OS X very slow after HDD upgrade

I have a Macbook Pro (Mid 2009) 15" 2.53GHz running OS X 10.6.7. I have recently upgraded from 4GB (2x2GB) of RAM to 8GB (2x4GB Kingston DDR3 1066MHz SODimm). That upgrade went smoothly and without issue.

I purchased a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB 5200 RPM 8MB (WD10TPVT) to upgrade the 250GB drive that came standard. I used Winclone to copy my Bootcamp partition (Win XP Pro 32bit) to my external drive (WD My Book Essential) which I also use for Time Machine. I made sure to back up Time Machine as well to have a recent copy of my machine.

I swapped out the drives and booted from the Mac DVD that came with my MBP. I selected to restore the Time Machine back up and let that run. When it rebooted, I got the grey Apple screen with the swirling cog and it would not go past that and I let it run for well over an hour. I finally booted from the Mac DVD and went into Disc Utility. I Verified Permissions and came up with many issues. I had it correct permissions and let it reboot, but came up with the same issue.

I then restored an older back up from Time Machine and the same issue occurred. Finally, I reinstalled Snow Leopard and let it reboot. To my surprise, almost all my data was there, but I needed all the software updates.

After getting all those, my Macbook Pro is very sluggish to boot and every task is met with the beach ball. I restored my Windows partition and that works just fine. I've verified and corrected permissions once again, as well as verified the disk. The verified permissions comes up with more problems and it states it fixes them all.

I'm not really sure what to try next. I'm a real novice with OS X, as I am a Windows convert as of early 2010. Any and all help is appreciated. Hope I got all the info you might need.

How about a clean install of OS X and then a Time Machine restore?

Make sure to select DU from the install disk to format the drive. This will kill the Windows partition.

I'm thinking that might be the route I need to go. Any other ideas?

Try resetting your PRAM-NVRAM before doing a clean install. See if that helps to speed things up somewhat.

Also, I'd like to point out that you're using a hard drive that is not recommended for your MBP. The 1 TB drive you have is thicker (12.5 mm) than what Apple uses in their notebook computers. The drive should be no thicker than 9.5 mm to allow for proper cooling.

I'll definitely give this a try. I know the drive's bigger than what was original was, but it was the only 1TB I could find in my price range. Thanks!

If the PRAM reset doesn't work, post back and we'll try something else.

Will do, thanks for the direction chscag!

Did the PRAM reset and it doesn't seem to have had any effect (followed directions to the letter). Any other ideas?

The drive may be fragmented with scattered free space. You can give iDefrag a try if you like. It's $29.95 but they also have a demo version you can use to find out if the drive is fragmented.

Tried iDefrag, showed a really nominal about of fragmentation.

Any other ideas before I format and reinstall?*


*Side note: I've never done a format and fresh install on a Mac. Any decent idiot proof directions that I can use to do this?

the way I see it, the only practical and logical solution for your problem is to just format the drive, do a clean install and solve the problem, it's that simple. No other idea is needed.

I know it needs to be done, but I can't do all that right now due to needing the Windows partition for work. I was just looking to see if there was anything I could do in the interim.

Would formatting, fresh install of OS X then restoring from a back up be the best route or should I just format and restore the back up?

The problem with formatting and reinstalling is that it may render the Windows partition unusable which is why I was trying to steer you around that.

Since iDefrag proved that the drive is not fragmented, there's no sense in purchasing it. So we can put that aside.

My next suggestion is to take a look at using WinClone to image and backup your Windows partition before formatting and reinstalling. The only caveat here is that WinClone is unstable and may not work right. It's also no longer being developed. However, lots of folks have used it successfully, so I'll leave that decision up to you.

I actually backed up my Windows partition on my old drive using Winclone and it worked great. I'm using that image on my MBP now with no issues whatsoever.

OK, great. You're familiar with WinClone which is good. Just wanted to give you the standard warning about using it though. Let us know how things turn out.

Will do! Thanks everyone for the suggestions!

I swapped out the drive back to the old one so I at least have a well functioning machine. I purchased an external hard drive enclosure so that I could connect the drive via USB and erase/format it in Disk Utility but it doesn't recognize the drive (not in Finder or Disk Utility). Other than the enclosure being a POS, any thoughts as to why this is happening?

Maybe the drive is failing. Thats what it sounds like. Check the SMART status.

I replaced the hard drive enclosure and it works fine now. It's ready for when I can put the most updated image on it.