Help! MacBook Pro 2012 is barely crawling

[Chrismigl]

Help! My wife’s MacBook Pro 2012 is barely crawling. I’m running high sierra OS. Opening apps is painfully slow. I click and wait....and wait...read facebook....and wait....then the app finally opens. Same thing happens when I click on menus items, or anything really.

I’ve searched the web, watched lots of YouTube videos, read articles, posted, etc on the usual tips to speed up your Mac. I’ve done these and really not seen any improvement to the performance of the machine.

Does anyone have any clue as to what could be happening? Is this a hardware issue?

 

[harryb2448]

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Three vital questions:-

1. MBP or MBP Retina?

2.. SSD or platter drive? The latter are really struggling today.

3. How much free space is on the drive? Remember the old rule of thumb must have 10-15% free space to operate any near peak.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

What are the specs of the machine? What CPU? How much RAM? How much storage? How much free? Was High Sierra an update or a clean install? When did the slowdown start?

 

[Chrismigl]

Thanks for the reply. To answer your questions:

1. MBP
2. Not solid state
3. About 40% free space.

 

[Chrismigl]

Here are the machine specs:

OS: High Sierra version 10.13.1
Processor: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory: 8 GB 1600JHz DDR3

Free space is about 40% though I’m working on moving items to iCloud to free up some additional space.
High Sierra was an update.
I honestly don’t remember when the slow down occurred. This is my wife’s computer. About a year ago I got her a new MacBook Air and when I did some file transferring, I don’t remember it being this slow, but then that’s about the time that I updated the old machine to the latest OS.

 

[harryb2448]

Your problem is the slow as molasses platter hard drive. The drive is going on seven years, if original, which is a great run. Consider popping an SSD in there and tighten your seat belt for the speed increase.

 

[ferrarr]

One of our members created a site for these issues, OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting, give them a shot.

 

[RavingMac]

As Harry said, probably want to replace the drive. FWIW sometimes HDs die suddenly, but often they linger and die a slow death.
My 2012 MBP is still plenty fast but I upgraded it to an SSD quite some time ago.

 

[Dxhound]

As everyone has mentioned, upgrade to a SSD. Also with the price of ram these days, upgrading to 16GB will also help. I did the same upgrades to my 2012 MBP and right now the machine is pretty darn fast for its age.

 

[Chrismigl]

Can you recommend a hard drive and ram? I’ve never replaced these items. I’ve replaced a battery on my iPhone before and am brave enough to give it a try.

- - - Updated - - -

Mike, what hard drive and ram did you use for your upgrade?

 

[ferrarr]

For D-I-Y repairs, check out ifixit.com, https://www.ifixit.com, as they have great step by step repair guides, for most Apple products.

I had a Late 2011 15" MBP, in which I put a 240GB SSD in the main drive bay, then moved the 500GB HDD to the optical drive bay with an adapter. I had tried 2 different SSD brands, Samsung and Kingston. The Samsung wasn't recognized by the MBP, so I used the Kingston and sold the Samsung. The Kingston did die after 2 or 3 years, so then I switched to a Crucial SSD drive. Now that drive is in my Late 2014 Mac mini.

 

[Dxhound]

Can you recommend a hard drive and ram? I’ve never replaced these items. I’ve replaced a battery on my iPhone before and am brave enough to give it a try.

- - - Updated - - -

Mike, what hard drive and ram did you use for your upgrade?

I used a Samsung 500GB SSD and the install went perfectly. I opted not to replace the Ribbon Data Cable, but have since bought one and will replace it maybe over the winter. The reason I chose the Samsung as when I was looking for SS Drives, it was recommended to check out Samsung and haven't had a problem. I haven't replaced the Optical Drive at this time.The memory, I went with 2 x 8GB modules from OWC as they said and recommended their brand will work. Probably paid a little extra, but it came with a guarantee they would work. The instructions as mentioned on OWC and Fixit makes both the SSD and Memory upgrades work perfectly.

I have been thinking of replacing the HDD in my 2012 iMac 27", but taking an iMac apart looks a bit daunting. I might just take it to the Apple store and get them to do it.

 

[chscag]

I have been thinking of replacing the HDD in my 2012 iMac 27", but taking an iMac apart looks a bit daunting. I might just take it to the Apple store and get them to do it.

I wish you luck with that. Apple Stores will not do that type of work unless it's for reasons of warranty or a recall. A private authorized Apple repair service will do it though. Should be plenty of those up where you live.

 

[Dxhound]

I wish you luck with that. Apple Stores will not do that type of work unless it's for reasons of warranty or a recall. A private authorized Apple repair service will do it though. Should be plenty of those up where you live.

The plastic clips that hold the monitor in a vertical position are both broken (Well Known Problem) and the local Apple Store has told me they will take it apart to replace the clips, maybe I can get them to replace the HDD with a SSD at the same time. Keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks for the heads up.