Hard drive is only 1/2 full, but computer runs very slow. Is there a defrag function like on a PC?

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011)

Please describe the problem in as much relevant detail as possible. The better your description, the better the chance of a solution.
For example, if the computer is slow, which specific actions are slow? Is it slow all the time, or only sometimes? What changes did you make, if any, just before it became slow? Have you seen any alerts or error messages? Have you done anything to try to fix it? Most importantly, do you have a current backup of all data? If the answer to the last question is "no," back up now. Ask if you need guidance. Do nothing else until you have a backup.

Similar Messages

Memory full with nothing running, very slow

Our macbook suddenly started running very slow and having programs freeze a lot after a partial migration form a power PC G5. In short it happens in two different accounts. Activity monitor shows the cpu is not doing much (idle > 70%) but the memory is very full even when only activity monitor has launched.
Is it right for activity monitor to be showing almost all of the 1 GB used (0.78GB) immediately after a restart with only activity monitor running (see image). I don't know what most of these things are. CPU usages was very low. launch program takes a long time, switching between programs, pretty much anything between programs, saving, or launching. Also programs (at least firefox and power point which I use alot) freeze frquently. (What I have tried is listed below). Yes I have ordered more memory but that doesn't address the issue that this was working fine before. Once much is launched the memory use is essentially 100%
The cause: macbook had been working fine with several user accouts and normal operation. We had used it since "mid 2007". Our old G5 is dying (video card I believe). So I did a partial migration using the firewire migrate in the OS. I migrated my account and then separately migrated some of the applicaitons. I also started using Outlook and set up all my email accounts in it. What should the activity look like?
0
Tried: repair disk - no problems The HD was replaced 12/12/2008, repaired disk permisions
reinstall snow_leapard from original disk 10.6.3 - same symptoms, updated through software update to 10.6.8 - no change.
not much on login launch. other account has less and also slow.

Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.1 or higher are Intel Mac compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. Versions 1.5.1 or later are Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts had been significantly reduced in Tiger and Leopard. These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or Lion and should not be installed.
OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.
I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Other utilities are also available such as Onyx, Lion Cache Cleaner, CockTail, for example.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. There is no confirmation that this version also works with Lion.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
Backuplist
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
iBackup
JaBack
Silver Keeper
MimMac
Retrospect
Super Flexible File Synchronizer
SuperDuper!
Synchronize Pro! X
SyncTwoFolders
Synk Pro
Synk Standard
Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at CNet Downloads or MacUpdate.

Why is external hard drive read-only on one Mac, but read/write on another?

I have a Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive. I bought it to be compatible with both Windows and Mac, which it currently is. It works just fine on my PC and my MacBook. However, recently, I bought a MacBook Pro. The Seagate drive shows up as read only on the MacBook Pro, though it is read/write on my MacBook. It's formatted NTFS, yes, but it already works on my MacBook. What's going on here?

Nope, one of the selling points of the drive was that it came ready to work with both Mac and Windows (the product description says there is an NTFS drive installed for use on Mac). No hacking or installing on my part.
But I think I figured it out. Apparentely, Mavericks comes installed with something that does not allow it to write NTFS no matter what (well, unless you go through a whole bunch of technical stuff to rewrite the software). My old MacBook was Leopard.
I'll just reformat the external hard drive for Mac, and if I ever need to use it on a Windows, I'll install HFS+ Explorer on the Windows. Oh well.

MacBook Pro 13" Only boots to safe mode and running VERY slow.

Hi...
Not posted on here before, but am desperate so hoping there are some experts out there who can help...
I have 13" Macbook pro which has ceased to work properly - it runs very slowly and will only boot in safe mode.
I have installed a new hard disk, but I get the same problem whether I (try to) boot from the old HHD or the new one.
The new drive was imaged using Carbon Copy Cloner.
I have run the repair disk priorities in disk utility and verifying the disk says all OK.
I have set the startup disk to be the new hard disk, and cleared the NVRAM via cmd-option-p-r...
As things stand at the moment, rebooting (not in safe mode) leaves me with the grey screen and apple logo (and no obvious activity for 10+ mins (so far)).
Booting in safe mode takes 3+ mins but I do get to a user login prompt and can get to a desktop.
Any ideas / help very much appreciated as I urgently need to get this machine working!
Thanks!

