Slow SSD speeds on late 2010 MacBook Air

[ygys]

please I have recently noticed that my macbook air is very slow

I tried to use the black magic speed test and here is the result

Read : 50-70 mb/s
write : 60-90 mb/s

is this normal ?

I also have some problem with fans. They are running on top speeds (6700 rpm) even though I am not doing any processor intensive stuff. (most of the time I am just browsing the web.
those fans are so loud that I can hardly even listen to the music ....

I was kinda able to solve this problem with this script

/Applications/smcFanControl.app/Contents/Resources/smc -k F0Mx -w 2e80

I made an automator app... but then I always have to click on that app every time my mac goes out of sleep otherwise it would get loud again

I also do have a problem with my battery life . currently my macbook air is running its 1326 cycle. my battery health is 58% and the battery does not even last for an hour :/

clearly I will have to replace my machine very soon but I am still trying to hold off until the new broadwell machines come out...

 

[26139]

Thought

My 2011 11" MBA had fans that were always on, too.

I fixed it by opening activity monitor and quitting bash.

It always launched when I restarted, but quitting it helped.

 

[Weaselboy]

It sounds like you have some process running away chewing up CPU cycles, and that using heat and the fans to ramp up.

Start Activity Monitor and in the CPU tab click show all processes then sort by CPU% and tell us if something is consuming a high % of CPU cycles.

 

[ygys]

most of the time carnel_task and windowsaver are using the most of my processing power

 

[ygys]

here in this picture you can see that I am not running almost any apps, cpu is ok , temperature is ok but my fans are running at top speeds

also when my battery reaches around 5% of charge and I close the lid and go to get my charger I alway find out that the computer has turned itself off.


I remember the times when the battery had 0% it went to sleep, I went to get my charger and the computer just woke up from the sleep and I could continue in my work ... but those times are long gone

 

[motrek]

here in this picture you can see that I am not running almost any apps, cpu is ok , temperature is ok but my fans are running at top speeds

also when my battery reaches around 5% of charge and I close the lid and go to get my charger I alway find out that the computer has turned itself off.


I remember the times when the battery had 0% it went to sleep, I went to get my charger and the computer just woke up from the sleep and I could continue in my work ... but those times are long gone

The number of apps you're running or your opinion about what should/shouldn't be CPU intensive is absolutely worthless.

Just run Activity Monitor and see what the CPU utilization ACTUALLY is, instead of just theorizing about it. I mean, it takes 5 seconds.

 

[Dracoy]

I have the same computer here are my speeds for a benchmark.

Good luck fixing this.

 

[ygys]

I have no idea what is wrong with my ssd :/

I have checked the Hwmonitor and it says that the health of my ssd is 100%

here is my activity monitor screen

as you can see the only app running is google chrome.
I have a couple apps running in the backround like istat menus but nothing major

the computer is is unresponsive that I even have very hard time to actually type this

 

[motrek]

I have no idea what is wrong with my ssd :/

I have checked the Hwmonitor and it says that the health of my ssd is 100%

here is my activity monitor screen

as you can see the only app running is google chrome.
I have a couple apps running in the backround like istat menus but nothing major

the computer is is unresponsive that I even have very hard time to actually type this

Looks like kernel task on your computer is going nuts. There was somebody else complaining about the same problem recently. No idea about causes or fixes yet.

BTW -- your "only" app is Chrome but it's taking up over ~50% of a CPU core. That's not trivial. Try closing the offending tabs.

 

[gnasher729]

Looks like kernel task on your computer is going nuts. There was somebody else complaining about the same problem recently. No idea about causes or fixes yet.

BTW -- your "only" app is Chrome but it's taking up over ~50% of a CPU core. That's not trivial. Try closing the offending tabs.

Quite possible that Chrome is also causing kernel task to run like mad. Together that's 130% CPU of 200% available, so that's quite a lot. I'd check what happens when you quit Chrome.

 

[Meister]

Don't use chrome!

 

[motrek]

Don't use chrome!

Or at least use Safari temporarily to rule out Chrome as the cause of the problem.

I have been using Chrome on all of my Macs for years and don't have any complaints except when it started putting that stupid notification icon on the menu bar. They've fixed that though.

 

[rigormortis]

this post probably won't help you about your speeds, but it may be informative
===


back in 2010 to 2011 mac book airs came in two versions and you could not tell which one you got until you opened the box.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3211759?tstart=0


version 1 was a mac book air with a samsung module, it ran fine

version 2 was a mac book air with a toshiba module. its write speed was half of what samsung was.

people in the day were literally returning mac book airs, hoping to get the samsung module.

i think the 2012 macbook air ssd module service program probably affected the 2011, but i could never get apple to replace my module under the program. the problems i had with the module is sometimes i would find 5 gb or so of lost clusters. and i would have to boot into recovery mode to get them back, and its write speed was very slow

 

[motrek]

this post probably won't help you about your speeds, but it may be informative
...

Indeed, if his entire computer is super slow and kernel task is taking up a crazy amount of CPU time, then that's probably what's slowing down his SSD and not vice versa.

But interesting information re: drives nonetheless.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

All of your CPU is being used, so no wonder it is slow.

