MBP 2010 17" + SSD is very slow again

[hajime]

Hello, I replaced the harddrive by a Samsung EVO850 SSD 1T few months ago. It was very fast at the beginning. Recently, my machine became very slow again and often I see the beach ball. From the activity monitor, I found that: Firefox 46.0.1 takes 15-45%. kernel_task and WindowServer are the next apps that take up cpu%. Do you know how to speed up the machine?

 

[keysofanxiety]

Hello, I replaced the harddrive by a Samsung EVO850 SSD 1T few months ago. It was very fast at the beginning. Recently, my machine became very slow again and often I see the beach ball. From the activity monitor, I found that: Firefox 46.0.1 takes 15-45%. kernel_task and WindowServer are the next apps that take up cpu%. Do you know how to speed up the machine?

How much RAM do you have? Also which OS are you on? Ensure you're on the latest build of El Capitan.

A few things you can try in the interim to see if it runs smoother:

- run volume verification in Disk Utility, just to check all is OK there

- shut down often; once every couple of days, or whenever you're not using it, with the option 'reopen Windows when logging back in' unticked

- try using Safari instead of Firefox

Again, the above steps are just troubleshooting rather than permanent steps (though I personally would recommend them). However if they makes a positive difference, that should help towards diagnosing the problem.

Best wishes.

 

[Oliverhay]

Have you checked for TRIM support? About this mac --> system report --> SATA (or however your SSD is connected)
Non-apple installed SSD's have it disabled by default I think. If you don't have trim on, which cleans up deleted parts of your SSD in the background, any computer will slow down.

There is a programme called TRIM enabler that I used to force TRIM on for a 2011 iMac with a Crucial SSD installed. Works very well.

 

[hajime]

How much RAM do you have? Also which OS are you on? Ensure you're on the latest build of El Capitan.

A few things you can try in the interim to see if it runs smoother:

- run volume verification in Disk Utility, just to check all is OK there

- shut down often; once every couple of days, or whenever you're not using it, with the option 'reopen Windows when logging back in' unticked

- try using Safari instead of Firefox

Again, the above steps are just troubleshooting rather than permanent steps (though I personally would recommend them). However if they makes a positive difference, that should help towards diagnosing the problem.

Best wishes.

Thanks for the tips.

I have 8GB RAM. 1TB SSD. 600GB devoted to Mac OS 10.11.6 Currently 16GB left.

At the end of volume verification, I got a File system verifying code 0.
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Have you checked for TRIM support? About this mac --> system report --> SATA (or however your SSD is connected)
Non-apple installed SSD's have it disabled by default I think. If you don't have trim on, which cleans up deleted parts of your SSD in the background, any computer will slow down.

There is a programme called TRIM enabler that I used to force TRIM on for a 2011 iMac with a Crucial SSD installed. Works very well.

Thanks for the tips. Under system report -->SATA, I have:

Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB
TRIM Support: yes

As far as I recall, when I first installed the drive to the MBP, I used command line to enable TRIM. From the report, does it verify that I have done that already?