MacBook Pro 13 Mid 2010 super slow

Hi, facing some problems with my old MacBook Pro 13 mid 2010 2.66 GHz duo. I upgraded it few months ago with an SSD Crucial 1TB and 8 GB ram. All fine ! Two week ago after a reboot shift buttons and power button started not to work but speed was still ok. After that it started to become super slow and also making command + R, initializing the SSD and reinstalling Mac OS problem remain. I ordered the keyboard + backlight to be replaced but at this stage not sure if I should change the motherboard or what else I should do..........thanks for your help / suggestions

what else I should do……….thanks for your help / suggestions

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How full is that SSD?

Do you have a cloned backup external drive you could boot from and see if things speed up??

PS: Welcome to mac-forums.





- Patrick
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I have a back up made with time machine and I'm currently using the external disk I used for the back to reinstall everything.

I did it by entering i in recovery mode at stat up ( pressing command + R keys ).

As the macbook is superslow also the data transfer is super slow. The data transfer from time machine back up foresee approx. 80 GB and the estimated time given is approx 4/5 days at current speed.........

One more information is that the cooling fan always run permanently, always.

Let's hope someone can help me to solve this mistery.

Thanks

@Andrew:

Are you sure you wish to continue spending $$ on an eight year old MacBook Pro? I have no idea what your situation is, but it seems to us that you've already put a considerable amount of money and time into that machine and looks like you're about to do more. Of course that's your choice. If you wish to proceed, check eBay for parts or maybe an entire machine that you can cannibalize for parts.

One more information is that the cooling fan always run permanently, always.

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I can't recall if that Mac needs the special temp sensor cable/adapter added when a SSD is added.
ie: as available from macsales.com

You could try Macs Fan Control.app if the fans are running at full speed or close to it and you want to slow them down:
https://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control/support

PS: The suggested "estimated time" is often waaay off and exaggerated. And remember the old saying, the pot won't boil while being watched.




- Patrick
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Andrew72r said:

I ordered the keyboard + backlight to be replaced but at this stage not sure if I should change the motherboard or what else I should do..........thanks for your help / suggestions

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As chscag mentioned...are you sure you should be investing more money into an 8 year old computer? I sure hope the keyboard & backlight replacement wasn't too expensive. Add to this the cost of the SSD and RAM...and possibly talking the motherboard. Add all this up...and you could have purchased a much newer used computer...or had a nice ball of cash towards a newer computer.

- Nick

Andrew72r said:

Hi, facing some problems with my old MacBook Pro 13 mid 2010 2.66 GHz duo. I upgraded it few months ago with an SSD Crucial 1TB and 8 GB ram. All fine ! Two week ago after a reboot shift buttons and power button started not to work but speed was still ok. After that it started to become super slow and also making command + R, initializing the SSD and reinstalling Mac OS problem remain. I ordered the keyboard + backlight to be replaced but at this stage not sure if I should change the motherboard or what else I should do..........thanks for your help / suggestions

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I am just guessing, but maybe the hard drivel cable is bad and/or somewhat loose. You could start by checking the cable and replacing it if necessary...

If that not the issue, maybe neither the TRIM, nor the Crucial SSD built-in Active Garbage Collection works. Crucial SSDs do support TRIM command in addition to the built-in garbage collection.

The TRIM has been supported in OSX since El Capitano, but it had to be enabled manually in third-party, a.k.a not Apple SSDs. In later versions of OSX/macOS, TRIM might be enabled by the OS automatically or might not. You can check TRIM setting in "About this Mac\System Report...\SATA/SATA Express" and manually enable, if it says "No".

Crucial SSD built-in Active Garbage Collection only works when the system is at idle. You can try disabling sleep and let the system idle for awhile. You may or may not recover the initial performance levels.

At this point, I'd secure erase the Crucial SSD, reinstall macOS, check if TRIM is enabled and disable sleep for the system. If you still have the same issue with the performance, then the issue is not the SSD.

Crucial SSD built-in Active Garbage Collection only works when the system is at idle.

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I didn't know that, and thanks for the info.

Is that typical for most other SSDs as well do you know, or just Crucial SSDs??





- Patrick
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pm-r said:

I didn't know that, and thanks for the info.

Is that typical for most other SSDs as well do you know, or just Crucial SSDs??

- Patrick
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You're welcome Patrick...

There might be some Crucial SSDs re-branded under a different name, for example Kingston used to have SSDs with garbage collection.