Domonic White,
when you ran Disk Utility, did you do so from your user account, or from Recovery mode? There are four options there: Verify Disk Permissions, Repair Disk Permissions, Verify Disk, and Repair Disk. Which of these did you do in Disk Utility?
Have you tried resetting your MacBook Pro’s System Management Controller?
Have you tried logging in as your administrative user, opening the Users & Groups pane of System Preferences, creating a new standard user (e.g. “Test”), and trying to log in as the new user, to see if the slow performance affects the new user also?
There is a chance that this could be due to a faulty internal SATA cable. If you have an external disk enclosure, or a SATA-to-USB or SATA-to-FireWire adapter, try booting from one of your drives when it’s externally connected. If it works fine that way, but is sluggish when internal, that could point to your internal SATA cable as the culprit.

My macbook pro's memory is full and I purchased an external hard drive. I am using timemachine, but need to earse/free up some memory on my laptop. How do I do this?

My macbook pro's memory is full and I purchased an external hard drive. I am using timemachine, but need to earse/free up some memory on my laptop. How do I do this?

Christinag1317 wrote:
My macbook pro's memory is full and I purchased an external hard drive. I am using timemachine, but need to earse/free up some memory on my laptop. How do I do this?
Ok when you refer to "memory" that is the Random Access Memory which is temporary memory the processor (worker) uses to store stuff while it's using it. Power goes off whats in the memory is gone.
Your storage drive is where data is pernamnetly stored if the power is on/off.
So what you really mean to say is your storage drive is filled up and you need to make some room.
You have a TimeMachine drive, what this does is makes a image of your internal storage drive as a backup method, it also allows some "back in time" restoration of your previous deleted files depending how much space is on that drive. The more space, the less data you have, the more days you can go back in time to retrieve something.
Unfortunatly the TimeMachine drive is not a extra space storage drive, it automatically rotates what appears on your internal storage drive. So if you delete something from the internal drive, it eventually gets deleted from the TimeMachine drive.
So you need to make some more room on your internal drive, this is rather easy, all you need is ANOTHER external drive and connect it to the Mac. Give it a name like ExtraStorage#1 and thenyou will have to decide which of your User files you really don't need on the internal drive.
For instance the best choice would be to move some movies out of your Movies folder to another MoviesExtra folder on the ExtraStorage#1 drive.
Movies take a LOT of drive space and you can always copy them on or off, or watch them from the ExtraStorage#1 drive as well. But if your going to do this a lot, you should consider getting a Firewire 800/400, USB 3,2,1 combination drive as Firewire 800 is fastest and decently priced (Thunderbolt is very high priced and overkill at this time)
The other things like Documents are quite small, Pictures can take a lot of space if you have a lot, but if you need them on the internal drive then that's better. Music one tends to use a lot or manage playlists and such, but perhaps some music you may which to move off or "prune", I suggest always burning data DVD's of music especially for extra backups.
Once you have freed some room on the internal drive, this liitle neat program will show you what is taking the largest amount of space on your internal drive.
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
After a scan, right click on the big squares to "revel in Finder" to show you what's taking the largest amount of space, be warned it also opens up hidden system files and folders, which you won't be able to move. So concentrate on what's inthe Users folder.
Likely if you have a lot of Movies this is the biggest culprit on most standard internal hard drives. Also if you have something in iTunes that's auto-downloading something like PodCasts and not deleting the older ones and you forget. So go there and fix things and that can free up drive space.
If you bought a small SSD with your new Mac, then the price of that SSD has come back to haunt you with low storage space, you will have to think carefully what you can live without on the internal drive.
Once you have slimmed things down, TimeMachine will update to reflect your slimmer internal drive. What this means is there is only one copy of your data on the ExtraStorage#1 drive.
You need to maintain two copies of your data at all times on seperate hardware, so now you need ANOTHER storage drive (ExtraStorage#2) to copy everythinng of ExtraStorage#1, or else if you drop or have a mechanical problem with ES#1 all that data will be gone!
If you wish to learn more then I suggest reading these two links
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16276201#16276201
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

