questions about upgrading

Hey, first post, but I figured this would be a good place to start. I want to upgrade my computer, I bought it about a year and a half ago. Put in a second hard drive (300 gb). It's really sluggish and sticky, what do I have to do to bring it up to par? Is it as simple as getting more RAM? Oh, and it's running OS-10.3.9

Here's the info on it:

Machine Model: Power Mac G4
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.1)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 800 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
Memory: 768 MB
Bus Speed: 133 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.3.3f2

You've got a decent amount of RAM really. Try a fresh install, or upgrade to 10.4 Tiger.

so, maybe it's the 120 gb of music that is slowing it down?

Alittle more specific on what exactly is running sluggish?

RottenApple said:

Hey, first post, but I figured this would be a good place to start. I want to upgrade my computer, I bought it about a year and a half ago. Put in a second hard drive (300 gb). It's really sluggish and sticky, what do I have to do to bring it up to par? Is it as simple as getting more RAM? Oh, and it's running OS-10.3.9

Here's the info on it:

Machine Model: Power Mac G4
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.1)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 800 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
Memory: 768 MB
Bus Speed: 133 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.3.3f2

Click to expand...

Do you leave it on overnight? (so it can run the system cleanup periodically)

Have you got every application running at once? (little arrow next to the Dock Icon say's it is running)

Have you cleaned out you Safari cache and history recently.

Is the Trash full of rubbish. (you should put it out for the bin men at least once a week)

Have you run Activity Monitor (in utilities folder) to see what the thing is doing?

Amen-Moses

Amen-Moses said:

Do you leave it on overnight? (so it can run the system cleanup periodically)

Have you got every application running at once? (little arrow next to the Dock Icon say's it is running)

Have you cleaned out you Safari cache and history recently.

Is the Trash full of rubbish. (you should put it out for the bin men at least once a week)

Have you run Activity Monitor (in utilities folder) to see what the thing is doing?

Amen-Moses

Click to expand...

I do leave it on all night, I usually only have 1 or 2 programs running at a time (mostly just iTunes though), I just recently hooked it up to the internet and installed Safari & firefox (but it was sluggish before that), The trash is constantly empty (i'm a bit ocd with things like that), I have not run Activity Monitor but will tonight.

It's sluggish in that almost everything thing i do makes the twirling beach ball come up. And i mean almost every click of the mouse. It takes way longer than it should to bring up programs and if i try to edit info in itunes or a photo in iphoto, spinning beach ball, and it takes like 20-30 seconds to go back to normal.

This computer is basically just a place to keep all my music and photos, I have a powerbook that I've had for 5 years and have never had any problems with. But, if possible I'd like to start using it to do more with.

RottenApple said:

I do leave it on all night, I usually only have 1 or 2 programs running at a time (mostly just iTunes though), I just recently hooked it up to the internet and installed Safari & firefox (but it was sluggish before that), The trash is constantly empty (i'm a bit ocd with things like that), I have not run Activity Monitor but will tonight.

It's sluggish in that almost everything thing i do makes the twirling beach ball come up. And i mean almost every click of the mouse. It takes way longer than it should to bring up programs and if i try to edit info in itunes or a photo in iphoto, spinning beach ball, and it takes like 20-30 seconds to go back to normal.

This computer is basically just a place to keep all my music and photos, I have a powerbook that I've had for 5 years and have never had any problems with. But, if possible I'd like to start using it to do more with.

Click to expand...

If you can't see anything awry in Activity Manager then I would suggest using disc utility to check out and/or repair both discs then if it is still a bit wonky:

If you have enough space on the second hard drive this is what I would do: install OS X on the second drive and when it asks you if you want to copy files and settings from somewhere say yes and select the other drive as the source. Then boot up with the second drive and see how it is, if everything seems dandy make sure you have everything on that drive that you want to keep from the first one then format the first drive and install OS X on that doing the reverse of before, i.e select the second disc as the source.

That should leave you with a nice clean and performance enhanced Mac (once you've established that the first drive boots ok and that all the files are in place you can delete the OS X install from the second disc).

What may have happened is that the first disk has become so full it can't tidy itself up properly.

You could try just moving some large files over to the second drive to make some space and leaving it overnight to see if the tidy up utilities can fix things or alternatively install something from Apple like X11 (the installer does a tidy up after installing) to see if that makes a difference but in my experience if it has got as bad as you suggest it may be beyond the capabilities of the automatic tidying to fix.

Amen-Moses

So, this is what it looks like:

I didn't have my itunes in the same hd as i did the music, would that cause problems? I've switched that now.

I verified the larger hd and it said it was ok


and this is the break down of the hds-

ST340016A:

Capacity: 38.18 GB
Model: ST340016A
Revision: 5.05
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
OS9 Drivers: Yes

HD:

Capacity: 38.18 GB
Available: 21.63 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s9
Mount Point: /

ST3300831A:

Capacity: 279.46 GB
Model: ST3300831A
Revision: 3.03
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk1
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 1
Socket Type: Internal
OS9 Drivers: Yes

MUSIC:

Capacity: 229.6 GB
Available: 110.5 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s10
Mount Point: /Volumes/MUSIC

OTHER:

Capacity: 49.6 GB
Available: 49.17 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s12
Mount Point: /Volumes/OTHER

RottenApple said:

So, this is what it looks like:

I didn't have my itunes in the same hd as i did the music, would that cause problems? I've switched that now, and it seems to have helped a bit, but that doesn't account for the lag in iphoto and other programs.

I verified the larger hd and it said it was ok


and this is the break down of the hds-

ST340016A:

Capacity: 38.18 GB
Model: ST340016A
Revision: 5.05
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
OS9 Drivers: Yes

HD:

Capacity: 38.18 GB
Available: 21.63 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s9
Mount Point: /

ST3300831A:

Capacity: 279.46 GB
Model: ST3300831A
Revision: 3.03
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk1
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 1
Socket Type: Internal
OS9 Drivers: Yes

MUSIC:

Capacity: 229.6 GB
Available: 110.5 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s10
Mount Point: /Volumes/MUSIC

OTHER:

Capacity: 49.6 GB
Available: 49.17 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s12
Mount Point: /Volumes/OTHER

Click to expand...

Well you've got me stumped, doesn't look like anything nasty there so I haven't a clue what's up.

All I can suggest is the reinstall path as above, if that doesn't fix it then I'm all out of ideas.

Amen-Moses