Leopard growing increasingly slow, why?

[alana22]

I've got a 3.06ghz iMac and over the last year the computer has grown slower and slower until now I get rainbow beach balls for about 5-20 seconds no matter what I do.. opening a program, playing an mp3.. sometimes I don't have to do anything, it just happens. Granted, this isn't new.. stuttering/beach ball thing has gone on for quite a while but the delays are becoming more frequent and longer lasting.

I kinda hoped buying a Mac would prevent this.. I always assumed this was a Windows problem. Do I need to reformat and reinstall OSX?

If so, is there any way to back up my data without spending money on an external hard drive?

Argh, so annoying

 

[mackmgg]

If you can stand it, wait till snow leopard in september, my leopard was fine, but going back from snow leopard it is almost unbearable

 

[alana22]

If you can stand it, wait till snow leopard in september, my leopard was fine, but going back from snow leopard it is almost unbearable

Oooh, good idea, I guess I can do that. But about back-up.. is an external hd (or a service like mozy.com) the only options I really have to back-up my stuff?

If my computer is slow, would installing Snow Leopard (when it comes out) fix it, or would I need to do a full reformat of the drive (as I would presume).

Thanks so much.

 

[mackmgg]

Oooh, good idea, I guess I can do that. But about back-up.. is an external hd (or a service like mozy.com) the only options I really have to back-up my stuff?

If my computer is slow, would installing Snow Leopard (when it comes out) fix it, or would I need to do a full reformat of the drive (as I would presume).

Thanks so much.

An upgrade might help, but you might need to restore. As for backup, try the 60 day trial of MobileMe which I believe has 20GB or Mozy for one month.

 

[Ti_Poussin]

I would suggest:
1- you run the disk utility to repair permission.
2- open a terminal and type "sudo periodic daily"
3- open a terminal and type "sudo periodic weekly"
4- open a terminal and type "sudo periodic monthly"
5- remove the old spotlight index by adding the whole drive to the privacy list, quit pref pane and remove the whole drive from privacy list on a new launch. This going to take a while but may speed up stuff.
6- clear some cache for safari, mail, etc...

That should help. If not, some process are eating your machine, try to see which one and kill them. Or your hard drive may be on the last miles...