Terrible (drive) performance (since update?)

[lapino]

I'm experiencing really terrible drive performance on my uMBP lately. The rainbow icon appears a LOT and the laptop is a lot less responsive then it was when I first used it (for the first few weeks that is).

Is there anything I can do or check this? I did fell of the stairs a while ago which dented my laptop, so maybe the drive got damaged too? (although I have not gotten any errors).

 

[product26]

I have noticed on both my macbook pro and mac pro that Leopard has suffered much more slowdowns over time than Tiger ever did. Both of my systems boot times have steadily increased noticeably.

Just waiting for snow leopard now... (fingers crossed)

One thing to check... next time you get the rainbow 'beach ball' put your ear to where the hard drive is and listen for rhythmic clicking. If it sounds like the drive is stuck in a loop of repetitive activity, it may be failing.

I'm experiencing really terrible drive performance on my uMBP lately. The rainbow icon appears a LOT and the laptop is a lot less responsive then it was when I first used it (for the first few weeks that is).

Is there anything I can do or check this? I did fell of the stairs a while ago which dented my laptop, so maybe the drive got damaged too? (although I have not gotten any errors).

 

[Cavanboy18]

im running snow leopard beta on my umbp 17" slow as dick 2.

 

[CTechKid]

Have you repaired disk permissions recently?

 

[MacModMachine]

I'm experiencing really terrible drive performance on my uMBP lately. The rainbow icon appears a LOT and the laptop is a lot less responsive then it was when I first used it (for the first few weeks that is).

Is there anything I can do or check this? I did fell of the stairs a while ago which dented my laptop, so maybe the drive got damaged too? (although I have not gotten any errors).

agreed...slow slow slow...i have been testing this alot. repaired permissions , ran tests...nothing came up bad..odd but its definitly slow and shows up mostly when browsing net.

 

[muttonhead411]

when the beachball shows up, it isnt necessarily the os thats the problem, it could occur because it is waiting upon applications or even peripherals attached (such as reading a slow usb drive). If an application is cause a system lag period, console will usually show it writing errors all over the place.

 

[kockgunner]

Haha. Slow as dick.

Anyway, I've been having the same problem on my early 08 model. I haven't pinpointed it to anything until you mentioned it. I have beach balls especially in Safari. Photoshop has also been pretty slow too. It was frozen for a good 5 minutes and force quits didn't do anything. Glad I'm not alone.

 

[m85476585]

How much free space do you have? If it is less than 10-20% the disk can become fragmented. To defragment it, you can do a time machine backup and restore from it if you don't want to buy something like idefrag.

Open Activity monitor and see what is happening when the beach ball is spinning. Is is CPU? Disk? low memory? If there is excessive CPU usage you can easily pinpoint the application(s).