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Slow hdd access = beach ball

L

lapino

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 6, 2009
238
11
My MBP 15" Unibody seems very sluggish when it comes to harddrive speed, and I've got a feeling I get the beachball quite often due to the drive not keeping up. Trash is empy, got about 150gb free on a 320gb drive but my MBP feels very very sluggish from time to time.

Any idea how I can speed things up? I'm running Snow Leopard btw, but had same issues with Leopard, did an upgrade, not clean install.
 
lapino said:
My MBP 15" Unibody seems very sluggish when it comes to harddrive speed, and I've got a feeling I get the beachball quite often due to the drive not keeping up. Trash is empy, got about 150gb free on a 320gb drive but my MBP feels very very sluggish from time to time.

Any idea how I can speed things up? I'm running Snow Leopard btw, but had same issues with Leopard, did an upgrade, not clean install.
Click to expand...

What's your rpm? 5400? 7200?
 
Adding RAM?

lapino said:
My MBP 15" Unibody seems very sluggish when it comes to harddrive speed, and I've got a feeling I get the beachball quite often due to the drive not keeping up. Trash is empy, got about 150gb free on a 320gb drive but my MBP feels very very sluggish from time to time.

Any idea how I can speed things up? I'm running Snow Leopard btw, but had same issues with Leopard, did an upgrade, not clean install.
Click to expand...

Will adding ram help with beachball issues? My friend has a White Macbook bought in March and we upgraded his hard drive to the 500gb Seagate Momentus 7200. He still gets the beachball occasionally watching video on espn360.com? Will upgrading his ram to 4gb help? He still has 100gb free on the hdd. Thanks!
 
gaps said:
Will adding ram help with beachball issues? My friend has a White Macbook bought in March and we upgraded his hard drive to the 500gb Seagate Momentus 7200. He still gets the beachball occasionally watching video on espn360.com? Will upgrading his ram to 4gb help? He still has 100gb free on the hdd. Thanks!
Click to expand...

I personally think that the RAM addition will not help. Especially if your seeing the beachball occur when then the only program that is open is safari. Just open "activity monitor" while watching espn360. If the ram shows that it is being maxed out then that could be the problem.

On a side note I reinstalled snow leopard (clean install), and I have not had one beachball in about 24 hours of use. Normally I got one about every 15 minutes. Keeping my fingers crossed.....
 
Got a 500gb 2.5" drive spare, going to try a clean snow leopard install in a few days, hoping that'll help. Also considering getting a new, fast drive.
 
calimed said:
I personally think that the RAM addition will not help. Especially if your seeing the beachball occur when then the only program that is open is safari. Just open "activity monitor" while watching espn360. If the ram shows that it is being maxed out then that could be the problem.

On a side note I reinstalled snow leopard (clean install), and I have not had one beachball in about 24 hours of use. Normally I got one about every 15 minutes. Keeping my fingers crossed.....
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice!
 
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