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Speed Up Computer

B

blasto333

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 3, 2004
247
2
I have made a mac for a very long time (pre os x days). Each time I have got a computer I have used migration assistant. My hard drive now has about 400GB of space used and can sometimes feel slow. I will be getting a mac book pro ARM when it comes out; but want to speed up my computer now and get rid of junk.

I am thinking of doing a complete rebuild of my mac book air 2017. Install from scratch and manually rebuild. If I do this now on my mac book air and get it working nice will this carry over well when I get the new mac book pro via migration assistant? Or should I wait until I get new computer.

My computer is usable but the mail app is buggy and some things are slow. My mac book air 2012 is actually faster.

Is this a bad idea? I just dread it as it is going to take at least a day to do :(
 
Mac's don't tend to suffer from slowdown to the same extent that Windows PC's used to when fully loaded with old Apps. However if you have a lot of junk due to multiple migration assistants then a clean install may help. I am not sure what Mac OS you are running at the moment, but it is likely that you have a number of 32 Bit Apps that no longer will run from Catalina onwards. So if you plan to do a clean install now may be a good time to clean up.
 
I am on 10.15.6 on both of my machines. (mac book air 2012, mac book air 2017)
 
Ok both are running the latest version of Catalina.

I would run Disk Utility First Aid on your SSD to ensure there are no issues.

Would also be worth checking and processes taking up a significant amount of processor time run Activity Monitor ( Use Spotlight to find and run) and click on the CPU tab. Click the %CPU column to see if anything is causing a problem.

Napkin 2 17-08-20, 3.35.18 pm.png
 
Like the one poster says, its most likely not due to your disk usage but more so the open processes.

MacOS also does routine maintenance automatically without you noticing.

If I were you, I would backup your personal/important files and note all the apps that you use and format your drive and start over.
 
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