Macbook Pro Issues

[tom438]

So yesterday I took my late 2011 Macbook Pro to the genius bar as for more than a year it has been performing very slowly. It takes over a minute to boot to the login screen then another minute or so after login before the dock shows. Even tying this i'm getting a spinning beach ball every now and then.

The genius ran some diagnostics and said there was no issue with the hardware but that there is a problem with the file system. So as instructed i've repartitioned the drive to a master boot record then back to GUID, reinstalled the os to Lion then upgraded to mavericks. Tested it then and it took around 55 seconds to get to the login screen, then restored my info with migration assistant and it's gotten even worse.

I also mentioned that two of the case screws were loose and he said he'd tighten them up, but by the time I got home one had fallen out.

The machine is a 15", 2.2GHz i7, 8GB RAM, 500GB hard drive.

Any thoughts on what else could be causing the slowdown.

Thanks.

 

[nickandre21]

I would check your hard drive for any bad sectors, also having more then two partitions can slow it up. I suggest a hybrid drive or ssd drive it could make your macbook fly.

 

[tom438]

I would check your hard drive for any bad sectors, also having more then two partitions can slow it up. I suggest a hybrid drive or ssd drive it could make your macbook fly.

Thanks. How would I check for bad sectors? Is this not something they would have done at the genius bar? I'm planning on putting a Crucial M500 480gb SSD in soon but would like to have this fixed if I can while its still under applecare.

 

[Barney63]

If your HDD is getting full, that will also slow things down.
How much free space do you have?

Barney

 

[nickandre21]

the mostly do not, you can use an application like drive genius or tech tool pro to check. There maybe some more but you need to run a google search.
Alternatively try SMART utility it can tell you if your hard drive is failing or fine.

 

[tom438]

If your HDD is getting full, that will also slow things down.
How much free space do you have?

Barney

I'v gone from having around 100GB free before the reinstall to around 160GB after, so can see that being the issue.

 

[Barney63]

I'v gone from having around 100GB free before the reinstall to around 160GB after, so can see that being the issue.

Even at only 100GB free, that still satisfies the 20% free rule of thumb, so I doubt that that is the issue.

Barney

 

[thundersteele]

How is the HDD speed doing? You can check e.g. with the App BlackMagic.

 

[OldGuyTom]

The guys who make Scannerz have an inexpensive version, I think it's 20 bucks or so that you can do a check on the drive with. It gives a pass/fail on it and the display will count all the errors with it. The problem is it can't do the diagnostics so you can't tell if it's a cable or a drive. I used the normal version and it made it clear I had a cable problem.

With that said, Mavericks isn't the fastest OS on earth. I have a remote bootable drive with one partition as a clone and the other for time machine. If I boot off the external clone, it takes over a minute to boot. With Lion it would do it in about 40 seconds.

These units are known for bad SATA cables, and Apple's basic tests won't detect it.

 

[tom438]

How is the HDD speed doing? You can check e.g. with the App BlackMagic.

This was my result with Blackmagic 43.2MB/s Write, 40.4MB/s Read with 5GB stress.

Then 50.3MB/s Write, 49.9MB/s Read with 1GB stress.

The drive is a 500GB 5400rpm TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF.

Also any thoughts on the screw falling out the case after getting it back from the genius. Should I just take it back in and see if they can fix it. I have a feeling the thread in the case is stripped.

 

[brdeveloper]

This was my result with Blackmagic 43.2MB/s Write, 40.4MB/s Read with 5GB stress.

Then 50.3MB/s Write, 49.9MB/s Read with 1GB stress.

The drive is a 500GB 5400rpm TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF.

Pretty bad but I think it's normal in hard disks. With a SATA III SSD (is your MBP SATAIII-capable?) you'll get values around 350-400MB/s or even better in some cases.

 

[yjchua95]

This was my result with Blackmagic 43.2MB/s Write, 40.4MB/s Read with 5GB stress.

Then 50.3MB/s Write, 49.9MB/s Read with 1GB stress.

The drive is a 500GB 5400rpm TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF.

Also any thoughts on the screw falling out the case after getting it back from the genius. Should I just take it back in and see if they can fix it. I have a feeling the thread in the case is stripped.

It's quite slow.

Buy an SSD and watch the speeds shoot to beyond 450MB/s. SATA3's maximum speed is around 520MB/s.

On Haswell Macs with PCIe SSDs, it will go all the way to 750MB/s.

 

[thundersteele]

Pretty bad but I think it's normal in hard disks. With a SATA III SSD (is your MBP SATAIII-capable?) you'll get values around 350-400MB/s or even better in some cases.

New that drive should be closer to 90 MB/s. But with a few years of age and a somewhat full HDD I'm not surprised that the rates are down.

New MBPs with fast PCIe SSDs take about 8-10 seconds to boot. With a 10x slower HDD it is not such a big surprise that the boot process takes so long.

 

[tom438]

Thanks guys. I'v ordered a Crucial M500 SSD now (didn't want to spend too much as i'll probably change the machine in the next couple of years and the jump to that should be more than enough). Still going to take it back to the genius bar I think to see what they say about the speed. When I change the machine i'll probably put the HDD back in to sell it on so would be good if they swapped it.

When I get the SSD put in is it possible to just do a clean install using internet recovery or do I need to boot to an external drive?

 

[yjchua95]

Thanks guys. I'v ordered a Crucial M500 SSD now (didn't want to spend too much as i'll probably change the machine in the next couple of years and the jump to that should be more than enough). Still going to take it back to the genius bar I think to see what they say about the speed. When I change the machine i'll probably put the HDD back in to sell it on so would be good if they swapped it.

When I get the SSD put in is it possible to just do a clean install using internet recovery or do I need to boot to an external drive?

If I'm not mistaken, you can't use internet recovery as an empty SSD wouldn't contain the recovery partition.

Create a bootable Mavericks installer with a USB stick and boot from it instead.