Time Capsule visible as wifi but hard drive can only be accessed via ethernet.

Time Capsule shows up as WiFi in Airport menu bar but does not show up in Airport Utility. Hard drive is accessible via ethernet connection but not by wireless.
How can I reset the TC or reload a saved configuration?

Yes, with the following warnings.
1. A 1TB TC is a Gen3 or earlier and can die at a moments notice.. So backup is essential.
2. A Gen1 or 2 is slow.. even over ethernet they were processor bound and so transfer speeds are not great.. a USB2 plugged into the computer will be faster. Gen3 is about 50% better as the processor was upgraded by 50% speed.
3. TC has no built in backup.. TM cannot backup network drives.
4. TC is designed to spin up slowly and spin down quickly.. you will have issues with itunes constantly losing the library.
5. You cannot use USB to the TC.. it is a network drive. If you want to use USB directly on the computer buy a USB drive.. but buy as fast a drive as your Mac supports.. Thunderbolt>USB3>FW800>USB2
USB3 is cheap and very good.. but the port is only from 2012 so check your Mac specs.
Thunderbolt whilst being super fantastic and around since 2011, has a bank account clearing price although there are Thunderbolt to esata converters.. for around $160. esata falls between usb3 and fw800.
FW800 from WD is no better than USB2 but other brands it can be twice the speed of usb2.
USB2 is the worst. But still faster than a TC.

I keep my library on an external hard drive 4TB. It's full. Can I use more than one hard drive to keep my library on?

I keep my iTunes library on an external hard drive 4TB. It's full. Can I use more than one hard drive to keep my library on? Like two 4TB next to each other.

Create a concatenated disk set
Increase storage space with a concatenated RAID set (also called “Just a Bunch of Disks” or JBOD). If you need one large disk, but you have only several smaller disks, you can create a concatenated disk set to use several small disks as one large disk.
Open Disk Utility, in the Utilities folder in Launchpad.
Select one of the disks that you want in the set, and then click RAID.
Click Add (+), and type a name for the RAID set.
Choose a format from the Format pop-up menu. Usually you’ll choose the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
Choose Concatenated Disk Set from the RAID Type pop-up menu.
Drag the disks you want to add to the set to the list on the right.
Click Create.
Exerpt from:
Disk Utility 12.x: Create a RAID set - Apple - Support
Note that the biggest CON to concatenated RAID configurations is vulnerability to volume failure. If either disk fails, the whole volume fails. If you choose this option, I would highly recommend backing up your music to a cloud service. There are very cheap per GB/storage, and some of the most reputable actually offer unlimited storage:
Five Best Cloud Storage Providers - Lifehacker

Can I use Time Capsule 1TB as an external hard drive tos tore my music library(but with cable connection,not WI-FI)

Can I use my Time Capsule 1TB as an external hard drive to store my music library but with a cable connection(Ethernet or USB) and not Wi-Fi.

