Memory "Swap" full in 8 hours

Hi,
I have a macbook (the black one)

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM
250GB HDD. (200 used, 32 free)

Now I started getting a lot of beachballing, so after a search of the internet I noticed that my SWAP showed high values (1.8GB/2GB) which I think is pretty full given my spec, and that log-out/login should sort it, or a reboot.

So I followed the instructions, but after a reboot yesterday, 24hours later I am back up to 1.9GB/2GB for the Swap and page-ins/outs are up to 170,950 and 183,796 respectively.

I don't do any memory hungry things with it - word processing, excel, lots of pdf reading and a lot of internet use (Firefox). I have a big-ish iPhoto library (30gig or so) and have my iPhone synced to this machine as well so it opens and closes a lot.

I was just wondering, why on earth would it be fulling up so quickly, and how can I stop it? I know its quite old (April 08, I think) but surely its should be fine given my usage?
More RAM, free up HDD space, a piece of software to help?

Any help appreciated

FireFox...

memory leaks...

Just last week, my mid '11 machine was running slow.
Noticed I had 13 MB free memory.
I quit FireFox.
Free memory went to 2.59 GB.

That's the biggest jump I've seen, but often see >1GB freed simply by quitting and restarting FF.

Would use strictly Safari, but need FF for the extensions available for a game I play.

Hi Bob,
Thanks for the reply. Seems a bit odd that it is spilling so much memory. Is this a known fault?

Are there other recommended browsers other than Safari? I'm not such a fan....

Whats chrome on Mac like? Does well on my Windows laptop

I'm sure the game and extensions I use take up a fair bit of that, but FF has gotten to be much worse than Safari.

Don't use Chrome - I don't like it.
We do have a fair number of members that are using it however.

My personal favorite browser is still Opera, although 1Password doesn't work with it - so Safari it is for me.

If you're running a version of OS X with access to the App store, you might also try Free Memory.

I use that at times when I can't (don't want to) exit the browser.
It often clears up to about 1.25 GB memory for me.
Has a nice little icon sits on the menu bar.

Increasing the physical memory in your machine would be a good idea also - it's cheap enough nowadays.

****. Running an older version. Leopard, I think.

Yep - 10.5.8.

I'd strongly encourage you to upgrade to Snow Leopard at least.
Most of us agree, it was a very nice improvement over 10.5.

You can only get it by calling Apple - have seen reports of $20 & $30 for it.
Once you get to 10.6.8, you can upgrade further - all online from the App Store.

You should already have noticed a lot of apps made in the last couple of years are no longer 10.5 compatible.

Upgrading beyond 10.6 though, and you would have to make sure all your existing apps would be compatible.

A part of your issue is also going to be the fact you have only 15% free space.
I notice my machine begin the slow down process at 30-35% free space.
Dumping some no longer needed stuff and getting to a minimum 25% free space would probably help as would a defrag more than likely.

Vanilla Firefox (no extensions) has gotten considerably better but extensions continue to be Firefox's Achilles' heel. If you use a lot of extensions, start disabling them one at a time to see if any one extension is causing a problem.

Awesome. Really appreciate the advice and help guys.

Will keep this bookmarked and get it all sorted out.
More RAM (2x2Gb) is only 50 quid so I'll upgrade to Snow Leopard and delete FF plugins and see what happens. I don't use them anyway. Looks like the sad deleting of unwanted files is going to have to go ahead too!

Does Leopard have a built in defrag tool?

No - OS X is laid out in such a way that defragmentation will provide little to no benefit. Thus, even if you do get a tool, you'll likely see no improvement.

coriordan said:

More RAM (2x2Gb) is only 50 quid so I'll upgrade to Snow Leopard and delete FF plugins and see what happens.

Click to expand...

You'll be surprised how much more ram will help with this situation.

- Nick

Cool.

Its just a bit annoying that it would slow down so much even though I do such basic tasks on it. Oh well.

coriordan said:

Cool.

Its just a bit annoying that it would slow down so much even though I do such basic tasks on it. Oh well.

Click to expand...

I actually have the exact same MacBook (but the white version). I also only have 2gig of ram in it…and was going to upgrade it to 4gig as soon as I get around to it.

By the way…technically this model MacBook can be upgraded to 6gig of ram (Apple officially says 4gig). But going from a 4gig upgrade (2 x 2gig) to a 6gig upgrade (2gig + 4gig)…doubles the price. The 4gig stick of ram obviously is more pricey.

Just in case you wanted to know.

- Nick

vansmith said:

No - OS X is laid out in such a way that defragmentation will provide little to no benefit. Thus, even if you do get a tool, you'll likely see no improvement.

Click to expand...

I use to would agree, but you'll find at least a couple of us that will argue that point now.

I've seen boot times from before and after iDefrag change from > 45 seconds to < 30 seconds. That's testing with a minimum of 3 cold boots for each. Application launch times also feeling much snappier with some apps going from 1-3 bounces in the dock to none.

The biggest area of help from my experience is to those that run their OS on a partition with less than 40% free space and can be particularly helpful to those that have filled their drive.

Would definitely agree that running a defrag for those that "maintain" 50-60% or greater free space is more than likely a waste of time and energy with OS X (unlike that other OS), and at 40-50% free space, probably only a negligible help.

Really appreciate the help and advice and will certainly be taking it all on board when I get the chance to fix all this.

I am pretty bad/lazy regarding drive management so will look into partitions etc. I dont even have a backup HDD!

Thanks again, guys
Charlie