Any helpful input would be greatly appreciated.

A while back I cloned a new Momentus XT, installed it and my Mini ran great. Startups and shutdowns were fast. Recently, after performing a permission repair, startups an shutdowns became noticeably slower. Logins and logouts are still fast as usual, thankfully. I also upgraded the XT firmware to SD24 a while back. I would have never thought that my system performance would suffer from running permission repair.
I tried:
resetting the pram
resetting smc
ran fsck in single user mode
verified startup disk
I was going to try to archive and re-install but I found out Apple discontinued it for Snow Leopard. (Why Apple???? this whole experience has been like Microsoft)
If I cannot remedy the issue I was thinking of doing a Time Machine backup of user settings. Will this restore my pop email accounts?
I know if the startup disk is not selected properly, startup time can suffer. One thing I think is weird is the sata info from system profiler: what is the volume disk0s1 with a size of 209.7 MB?
NVidia MCP89 AHCI:
Vendor: NVidia
Product: MCP89 AHCI
Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported
ST95005620AS:
Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,107,862,016 bytes)
Model: ST95005620AS
Revision: SD24
Serial Number: --------
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Rotational Rate: 7200
Medium Type: Rotational
Bay Name: Lower
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Capacity: 209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)
Writable: Yes
BSD Name: disk0s1
HDD:
Capacity: 499.76 GB (499,763,888,128 bytes)
Available: 400.31 GB (400,314,204,160 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /
If I have to do a re-install then so be it. My main concern is is getting all my user files and pop email back after I do it. I have never used Time Machine; only Carbon Copy Cloner on a regular basis.
A while back I cloned a new Momentus XT, installed it and my Mini ran great. Startups and shutdowns were fast. Recently, after performing a permission repair, startups an shutdowns became noticeably slower. Logins and logouts are still fast as usual, thankfully. I also upgraded the XT firmware to SD24 a while back. I would have never thought that my system performance would suffer from running permission repair.
I tried:
resetting the pram
resetting smc
ran fsck in single user mode
verified startup disk
I was going to try to archive and re-install but I found out Apple discontinued it for Snow Leopard. (Why Apple???? this whole experience has been like Microsoft)
If I cannot remedy the issue I was thinking of doing a Time Machine backup of user settings. Will this restore my pop email accounts?
I know if the startup disk is not selected properly, startup time can suffer. One thing I think is weird is the sata info from system profiler: what is the volume disk0s1 with a size of 209.7 MB?
NVidia MCP89 AHCI:
Vendor: NVidia
Product: MCP89 AHCI
Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported
ST95005620AS:
Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,107,862,016 bytes)
Model: ST95005620AS
Revision: SD24
Serial Number: --------
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Rotational Rate: 7200
Medium Type: Rotational
Bay Name: Lower
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Capacity: 209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)
Writable: Yes
BSD Name: disk0s1
HDD:
Capacity: 499.76 GB (499,763,888,128 bytes)
Available: 400.31 GB (400,314,204,160 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /
If I have to do a re-install then so be it. My main concern is is getting all my user files and pop email back after I do it. I have never used Time Machine; only Carbon Copy Cloner on a regular basis.