 

[Boyd01]

There are a number of threads here where people claim a SSD degrades over time, especially if it is near capacity. Sounds like something else may be your main problem, but I wonder if you might be seeing some performance drop on a 5 year old SSD? How full is it? Did you ever clock the drive when it was new?

 

[rigormortis]

Indeed, if his entire computer is super slow and kernel task is taking up a crazy amount of CPU time, then that's probably what's slowing down his SSD and not vice versa.

But interesting information re: drives nonetheless.

he should of posted more screenshots. perhaps that crazy task is reading and writing crazy to the disk, and it is affecting his benchmarks

perhaps he is running filevault which also lowers your disk benchmarks

 

[rigormortis]

you guys arguments that the cpu being pinned and it is lowering the original posters disk speed tests are hogwash

all you guys should turn in your apple fan boy buttons

what we need are screen captures of what DISK and MEMORY said not CPU

here is a screen shot i just made. i am using handbrake to take a 18 gigabyte blu ray rip of "batman 1966" and encoding it to 720x480 vga resolution (48 frames per second) this was 2 pass encoding, first pass., with a average bitrate of 2500


if you want more screen captures, let me know and i will download boinc
and run 8 copies of seti@home


notice how the black magic speed test WAS NOT AFFECTED at all by the cpu alone.

 

[rigormortis]

things to try

reset pram
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

reset smc
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

download apple jack. and boot into single user mode (command S) and type "applejack AUTO"
this will validate preference files, check permissions, repair the disk, delete cache files, and reset virtual memory
http://applejack.sourceforge.net
if you are running Yosemite + filevault you will need to temporarily turn off filevault on reboot by going into terminal and typing
"sudo fdesetup authrestart" so single user mode can run
this copies your deception key in ram so when you reboot , your partition is not locked. apple jack is still compatible with yosemite

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

you guys arguments that the cpu being pinned and it is lowering the original posters disk speed tests are hogwash

all you guys should turn in your apple fan boy buttons

A highly active kernel task often hogs down the disk. Try using Google for once.

 

[Unclemase]

I have a late 2010 Macbook as well and fixed this exact problem this am. Do you by chance have a Samsung 840 EVO SSD? I was getting read/write's for the past two weeks that were horrendous when I looked on Blackmagic last night. Probably around 25-40. I updated the firmware on the SSDs that Samsung put out and boom back to 210W and 265R. If you do have this SSD and need instructions on updating the firmware just search on the forums and make sure you have access to a optical drive either internal or external.

 

[rigormortis]

irq's aren't being used anymore. i don't see how kernel tasks can lower the disk speed, we have turbo boost and we have hyperhtreading, and with these intel technologies, its very hard to get the computers cpu to slow down disk access.

with access speed simply on cpu usage alone, you cannot tell someone that your disk speed is low simply by looking at his cpu speed. you need more information.

when you tell someone that you disk speed is being halved because "oh your computer is too busy" without
more information and more screen shots, its like telling someone you have an IBM PC JR and you do not have a DMA controller, and you have to order one

if i saw speeds that slow on a mechanical hard drive, i would suspect excessive thermal recalibration



like was it doing a spot light index?

what is his screen captures for disk, network and memory usage?

here i am on my mac mini 2010. I'm trying to blow up my cpu by trying to run handbrake on "return of the jedi" 11 gig and making it into a 720x480 m4v, and i am trying to run milky @ home at the same time. milky way @ home does not want to corporate

these two applications are the most cpu intensive applications i can think of that are readily available.

if someone says "gee, why do i need a quad core i7" your simple reply is "handbrake or seti@home" hahaha

before and after shots
this is a MECHANICAL SSHD drive. running on a c2d 2.4 mac mini

 

[rigormortis]

btw i ran safari on my c2d and my read / write speed was like 20 mbit
on my c2d and it stayed that way until safari was done loading and in the background

so much for chrome

we don't know what is slowing his drive down unless he posts more screen shots. like this one

mds stores and kernal_task is has read a lot of the disk since i turned this computer on, and i don't even notice it, thanks to the technological miracles of
Turbo Boost, QPI, Hyperthreading, and Direct Memory Access.


so it must be something else.

number one cause.
"i turned on filevault when i installed OS X Yosemite"

 

[rigormortis]

also when looking at screen shots of cpu usage:

when it says 70 % it means 70% of 1 cpu

so therefor, if its a 2.6 ghz intel core i5 , it really means you are using 17% of the entire cpu across all 4 cores

if it says 70 % and you have a quad core i7 with hyper threading then 70% in task manager means 8.75 % of the entire cpu over 8 cores ( virtual and physical)

or if you are using a c2d, it means you are using 35% of the entire cpu

in order for a cpu to be pinned then it should be around 150% or 350% as 400, 500, 600 ,700 % reported in task manager.

 

[ygys]

I have around 6-7 gb of free space

It is very hard for me to switch from google chrome to something else since all my data, history, logins and passwords are stored over there.

But I do not think it is the chrome that makes all of these problems

I believe my SSD is made by toshiba APPLE SSD TS128C Media

thank you guys so much for your help ! I really appropriate it