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speeding up my MacBook Pro

wfriedwald

wfriedwald

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
my current set-up:

a late 2024 M5 MacBook Pro
Tahoe 26.2
24GB Memory (RAM?)
startup drive with 730GB free

most of my most important files, folders that I use every day, are an external SSD drive ORRICO, 2TB.

and I do have a ton of external hard drive (traditional drives not SSD) attached, probably too many.

I was hoping this would be the fastest system I could possibly get, but I am still waiting for the beach ball many times a day.

of course, I guess that's too big expected, mainly, I imagine because of all the external hard drives attached.

Does anyone have an idea how to speed it up, or get rid of the beach ball? (Other than replacing all the older hard drives with SSD, which would cost a fortune!)

gratreful for any suggestoins!

w
 
i have 2015 macbook running macos 12 . I have no beach balls. My guess is spotlight is trying to index your HDDs and HDDs are slow. IIRC HDDs and mac partition system AFPS does not play well its made for SSD.

What you could do is format your external HDD to GUID Partition and ExFAT format (readable by Windows and MacOS). Unfortunately this means you will have to transfer your files to a temporary place, format the hdds, then transfer back in a tedious process.

you can test if the hdds are the problem by detaching the hdds and see if you get the beachballs
 
What you're likely waiting for is all the external hard drives to spin up. You may be able to avoid this by keeping the disks spinning all the time. This is done in System Settings-Battery-Options, and selecting "never" for the "put hard disks to sleep" option.
Otherwise leaving the disks unmounted when you aren't using them should help this too.

Not directly related but you probably want to update the operating system to 26.5, Apple has been improving the OS and getting rid of lots of bugs with each update.
 
MacBH928 said:
What you could do is format your external HDD to GUID Partition and ExFAT format (readable by Windows and MacOS). Unfortunately this means you will have to transfer your files to a temporary place, format the hdds, then transfer back in a tedious process.
Click to expand...
ExFAT isn't really advisable to use without the need for cross-platform compatibility. It's a much less resilient filesystem than APFS or even HFS+.
 
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Do you really NEED TO have all those external drives connected all the time?
(serious question)

Would it be possible to put all the stuff that you access frequently on one or two drives, preferably SSDs?

I have HHDs and SSDs all over the place (some of the HDDs are approaching 20-25 years old). But NONE of them are connected to my m4 Mini unless I need to access them. When I'm done with them, I eject AND disconnect them ... until next time...
 
Apple_Robert said:
Consider setting up a NAS (Synology for example) for all the data that is on your external drives. That would be much more conducive than what you have right now, in my opinion.
Click to expand...


This is by far the best approach, the one I use with a 4-bay QNAP.
You might even be able to put your hard drives in it, depending on the RAID configuration you want.
 
wfriedwald said:
Does anyone have an idea how to speed it up, or get rid of the beach ball? (Other than replacing all the older hard drives with SSD, which would cost a fortune!)
Click to expand...
First step is to diagnose the problem. You are concerned that hard disk may be causing the problem. Let's try and decide whether this is the issue.

Disconnect your hard drives and run without them for a while. Does that get rid of the beach balls? If it does, you know that the HDDs are involved - either because they cause a delay or some software using them does. Maybe connect back one at a time to see if particular ones are the problem.

If you still get beachballs with the HDD disconnected, need to look elsewhere. I would next look at RAM usage.
 
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wfriedwald said:
my current set-up:

a late 2024 M5 MacBook Pro

w
Click to expand...
To my knowledge, the M5 MacBook Pro was released in October 2025
Hand On Face.gif


Lou
 
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