Slow SSD speeds on late 2010 MacBook Air

[motrek]

also when looking at screen shots of cpu usage:

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

You're making a fool of yourself.

Nobody said that computation alone was causing the disk to be slow. We noticed that his computer seems to be busy doing something, based on CPU usage. That "something" might also be disk-intensive.

It's also extremely possible that whatever the kernel task is doing, it's hogging a lock necessary for file system or disk access. So even if CPU usage and disk usage seem to be relatively low, disk performance could still be ruined depending on what kernel task is doing.

----------

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
...

You don't have to switch all your stuff to Safari to rule out Chrome as the problem.

Just quit Chrome, open some favorite tabs in Safari, and see if performance is still terrible.

 

[b0fh666]

chrome is a POS. try not running it and see if it fixes your problem.

 

[ygys]

yeah I know that chrome is killing most of my processing power but whatever it is a old computer

I tried to quit chrome and clearly chrome is not the problem so I do not know what is

 

[Weaselboy]

yeah I know that chrome is killing most of my processing power but whatever it is a old computer

I tried to quit chrome and clearly chrome is not the problem so I do not know what is

I have an idea. Let's try to clear up unused blocks on the drive. Do a command-s boot to safe mode then at the command prompt enter "fsck -fy" (without the quotes) and enter. You should see a log output at the end that it TRIM'd all unused blocks on the SSD. Now type reboot and test again.

This will often restore slow write speeds on flash storage.

 

[ygys]

I have an idea. Let's try to clear up unused blocks on the drive. Do a command-s boot to safe mode then at the command prompt enter "fsck -fy" (without the quotes) and enter. You should see a log output at the end that it TRIM'd all unused blocks on the SSD. Now type reboot and test again.

This will often restore slow write speeds on flash storage.

so here is the result... my read speeds have improved but my write speeds are even slower than before

my cpu and the fan are going bananas. The Fan is basically hitting 6700 rpms , the computer in not even that hot and processor usage is in the mid range ..even though that the only programs running are blackmagic speed test and activity monitor so I do not get it ...

 

[Weaselboy]

so here is the result... my read speeds have improved but my write speeds are even slower than before

Well shoot... so much for that idea. It is really odd you fans are going nuts with little or no CPU usage there. I wonder if there is a larger, underlying hardware issue here maybe with the logic board.

Have you tried running the Apple Hardware Test to see if that shows anything?

 

[ygys]

Well shoot... so much for that idea. It is really odd you fans are going nuts with little or no CPU usage there. I wonder if there is a larger, underlying hardware issue here maybe with the logic board.

Have you tried running the Apple Hardware Test to see if that shows anything?

so I got there but for some uknown reason the computer does not want to connect to the Internet .
It is showing me that the wifi password is not correct but I am sure it is . I have tried to make a wifi hotspot out of my iPhone and it does not want to accept the iPhone password either .
I have restarted the computer twice with the same result

 

[Weaselboy]

so I got there but for some uknown reason the computer does not want to connect to the Internet .
It is showing me that the wifi password is not correct but I am sure it is . I have tried to make a wifi hotspot out of my iPhone and it does not want to accept the iPhone password either .
I have restarted the computer twice with the same result

Try opening up the router with no wifi password just for this and see if that works.

 

[ygys]

ok so this is the message that came up :-/

 

[Weaselboy]

ok so this is the message that came up :-/

How are running the test? It varies by year model, and you need to look over that support doc. I linked and figure out how to do it for your specific model.

Do you have this disc?

AHT is located on the Applications Install Disc 2 and should be included with your computer or the MacBook Air Software Reinstall Drive on a MacBook Air (Late 2010).

 

[2IS]

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

Good luck fixing this.

Image

I too have a 2010 MBA and that's about what I'm getting (161.4/190.1) and that's on a 128GB SSD that has endured every OS upgrade since Snow Leopard. Windows 7 boot camp configuration. A complete wipe and clean install of OSX and went with parallels only for my Windows needs to save some disk space. In other words, quite a bit of writing to this SSD and it's still going strong relative to it's performance when new.

 

[ygys]

How are running the test? It varies by year model, and you need to look over that support doc. I linked and figure out how to do it for your specific model.

Do you have this disc?

All I did was enter my wifi, then I choose english as my language and than that window popped up.

I am not sure what disc are you talking about.
As far as I know there were no Discs with macbook airs since 2010.
there might have been a usb flash drive with snow leopard stored on it but I have no idea where it is right now :/

 

[tmarks11]

I have around 6-7 gb of free space

And there lies your problem. Your SSD is going to slow way down with most of the space used up.

Funny to live in a world where 6 GB left is "almost used up"... I remember my first HDD had 40 MB of space... total. But I digress...

I would recommend that you get a larger SSD. Transcend JetDrive 500 in 240 GB size will make all the difference in the world... and it is a slightly faster drive than the OEM drive, so you will get a bit of a benefit there. For $180, it is a cheap way to get a few more years of life out of your machine.

http://www.transcend-info.com/apple/jetdrive/

 

[NazgulRR]

Recondition the SSD.

http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2015/20150112_1019-SSD-recondition.html

 

[motrek]

Recondition the SSD.

http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2015/20150112_1019-SSD-recondition.html

Looks like "reconditioning" the SSD just marks empty blocks as free via TRIM. You can do the same with Apple's Disk Utility and just choosing "repair disk." I would trust this more than a 3rd party tool that might be doing other stuff I don't want.

 

[JonLa]

And there lies your problem. Your SSD is going to slow way down with most of the space used up.

Funny to live in a world where 6 GB left is "almost used up"... I remember my first HDD had 40 MB of space... total. But I digress...

I would recommend that you get a larger SSD. Transcend JetDrive 500 in 240 GB size will make all the difference in the world... and it is a slightly faster drive than the OEM drive, so you will get a bit of a benefit there. For $180, it is a cheap way to get a few more years of life out of your machine.

http://www.transcend-info.com/apple/jetdrive/

Got to agree here - once it hits less than 20% space you'll find in the logs that it's constantly doing something it calls "thinning" to try to cope with the tiny amount of available space. I'd try moving a shed-load of files off there (get a nifty mini drive and micro sd combo?) and reboot, see if it improves.

On a separate note, doing a clean install (like complete wipe and just pull back the music, photos and document libraries) freed up about 50GB of space after previously just upgrading from Lion to ML to Mavericks to Yosemite.