Macbook slow banana, help

[Sceneshifter]

Hey Guys,

Lately my Macbook has become VERY sloppy. It sometimes leaves me hanging for a solid 20 seconds or more, when I'm doing basically nothing special.

Then I hear once in a while an OS X sound like a glass 'blip' or something, is that the sound os x makes when your HDD is failing or what? I checked my drive with disk utility and about this mac (smart) and it says everything is ok with the HD. What could it be? When looking at activity monitor everything seems fine, though sometimes one core is maxed for no reason at all (since I have nothing running) and the fans go nuts.

Thanks

Ps: Will the Time machine backups back up my entire drive and make for an easy reinstall in case of HD failure, or should I somehow get another HD and make a SuperDuper! backup?

 

[daneoni]

Go back to Activity monitor look for the process that using up CPU cycles and quit it. Also have you tried a simple restart?

Time machine should have u covered

 

[Laco]

Hey Guys,

Lately my Macbook has become VERY sloppy. It sometimes leaves me hanging for a solid 20 seconds or more, when I'm doing basically nothing special.

Then I hear once in a while an OS X sound like a glass 'blip' or something, is that the sound os x makes when your HDD is failing or what? I checked my drive with disk utility and about this mac (smart) and it says everything is ok with the HD. What could it be? When looking at activity monitor everything seems fine, though sometimes one core is maxed for no reason at all (since I have nothing running) and the fans go nuts.

Thanks

Ps: Will the Time machine backups back up my entire drive and make for an easy reinstall in case of HD failure, or should I somehow get another HD and make a SuperDuper! backup?

yeah i heard something that could be described as a "blip" before my hardrive failed a few months ago on my Macbook....It occured every half a minute so... After this I was working and my computer froze and when i restarted it it wouldn't start i got a flashing file folder...which i later found out means that the hardrive is dead....the good news is that i went to the apple store and they replaced my broken one for a new one right infront of me in less than ten minutes it was great especially since it was free....you are so lucky you have time machine i didn't have it then and i backed up only 90 percent of my files so i lost some stuff...now i have it....yeah time machine will restore your data if you have it without a problem...i think you need the original leopard disc though....

 

[niemo810]

Yeah, sounds to me like your macbook had a failing hard drive. Believe me--I have experience. Be sure to back up everything you want to keep BEFORE (that's important) you restart it, because every time I've had a hard drive fail (four times) it's been after I restart my computer. I thought to myself "wow, my computer is running really slow... I should restart it and maybe that will clear things up..." -BAM- flashing question mark on boot.

I bought my MacBook in August 2007 and the hard drive failed regularly every six weeks or so. Fortunately, it was covered under AppleCare each time, and after the second time it happened I bought a backup drive. The third time it happened, they gave me Leopard for free, and the fourth time it happened I demanded they give me a new MacBook, because it obviously was something wrong with the computer. I figured they would give me a refurbished MacBook of the same revision. Nope, they shipped me a new retail box of the "middle" model because I bought the middle model back in August. Lucky for me, the MacBook had been updated since I bought mine and I scored more hard drive space, more memory, and a faster processor. AND they renewed my AppleCare, so I have another year of service. Even though some people get a bad egg from Apple once in awhile, they really know how to care for their customers.

Give them a call and have them run through a diagnostics test with you, assuming you have AppleCare. I'm sure they'd be happy to help you.

P.S. Time machine restores are (almost) flawless. The only thing that happened to me was that my iPhoto '06 library didn't mesh well with the new iPhoto '08 interface. I had to re-do everything. Also, after I restored, my time machine backups didn't resume in the original folder. It started a new folder of backups and my drive filled up quickly. I just had to delete my old backups.