SSD Issue? OS Issue? IDK! It's Sloooow...

[Mr. Monsieur]

Hello!

Something has happened to my 2009 MBP and it’s moving slower than ever before. I boosted RAM to 8GB soon after I bought it. I put in a 250GB SSD boot drive a few years ago, as well as a 1TB backup drive (in place of the DVD drive, which I took out). I currently have over 80GB of free space on the boot drive, and over 300GB free on the backup drive. My computer is running OS X 10.11 El Capitan (its specs don’t allow it to upgrade any further). After googling, I found and followed the advice in these two articles:

https://9to5mac.com/2015/10/16/how-to-make-your-mac-run-silent-cool-fast-os-x-el-capitan/

https://9to5mac.com/2015/04/30/how-to-clean-speed-up-mac-free-download/

I actually ran OnyX twice, just in case(!) The result is that my computer is now running slower than ever :-(


QUESTIONS

1) I’m wondering if I need to do something to the SSD drive to tweak its settings...I’m under the impression that adding a 3rd party SSD requires a certain amount of maintenance…but I have no idea what it is that I need to do?

2) I’ve also been wondering if I should just reinstall the OS? If I were to do this…perhaps I should do so with an earlier (less demanding?) version of OS X (which one?)

3) Should I bring it to the Genius Bar? Perhaps they could reinstall the OS or tweak the SSD for me?

ANY thoughts/suggestions would be much appreciated!

 

[Fishrrman]

I know this seems elementary, but...

Do you have a bootable version of the OS on the old HDD, as well?
IF so, have you checked the "about this Mac" choice (Apple menu) to be sure that you're not accidentally booting from the HDD?
(almost certainly this isn't the case, but check anyway).

Do you have a bootable OS on the HDD?
If so, deliberately boot up from it.
Then run Disk Utility's "repair disk" feature on the internal drive.
WATCH CAREFULLY the progress report DU gives in progress (click the disclosure arrow to reveal it).
Do you see a line in there that says "Trimming unused blocks" ???

 

[Mr. Monsieur]

I know this seems elementary, but...

Do you have a bootable version of the OS on the old HDD, as well?
IF so, have you checked the "about this Mac" choice (Apple menu) to be sure that you're not accidentally booting from the HDD?
(almost certainly this isn't the case, but check anyway).

Do you have a bootable OS on the HDD?
If so, deliberately boot up from it.
Then run Disk Utility's "repair disk" feature on the internal drive.
WATCH CAREFULLY the progress report DU gives in progress (click the disclosure arrow to reveal it).
Do you see a line in there that says "Trimming unused blocks" ???

Thanks so much for your response! I double-checked...it does say "Startup Disk" is "SSD." The new HDD was added maybe 6 months ago (replaced a dying 500GB HDD). I'm nearly certain it is not bootable (when I reboot and hold the Option key, the options are "SSD" and "Recovery Disk 10.11" or something like that) When I first added the SSD, it was SUPER fast, which makes the current situation perplexing...

 

[BrianBaughn]

Create a new user account for testing and see if it's as slow when logged into that.