MacBook Pro 2011 spinning wheel during simple tasks

[burgerking2]

Hi, I have a MacBook Pro 2011 15" with i5 and 4GB and a 160GB SSD installed.

System runs fine overall, but I've noticed when doing some simple tasks, I get the spinning wheel.

For example, when I check "About This Mac" and then select "Storage", I get the spinning wheel for about 10-15 seconds. Also occasionally when opening a new finder window, same thing - something so simple.

Just did fresh install of OS X El Capitan and I keep no data on this laptop, just use for browsing.

I've already tried swapping out the SSD as well as well as the hard drive cable, but the problem persists.

Any ideas what this could cause this and what to check next?

Thanks!

 

[JTToft]

Do you have an internal hard drive or any external hard drives connected that might need to spin up ('cause they'll tend to do that when opening precisely those types of things)?

I must either be a 13" you have or an i7, because the 15" didn't come with an i5.

 

[burgerking2]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, you are correct, I have a 15" with i7 2.5ghz.

No, I don't have any internal or external drive that would have to spin up. Only a single internal 160GB SSD. This was a used computer I recently acquired, so wondering if something is bad or needs to be replaced that might be causing such a strange issue...

 

[burgerking2]

JTToft, I think I figured it out the problem - you kinda pointed me in the direction to look.

I ended up disabling/unplugging the superdrive connector on the logic board. Once I did that, the spinning circle went away. It seems that maybe during some tasks, such as checking "Storage", it was also checking the optical drive and that seemed to caused the slowdown. I'm assuming maybe the superdrive has gone bad... That would be fine, as I never use the superdrive at all anymore. Thanks!

 

[Samuelsan2001]

JTToft, I think I figured it out the problem - you kinda pointed me in the direction to look.

I ended up disabling/unplugging the superdrive connector on the logic board. Once I did that, the spinning circle went away. It seems that maybe during some tasks, such as checking "Storage", it was also checking the optical drive and that seemed to caused the slowdown. I'm assuming maybe the superdrive has gone bad... That would be fine, as I never use the superdrive at all anymore. Thanks!

The SuperDrive can be removed and replaced with a caddy and further storage if needed.