help (I'm guessing you need storage at a reasonable cost or I'd suggest at least considering a SSD).

Hope that helps.

I would most suspect Lion, first off. But swap out the hard drive just in case and test it doing exactly what you're doing when you get lock ups.

Then I'd get a nice brand spankin new 7200 rpm hard drive (or SSD i suppose, but I'd stick with the HDD's if you do a lot of video editing because that can easily kill an SSD with all the writes. Plus you will definitely miss the HDD space! Not to mention HDD's are much cheaper.)

 

[xbox4me62]

Used carbon copy cloner to put everything on my original 250gb hdd and everything is much faster now. But I only have 27gb free .

I'm gonna pick up a 7200rpm 500gb or 750gb hdd. What are your guys' opinions on the seagate hybrid hods?

And as for a SSD i'll remove my optical drive and put in an SSD when I find a good deal on a 128gb.

 

[bb426]

Used carbon copy cloner to put everything on my original 250gb hdd and everything is much faster now. But I only have 27gb free .

I'm gonna pick up a 7200rpm 500gb or 750gb hdd. What are your guys' opinions on the seagate hybrid hods?

And as for a SSD i'll remove my optical drive and put in an SSD when I find a good deal on a 128gb.

Try a Seagate Momentus XT! It's a seriously awesome HDD @7200RPM and 500 GB. Great boot times and everything and with the hybrid HDD, it makes a huge difference in speed. I've had mine since it came out, it's an awesome replacement. Probably one of the better HDD's you can get for the price.

Might be better having the SSD in the HDD spot and the HDD in the Optical Drive bay when you get to that point, however.