Macbook slow as could be?

[npolly0212]

Hey all, I have a mid 2012 Macbook Pro that I use daily for school with being a computer science major.

Lately my macbook has been slow as all get out and has been annoying the living crap out of me. takes 5-10 minutes to load up safari or the app store and whatnot sometimes while others it takes like 5 seconds to load.

So I am looking at just completely resetting my laptop back to factory settings and starting fresh again but have a few questions.

1. I have apps on my laptop I use all the time such as photoshop that I don't have the key for or anything that I really need and can't afford to lose. So, if I just drag and drop the photoshop app onto an external hard drive will this be able to just be transferred right back over, or will I need to completely re-download it?

2. Is there a way to somehow keep the list of my safari preferences, and my saved usernames and passwords on safari, or will I completely lose these when I restart the laptop after the reset?

3. Would it be best to keep all of my movies and tv shows that are on my laptop saved to an external hard drive and only transfer them over if I plan on putting them on my ipad/iphone and whatnot? Not sure if this will help with memory/speed.

 

[DeltaMac]

If you have "all your movies and TV shows" stored on your laptop - Are you simply running low on space? If you run out of space on your hard drive, that can cause your very slow performance.
If that is the case, then you can copy some, or all, of your movies and shows to an external drive, then delete them from your laptop. That may be all you need to do.
However, if you have plenty of free space (maybe more than 10% of the total space available), then it can be an indication that your hard drive is simply failing. The wipe and reinstall that you want to do may not help, and you may end up wasting that time.
In any event, a good backup would be advisable, and do it soon. Good plan is to use Carbon Copy Cloner, which will make a complete bootable backup of your internal drive. That will let you then erase/reinstall/restore everything back to your internal. And, it leaves you with a bootable backup of your system that you can use in the event that your hard drive really needs to be replaced, so you can continue to use your MBPro until you decide what you need for a replacement drive.

 

[npolly0212]

If you have "all your movies and TV shows" stored on your laptop - Are you simply running low on space? If you run out of space on your hard drive, that can cause your very slow performance.
If that is the case, then you can copy some, or all, of your movies and shows to an external drive, then delete them from your laptop. That may be all you need to do.
However, if you have plenty of free space (maybe more than 10% of the total space available), then it can be an indication that your hard drive is simply failing. The wipe and reinstall that you want to do may not help, and you may end up wasting that time.
In any event, a good backup would be advisable, and do it soon. Good plan is to use Carbon Copy Cloner, which will make a complete bootable backup of your internal drive. That will let you then erase/reinstall/restore everything back to your internal. And, it leaves you with a bootable backup of your system that you can use in the event that your hard drive really needs to be replaced, so you can continue to use your MBPro until you decide what you need for a replacement drive.

According to my storage it says 231.25 GB of 498.88 Gb of free space available so doubt it is that.

I just know there are lots of programs I have downloaded in the past few years I have owned this that I was never able to find the uninstall program for so I believe they are just files sitting around on my laptop taking up space and whatnot.

Most of the time while trying to open and quit apps I get the little colorful disk going around in circles and whatnot so I guess this will be my best bet?

Now what is a Carbon Copy Cloner? I have never had to do anything like this before so I am not sure how to go through all of that/good app to use for it and whatnot?

I have a 1 tb portable hard drive that I have most things stored on but was just thinking about transferring anything for school or any other important things, and than just resetting.

My school also offers a center here that runs diagnostics on our laptops for free, think I should go ahead and do that?

 

[DeltaMac]

Carbon Copy Cloner - https://bombich.com

It's been used for years by Mac users. Very good tool used for backing up your hard drive, and giving you something that you can reliably restore your system, if needed.

Your hard drive has lots of free space, so that is probably not your issue. It's more likely the hard drive is just failing.

If you feel more comfortable with having your school run some tests, that may be the equivalent of talking to AppleCare.
See what they have to say.

You also have free diagnostics, built-in to your Mac.
Restart, while holding the D key. You will see your Mac start up to a diagnostics test. You can run the test. If that reports any errors or diagnostic codes, that's more that you can take to the school, or you can come back here with any trouble codes reported.

 

[npolly0212]

Carbon Copy Cloner - https://bombich.com

It's been used for years by Mac users. Very good tool used for backing up your hard drive, and giving you something that you can reliably restore your system, if needed.

Your hard drive has lots of free space, so that is probably not your issue. It's more likely the hard drive is just failing.

If you feel more comfortable with having your school run some tests, that may be the equivalent of talking to AppleCare.
See what they have to say.

You also have free diagnostics, built-in to your Mac.
Restart, while holding the D key. You will see your Mac start up to a diagnostics test. You can run the test. If that reports any errors or diagnostic codes, that's more that you can take to the school, or you can come back here with any trouble codes reported.

Just wondering if there are any free programs like this?
Also, I greatly appreciate the help. I will backup anything important to my portable HD an than run that diagnostics test and see what I get. Or do I not need to copy everything over in order to run it?

 

[Mike in Kansas]

Just wondering if there are any free programs like this?
Also, I greatly appreciate the help. I will backup anything important to my portable HD an than run that diagnostics test and see what I get. Or do I not need to copy everything over in order to run it?

Disk Utility will make an exact copy of your startup disk by using the 'Restore' feature. It's a little confusing, as you "restore" the disk that you want to be the destination of your hard drive (i.e. your external backup disk).

You can also use Super Duper for free to do simple clones and make bootable drives. If that's all you need to do, you can do all that for free. If you make daily/weekly backups using Super Duper, you'll want to buy it as you can then make incremental backups; in other words, only copy what has changed since last backup vs. cloning EVERYthing.

I use Super Duper religiously - it has saved me on more than one occasion.