Strange slowing freezing issue silver key MBP

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Hi,
I bought a 17" Silver key macbook pro (a1261, 2.5ghz, 2gb ram, 250gb hd, 10.6.8) to replace my older 17" a1226. For a few days , the new 17 worked great. I installed 10.8 on it, worked fine. I swapped the drives (to keep my files and 320gb 7200) and then things started slowing a bit. I decided to back up, then install 10.8 on my older snowleopard 320gb HD. This worked ok at 1st, then slowed, slower and slower.

I have wiped my drive 4 times, to reinstall a OS that doesn't move slow. 2 attempts at reinstall ML 10.8 (both failed), then reinstalled SL 10.6. That installed (from disk) but every click takes 15-30 secs to respond.
I've tried :

~ resetting SMC, PRAM
~ installed different ram chips
~ AHT (passed fine)
~ disk utiltiy

nothing helps... has anyone found this same issue ? I'm usually good with figuring these things out, but this has me stumped.
 

chscag

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It sounds like your 350 GB 7200 RPM drive may be failing and causing the slow downs. Did you try putting back the original 250 GB drive that was in the newer 17" MBP to see if that made a difference?
 
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I've already sold the smaller drive. I didn't think it could be drive since I've been using that drive for 4 months with no issues and it passed disk utility repair and I wiped it each time i installed OS. I guess I'll have to pull a drive from another computer to test out that theory.
 
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Also be aware removing drives can cause the SATA cable to fracture. They are pretty fragile and all that heat does them no good at all.
 
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I use a spudger to pry cables that are glued down, I've swapped 4 dozen drives without ever breaking a cable. Besides, broken cable would be blinking question mark folder on boot, not slow response.
 

pigoo3

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I have wiped my drive 4 times, to reinstall a OS that doesn't move slow. 2 attempts at reinstall ML 10.8 (both failed), then reinstalled SL 10.6. That installed (from disk) but every click takes 15-30 secs to respond.

If the old 250 gig HD worked fine...and the "new" 320 gig is slow (even after fresh installs of the OS). Then it's almost definitely the 320gig HD. HD's (old or new) can fail (or start to fail) at anytime.

I'm betting that if you still had that 250gig HD...it would have worked fine as well.

- Nick
 

Slydude

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I've already sold the smaller drive. I didn't think it could be drive since I've been using that drive for 4 months with no issues and it passed disk utility repair and I wiped it each time i installed OS. I guess I'll have to pull a drive from another computer to test out that theory.

That's not necessarily an indication that there isn't something wrong. I had a drive in an '08 Mac Pro fail suddenly. Right until the day it quite the S.M.A.R.T .status tested as OK. Then suddenly numerous failures appeared. I found out later that there are a large number of possible test parameters and not all utilities test all available S.M.A.R.T parameters.
 

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