MacbookPro 2011 very sluggish after clean install and backup

[johnkree]

Hey everyone...

Two days ago my Macbook crashed, I got a critical failure message and the Macbook rebooted.
Then the loading bar just got half full and I couldn’t make it start.

So I used an old harddrive and everything was fine.

I formatted my SSD and reinstalled MacOS High Sierra and then I copied my Backup on the new install.
But everything is sluggish as hell now, even typing this is a real pain.

What could be wrong?

 

[keysofanxiety]

13"? I'd guess the SATA cable. You could verify this by running the SSD through a USB enclosure, though this will be a little slower due to it not being USB 3.

15"/17" - almost certainly graphics based on your description with the loading bar.

 

[johnkree]

13"? I'd guess the SATA cable. You could verify this by running the SSD through a USB enclosure, though this will be a little slower due to it not being USB 3.

15"/17" - almost certainly graphics based on your description with the loading bar.

Sorry, yes, it's an 13" model.

Would it help to connect the SSD through the DVD cable?
Can the cable be replaced?

 

[keysofanxiety]

Sorry, yes, it's an 13" model.

Yeah I'd guess SATA cable. Very common problem on that model. They are really flakey which means that sometimes they'll work fine (so the old HDD working may not necessarily indicate a drive failure) and other times they won't boot at all.

Easiest thing to do is boot it externally. If it's still having huge problems then this may indicate a software issue; potentially the backup has problems. But that's really unlikely.

The only other thing might be that one of the RAM sticks is on its way out. My first guess is HDD cable though.

 

[johnkree]

I searched the web a bit and the symptoms for a bad SATA cable are a grey screen, a flickering folder with a question mark on the boot screen or no screen at all.
My syptoms are like the Macbook is working in the background all the time.

I just noticed two Processes that seem to be constantly using CPU: bird and cloud...

They are related to iCloud but I just have 5Gb of data and a 30Gbit internet connection so there is no reason that the data comparison with the cloud lasts more than 12 hours, isnt it?

 

[Fishrrman]

If you sense that you could be experiencing slowdowns that are "iCloud-based", why not TURN OFF iCloud for a couple of days, and try that?

The SATA ribbon cable is a "point of failure" and VERY easily replaced (with the right tools).
Go to ifixit.com to see what's involved.
The replacement cable is cheap and the swap will take you 15 minutes.

When the SATA cable "gets marginal", it will look to the user "like a hard drive failure", but it's not the drive, it's the connecting cable. Sometimes platter-based HDD's will run ok, but SSD's won't...

 

[RobertPS]

Hey everyone...

Two days ago my Macbook crashed, I got a critical failure message and the Macbook rebooted.
Then the loading bar just got half full and I couldn’t make it start.

So I used an old harddrive and everything was fine.

I formatted my SSD and reinstalled MacOS High Sierra and then I copied my Backup on the new install.
But everything is sluggish as hell now, even typing this is a real pain.

What could be wrong?

If you used the same SSD when you got the critical failure message, then the SSD could be on the way out. What is the SMART status?

 

[simonsi]

I searched the web a bit and the symptoms for a bad SATA cable are a grey screen, a flickering folder with a question mark on the boot screen or no screen at all.

When my cable went the drive went into read only mode (so you can't create folders for example), and one of the CRC error counts was incrementing in SmartStatus (can't remember which one).

 

[johnkree]

Thank you all for the help...

Today I bought an external 2,5" case and everything is fine. I got the grey screen over night. So it is the cable. I already ordered a new one from Amazon.
Thanks a lot!