At the beginning of the Solid State Drive getting a hold of the desktop market, most OSs did not support the TRIM command. As such, the OS market pretty much dictated the integration of similar feature within the firmware to maintain SSD performance, hence the garbage collection. Most SSD manufacturers moved to TRIM only command by now, since all OSs support it natively, and to my recollection Crucial is the one, possibly the only company that still has garbage collection and in addition, added the TRIM support as well. Some people still believe that the garbage collection does a better job, than TRIM, but I am not one of them for number of reasons.

As a historical perspective... When different OSs had started integrating TRIM in to the OS, the developers' understanding how it works had been quite different from the SSD manufacturers. Even within manufacturers had disagreement in implementing it, the most vocal company had been Samsung back in the days. This was one of the reasons why Apple did not support after-market, or third-party SSD at the beginning.

Sorry for the long reply to your one question...

Sorry for the long reply to your one question...

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Nice and short and concise I thought, thanks.




- Patrick
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If I can pop in here, I noticed that Cr00zng mentioned a "secure erase" of the SSD. My understand is that one should NEVER do that to a SSD as that can shorten their life significantly. Can some of the experts here confirm that thinking or correct it? Thanks.

Csmac said:

If I can pop in here, I noticed that Cr00zng mentioned a "secure erase" of the SSD. My understand is that one should NEVER do that to a SSD as that can shorten their life significantly. Can some of the experts here confirm that thinking or correct it? Thanks.

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Gee, I missed that, and I would agree completely with your comments and that was my understanding as well as for "erasing" SSDs that way. Definitely NOT recommended.





- Patrick
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Actually unless you are really paranoid about erasing an SSD, using secure erase is not necessary. The TRIM function takes care of that. Data Recovery software developers have stated that once a file is deleted on a SSD it usually can not be recovered by using normal means. By the way, that was from the folks who develop Data Rescue. I'm sure that professional data recovery specialists can still recover deleted data (for a price).

When using an SSD, backups are a must!

chscag said:

Actually unless you are really paranoid about erasing an SSD, using secure erase is not necessary. The TRIM function takes care of that. Data Recovery software developers have stated that once a file is deleted on a SSD it usually can not be recovered by using normal means. By the way, that was from the folks who develop Data Rescue. I'm sure that professional data recovery specialists can still recover deleted data (for a price).

When using an SSD, backups are a must!

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Generally, I do agree with you with couple of comments...

The secure erase isn't just utilized for "paranoia", it is also used to restore original performance of the SSD device. Since Andrew has/had issues with performance, the secure erase seemed like the right utility prior to restoring/reinstalling the macOS.

Most, if not all manufacturers include secure erase and advanced secure erase in their utility apps. The actual secure erase takes 5-6 minutes, but cannot be done on the active system drive. There are also bootable media to do the same and some BIOS/EUFI has it built-in and can do secure erase, if the drive supports it. I don't know, if Macs have that option built-in, I had no need for it as of yet... ;D

As the SSD storage getting older and had became mainstream, there are number of utilities and/or companies that can recover data from failed SSD drives. I recall that the forensic expert in my department had been able to pull off data from a failed SSD drives about 4-5 years ego. I am no longer there, but certainly, she has better tools by now. You can also download apps for Mac to, quote:

Is your SSD drive dead, failed or crashed? Don’t worry! This page shows you how to recover data from dead/failed SSD with powerful dead SSD data recovery software in a few simple steps.

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Source

And yes, the link has Mac/Windows version of the SSD data recovery app...

To restore the SSD speed a secure erase is not needed, if indeed that is the issue here (there could be system problems that are causing the slowdown).

First verify that Trim in enabled and if not enable it as below:

At the prompt in Terminal type: sudo trimforce enable
It will give you a big warning then ask if you wish to do it. Type Y and trim will be enabled and the system will reboot.

Then to restore the SSD speed due to Trim not functioning the file system on the SSD is cleaned of any unused, but not released blocks by:

1. Perform a Command-S boot to Single User mode and once booted type "fsck -fy" (without the quotes) at the command line. At the end of the run you will see a message about "all unused blocks TRIMed."

2. Now type reboot.

This proceedure will release the free space that got cluttered up while TRIM was off or not working properly and should restore your write speeds. I've used this very successfully when I had an SSD that did not function well with Trim. Every few weeks I had to reclean the file system to regain the speed. My new SSD works great with Trim and I never need to do this any more.

Note: This file cleaning procedure was found on MacRumors Oct. 31,2014.

And yes, the link has Mac/Windows version of the SSD data recovery app...

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Not a bad price if the app actually works, and they do allow you to download a trial version to test with first. Revovering data from a dead SSD as this app claims to be able to do is quite a feat, but again, if it actually works as they claim. I'm a bit skeptical......