How to speed up slowing macbook?

[TacticalDesire]

That depends on the capacity, as well. Some 5400 drives are faster than some 7200 drives, due to higher density.

True. I neglected to mention that......

 

[Drew017]

I definitely agree that upgrading RAM will greatly increase speed. Also, I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but you can also get an SSD drive. This will make your experience a whole lot better!

Also, what OS are you running? How much RAM do you have, and is your HD filled with stuff? If so, sometimes doing a good thorough clean out always helps. As mentioned many times before in this thread, Onyx is the way to go!!

Try Crucial- they have all sorts of memory and HD upgrades at awesome prices!

 

[throAU]

Any tips or tricks to make it fast again or run like new WITHOUT restoring it from my OSX CD. I do not want to have to backup all my photos, music and reinstall/ update WOW.

This is my first mac.

Q: do you have a backup at all? if not.... good luck with that.


I'll mention 3 main things:

• IF OS X is very low on free space, it will have trouble keeping the disk de-fragmented. If you have hardly any space (like, less than 15-20%, free up some space to enable the OS to re-write files into contiguous blocks to reduce fragmentation
• hard drives slow down as they fill up, as the inner tracks read slower than the outer tracks.
• If possible... reinstall the OS and restore data/apps from time machine (shouldn't need to reinstall most apps?).

Yes. OS X does get fragmented. Its generally better than Windows NTFS about preventing fragmentation (it will try and de-fragment some files when they are opened if possible), but if you have very little free space, the OS can't do much about that (there's most likely not enough space in a big chunk) and will start writing files into whatever small spaces are available. Over time, this can cause significant fragmentation.

Wiping and restoring will re-write the files back to the disk in a contiguous manner (1 file = 1 fragment) which will make the disk work less hard to read/write them. Again, try to maintain 15-20% or more free space so that the OS can prevent fragmentation.



And yes as mentioned previously in thread... 5400/7200 is not as clear cut as it may appear. Bigger drive = faster than smaller drive at higher rpm in some circumstances. If you can get way more space than you need and limit the drive heads' movement to say 50% or less of the disk capacity, speed will improve significantly (google: short stroking)



And yes. Definitely upgrade to 4 GB of ram or 8 GB if your machien will take it (don't think so though?).

2 GB will be significantly crippling your machine's performance.

 

[seveej]

That depends on the capacity, as well. Some 5400 drives are faster than some 7200 drives, due to higher density.

Right on!
Also (personal experience, so don't flame me) 7200 rpm hard drives typically generate more noise and heat and might put an extra drain on your battery.

OP. First steps:
- clean up on HDD. MacOS usually works best when ≈ 15 % of HDD is free (more place for virtual memory and housekeeping). Usually any old machine has a lot of old c**p lying around. Put some on backups (external HDD or DVD) if you may need it again some day...
- get more RAM (in your case the combination of 2 GB ram and clogged hard drive will lead to massive slowdowns). Even bumping it to 4 GB makes a massive difference, but you could go all the way to 8 GB
- If you expect to use the machine for some more years, consider splurging on a bigger HDD and a docking solution for your old one... Install OS from scratch, then transfer files from old HDD...

If your machine is in otherwise good order, hold on to it. The MBAlu is a beautiful machine and I regret having sold mine...

RGDS,

 

[Commy1]

I bought my little Macbook a replacement 8GB of Corsair ram 1067mhz and a second SSD harddrive and an HDD optical caddy.
I think the best thing I could have done, I did, which was a fresh SSD installation of 10.8.2. Afterwards I did a Time Machine recovery of all my Applications and it was like new.