Snow Leopard

[peterbj7]

My 13.3" MBP came with 10.6.6 and I dutifully updated it to 10.6.8. The trouble is I also did a lot of other things, so I can't tell what's done what. Anyway, in the past week the machine has run like a dog, and today I finally reinstalled OS-X from the original disk. I didn't erase the disk beforehand, hoping it would just repair or replace those files that had been corrupted. I was delighted to find as I prayed that nothing else has changed, and I still have all my data and added programs. But it's running much more snappily than it has done for some time. My question - might my problems with poor running & difficulty opening & closing programs have been related to the upgrade to 10.6.8, or is that likely to be just a coincidence? I don't want to return to 10.6.8 if it just brings back my problems.

Interestingly, the "about this Mac" page says my update disk is 10.6.8, which it certainly isn't. It's 10.6.6, and that's what has just been reinstalled.

 

[pigoo3]

My question - might my problems with poor running & difficulty opening & closing programs have been related to the upgrade to 10.6.8, or is that likely to be just a coincidence? I don't want to return to 10.6.8 if it just brings back my problems.

There's nothing wrong with OS 10.6.8…it most certainly was something else.

- Nick

 

[bobtomay]

^^^^ditto

Read the 'Beachballs' link in Nicks signature above.

Another reason it could be running slow all the time, the drive is too full, or you've moved a lot of stuff on and off of the drive and it is fragmented - not as in file fragmentation, OS X is pretty good at keeping your files defragmented - rather it has stuff spread from one end of the drive to the other instead of having most of the data stored at the beginning (the fastest part) of the drive.

 

[peterbj7]

I've got plenty of space left (170gb) but yes I have moved a lot on and off. I'm familiar with fragmentation issues from Windows - is there a good Mac routine that will optimise the disk?

 

[toMACsh]

TechTool Pro will do it, from Micromat. Not cheap though.

 

[chscag]

TechTool Pro is overkill and as mentioned, expensive. iDefrag is what I use and it works well. ($30.95) Always make a backup before using any program that accesses your hard drive and moves files.

 

[peterbj7]

I learned that lesson years ago with Windows.

 

[chas_m]

Being cheap, I prefer to simply clone my drive onto an external, then zero out the boot drive, then boot from the clone and clone back.