IPhoto crippling my MBP

IPhoto is dragging my machine to the point where I have to force quit and restart after doing anything in the program. I have an early 2008 17"MBP w/ new 256gb solid state drive, 2.5 intel core 2 dou, 8gb ddr2 sdram. I'm running OS X 10.8.3 and have 50GB of memory free on the drive.

If I check my usage using Activity Monitor, it shows IPhoto taking up 160% of CPU. I get a spinning color wheel between any and all keystrokes after I've done any file work at all. Even after I have quit the program normally, I have a bogged down system which gets worse and worse the longer the machine goes without re-start.

Any ideas?

On my 2.4Ghz C2D iMac Starting iPhoto takes a bit but once it's up and running it's pretty smooth.

Even after it's been open a bit does it still drag like that?

The longer it's open, the slower it gets.

8GB of memory is definitely sufficient to keep iPhoto happy. Can you launch Activity Monitor again and then launch iPhoto and look at the memory consumption to see what it looks like. If you can tell us what the Active, Used, Free, Inactive values are as well as the Page Ins, Page Out values that'll help..

While iPhoto might be a drag getting going, it should be fine once fully loaded. Are there any other applications that cause this sort of behavior?

How new/old is the SSD and did you do a fresh install of OS X 10.8 on it or copy over an existing installation?

active: 2.10 GB
used: 3.68 GB
free: 4.35 GB
inactive: 939.8 MB
Page in: 2.42 GB
Page out: 0 bytes

SSD is new in January, and moved OS X from old drive to new.

You have sufficient memory (free + inactive) available and you have no Page outs which is good. So something else is messed up. How is the general performance with the SSD, does it work speedily in all tasks (except iPhoto) or does it lag on other apps as well?

It's been great for everything else. Do you think we should do a complete new install of the OS X?

What version of iPhoto? The newest is 9.4.3

I need to know what version of iPhoto, and also, I suggest doing a CLEAN INSTALL.


So, back everything up.

Do a 30 pass erase on the SSD, I normally do it 2 times.

Reinstall and do all new updates.

Do a 30 pass erase on the SSD, I normally do it 2 times.

Click to expand...

Bad advice. Not only will that take hours on end to complete, it will likely shorten the life of the SSD. An SSD device is not the same as a normal hard drive. Remember, it uses flash memory that has a limited number of reads and writes.

I have done that to both my personal SSD's with no problems, as has my stepfather with his MBA.

I have not ran into any problems doing so, and I will continue doing it.

Iphoto is up to date. Not sure what to do next short of removing all of iphoto and buying a different machine on which to run.

Air said:

I have done that to both my personal SSD's with no problems, as has my stepfather with his MBA.

I have not ran into any problems doing so, and I will continue doing it.

Click to expand...

You haven't yet because the problem will arise later down the line. You are in indeed shorting the life span of your SSDs.

chscag said:

Bad advice. Not only will that take hours on end to complete, it will likely shorten the life of the SSD. An SSD device is not the same as a normal hard drive. Remember, it uses flash memory that has a limited number of reads and writes.

Click to expand...

Agreed not the best thing to do to a SSD. It doesn't need that kind of maintenance at all.

I would do a backup of your current SSD, and perhaps get a separate storage device for your iPhoto library.

Is it bad enough it's going to kill it? If not, it dosen't matter.

Air said:

Is it bad enough it's going to kill it? If not, it dosen't matter.

Click to expand...

All hardware will eventually die. You are just making your SSD work harder than they should and will shorten their lifespan. It's your money. I prefer to have my stuff to last as long as they can.

Air said:

I have not ran into any problems doing so, and I will continue doing it.

Click to expand...

It's still bad advice. Do some research.

You could try closing iPhoto hold down the command and option key while opening iPhoto and then it will present you with a box to rebuild iPhoto since you said everything else is working correctly.

May be the drive beginning to show lack of free space. Requires at least 15%, and some say 20%, free space for a drive to work anywhere near peak efficiency. 50GB is just 20%, maybe a little less with formatting etc. Have you considered using a Firewire external drive and running iPhoto from that?

Air said:

Is it bad enough it's going to kill it? If not, it dosen't matter.

Click to expand...

Yes, an SSD will die sooner using that practice. Would suggest you do some reading pertaining to the care, maintenance, using apps like defraggers, etc. as related to SSDs.

There also is no need of the practice of a single 30 pass erase, much less twice, on "any" drive that you're just blowing away and re-partitioning & formatting for your own continued use. imho - that's a complete waste of time for 99%+ of typical users.

How many pictures are in your iphoto library ... I start a new iphoto library every 10 thousand photos or my iphoto slows down and I get the spinning wheel a lot ..