Mid-2010 MacBook Pro unacceptably slow!

Hello fellow Mac users,

I'm having a little trouble with my MacBook Pro (the Mid-2010 version, as you might have guessed from the title). This is my first Mac, but as I am a Developer, I had little trouble switching, and knowing my way around Linux helped there.

I got this beauty in Nov 2010, and since then I've been playing around a lot, installing software I need for my work, tweaking OS X (mainly visual customization like dock, icons, ...).

What bugged me a lot was NTFS incompatibility, so I went ahead and fiddled with that. There are some great and easy to use tools and drivers and whatnot, so I installed and tinkered until I got it to work, and I could use my external NTFS-formatted harddrives. I noticed, however, that from the moment I installed this software (I cannot for the life of my recall the name, will google after posting) my system was slow. And I mean sloooow. As soon as anything was going on that used the harddrive, like moving/copying files, unzipping, installing software, games loading, just anything related to a HDD read/write ... I was basically incapacitated.

Edit 1: Googled the NTFS thing, and I'm pretty sure it was MacFuse.

I then uninstalled the NTFS drivers/tools/whatever, and after that it was somewhat better, but still unbearable for someone like me (I'm a web developer, working for a advertising agency, and we have a lot of clients with a lot of data to be managed). Starting up Photoshop and Coda simultaneously would result in a 5-minute-freeze (don't get me started on loading 2GB-files into PS), and to be blunt, that sucks.

I do not think that there's any other cause than what I have explained. Please ask whatever information you need, I will give it as fast and accurate as possible. I know I could always do a complete format-and-reinstall, but I simply do not have the time for that. I would need at least 6 or 7 consecutive hours of uninterruptedness for backing up everything, formatting, reinstalling and setting up all the software and preferences, which is not possible at the moment.

I hope one of you has any idea on how to fix this!

Sounds to me like the actions of a dying drive. What you are desribing is rather typical of the way many of today's drives head for the hills instead of the old clicking sound many of us are familiar with. There is not much else that is going to cause such an issue other than not having any free space left on the drive.

If this is a production machine, you should already have a backup. If not, I suggest you do so NOW! using your choice of Time Machine, SuperDuper! or CarbonCopyCloner. Both of the latter will give you a bootable backup. With an appropriate back up, from the time I begin opening the case to replace a hard drive, and a fully restored system with 150GB of data to be moved (via FW800), I am back up and running in about an hour.

Since you are still under warranty, I suggest you head for the Apple store.

bobtomay said:

Sounds to me like the actions of a dying drive. What you are desribing is rather typical of the way many of today's drives head for the hills instead of the old clicking sound many of us are familiar with. There is not much else that is going to cause such an issue other than not having any free space left on the drive.

If this is a production machine, you should already have a backup. If not, I suggest you do so NOW! using your choice of Time Machine, SuperDuper! or CarbonCopyCloner. Both of the latter will give you a bootable backup. With an appropriate back up, from the time I begin opening the case to replace a hard drive, and a fully restored system with 150GB of data to be moved (via FW800), I am back up and running in about an hour.

Since you are still under warranty, I suggest you head for the Apple store.

Click to expand...

First of all, thank you for your quick response! I must admit, I find it very hard to believe that my drive is dying. So far, there's no "progression" of any sort regarding the decay of speed, it's just constantly slow. I am not willing to just go ahead and buy a new HDD (yet).

Backing up my data from this HDD, which would be 260GB+, onto my 1,5TB USB 2.0 External HDD, would take more than an hour, I believe ...

Any other suggestions?

You do not have to buy the drive as it will still be under the twelve month warranty. Make an appointment with the Genius Bar and reseller.