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Speed up MacBook Pro

M

macuser154

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 17, 2009
372
0
UK
Would clearing out my hard drive speed up my MacBook Pro?

I currently have 26GB free, on a 160GB drive (148.73GB after formatting). Would freeing up some space speed it up?
 
26GB free is plenty. I'd be worrying if it was 5 or maybe even 10, but 26GB is a fair amount of space.

Speed up: More RAM (maybe, you'd need to see your resource usage), faster hard drive.
 
helllpppppp

hey guys im running 2.26 ghz 2 gb ram 5400 rpm harddrive i guess id like things to open fasters and stuff but i ahve bout 10 gbs of space left on my harddisk and im also running windows 7
please help me
i want to know should i get
a new harddrive
or 4 gbs of ram
 
sounds like a no brainer

leewwiiss said:
hey guys im running 2.26 ghz 2 gb ram 5400 rpm harddrive i guess id like things to open fasters and stuff but i ahve bout 10 gbs of space left on my harddisk and im also running windows 7
please help me
i want to know should i get
a new harddrive
or 4 gbs of ram
Click to expand...

Well if you are already running out of hard disk space you would need a new hard drive anyway so you could get a 7200 rpm one. Ideally you would also upgrade your RAM but you could do that a few more months down the line once you save more money. Buying the bigger faster hard drive kills 2 birds with 1 stone.
 
macuser154 said:
Would clearing out my hard drive speed up my MacBook Pro?

I currently have 26GB free, on a 160GB drive (148.73GB after formatting). Would freeing up some space speed it up?
Click to expand...

One thing that would help is upgrading to Snow Leopard (I know that you didn't mention which version OS you use, but I notice that your formatted drive space is less that actual capacity suggesting you are on an pre-SL OS). This would speed things up a bit and also reclaim a little HD space.

Other people have suggested ONYX, which is a nice tool to ensure that everything continues to run smoothly, but I wouldn't expect it to make that much difference to speed (especially since you have plenty of free HD space). In fact, some utilities will slow things down for a while (e.g. deleting your applications and systems cache).
 
You might also try defragging the hard drive.

iDefrag is the tool of choice for this.

Others will jump in and say, "it's not necessary".

Au contraire, I've included defragmentation as an essential part of my hard drive maintenence for years, and it has worked well for me since the OS 8 days!
 
Fishrrman said:
You might also try defragging the hard drive.

iDefrag is the tool of choice for this.

Others will jump in and say, "it's not necessary".

Au contraire, I've included defragmentation as an essential part of my hard drive maintenence for years, and it has worked well for me since the OS 8 days!
Click to expand...

I always thought OSX is doing the defrag by itself at night?!
 
leewwiiss said:
hey guys im running 2.26 ghz 2 gb ram 5400 rpm harddrive i guess id like things to open fasters and stuff but i ahve bout 10 gbs of space left on my harddisk and im also running windows 7
please help me
i want to know should i get
a new harddrive
or 4 gbs of ram
Click to expand...

10GB is a not a lot of space left; the ideal situation is at least 15% disk space free on a traditional HDD.

So you would benefit from a bigger HDD or possible clear out some of the files you won't need onto a DVD or whatnot.

The RAM upgrade would also help with your situation with loading files and applications, but I would resolve your free space issue first.

Basically if your budget allows for only one or the other, I would attempt to clear some space first, so you can get more RAM; however if you cannot clear space, you may have to get a bigger disk.
 
The Seagate 1tb external HDD is my choice of keeping my mbp running at its fastest when it comes time to free up space ;) (once i get around 400gb used, transfer all of it to my external and BOOM! free space! :D
 
I upgraded to a 750gb hard drive with 7200rpm platter. You can actually notice some improvements surprisingly vs the Apple's stock 5400rpm HD's.
 
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