Yes, with the following warnings.
1. A 1TB TC is a Gen3 or earlier and can die at a moments notice.. So backup is essential.
2. A Gen1 or 2 is slow.. even over ethernet they were processor bound and so transfer speeds are not great.. a USB2 plugged into the computer will be faster. Gen3 is about 50% better as the processor was upgraded by 50% speed.
3. TC has no built in backup.. TM cannot backup network drives.
4. TC is designed to spin up slowly and spin down quickly.. you will have issues with itunes constantly losing the library.
5. You cannot use USB to the TC.. it is a network drive. If you want to use USB directly on the computer buy a USB drive.. but buy as fast a drive as your Mac supports.. Thunderbolt>USB3>FW800>USB2
USB3 is cheap and very good.. but the port is only from 2012 so check your Mac specs.
Thunderbolt whilst being super fantastic and around since 2011, has a bank account clearing price although there are Thunderbolt to esata converters.. for around $160. esata falls between usb3 and fw800.
FW800 from WD is no better than USB2 but other brands it can be twice the speed of usb2.
USB2 is the worst. But still faster than a TC.

MBP 15" (late 2008) new Hard drive issues in 10.6.8 but not in 10.8.5

I have a 15" Macbook Pro (Late 2008) with an up to date EFI firmware (ver 2.8).
When I went to replace the hard drive (Hitachi 320GB hard wired at 1.5Gb/s) with a new hard drive (Seagate 1TB SSHD).
This new HD runs at 3gb/s or 6gb/s and my MBP which will only do 3GB/s (link speed) DOES select this speed.
Now I've read over 1000 posts (no, really) about this topic of SATA drives in older MBP's but problem is a bit more nuanced.
I partitioned the new HD as follows (disk1-250GB, disk2-250GB, disk3-500GB). I have to do this because I run two versions of OSX.
I run OSX 10.6.8 for mobile audio recording and some post-production video editing and my software runs GREAT in Snow leopard.
Of course, there are some good reasons to have a newer OSX and so I put 10.8.5 on disk2.
On my old HD I had two partitions (disk1-150GB, disk2-170GB) and then used disk utility to copy the old drive to the new.
Here's where my problem is more nuanced. The new drive works AWESOME when running 10.8.5 at 3GB/s.
In 10.6.8, however, I get pinwheels, beachballs, hiccups, etc when running the hard drive at 3Gb/s.
I'll play an aif audio file in Quicktime player and it will stop producing audio, BUT it keeps track of the time. I swap back in my old HD and everything runs fine.
I'm planning in getting a different drive (one that works at 1.5 and 3.0GB/s) but I'd like to keep this drive as it boots up 10.8.5 FAST! In about 15 secs or so. OR, I could just swap out hard drives when I need to use 10.6.8 (which is really easy on my MBP but not preferable) and dedicate the old one for 10.6.8 only.
QUESTION:::::
Does anyone have any idea why the same physical HD would work fine in 10.8.5 but have constant (every 15-20secs) read/write errors in 10.6.8??
The fact that it works great in 10.8.5 has me a bit puzzled of whether or not there's an inherent hardware incompatibility.
Sorry for the long post, just trying to give as much info as possible.

Melophage-
I did try booting from the external SATA enclosure and all was fine; no hiccups. I used disk utility to restore my Snow Leopard partition to a newly purchased HD; a Western Digital 1TB(Mainstream) drive that operates at 1.5 or 3.0 GB/s. I noticed it's power requirement is about 3/4 of the factory drive which is also good.
Amazingly this drive actually works with a link speed of 3GB/s with 10.6.8. And no pinwheels/beachballs.
Possible Conclusions:
My MBP SATA onboard controller is OK with a HD that's 1.5/3.0 GB/s but NOT quite OK with 3.0/6.0GB/s. Although both drives had a link speed of 3.0Gb/s, only the newly purchased "slower" drive worked flawlessly. I'm fine with this being that my Apple factory drive was hard wired at 1.5Gb/sec and its speed was adequate for the audio/video recording I do in 10.6.8. Hopefully it works fine with 10.8.5. Still restoring that partition to the Western Digital drive.
In the end, I have a HD with over 3X the capacity as before and a link speed of 3GB/s.
I may not have the 15sec boot-up time as I did with the hybrid drive, but I won't miss it.

How can i transfer a movie from mac to external hard drive? I have tried dragging but it is like my hard drive has a block on it?

How can i transfer a movie from mac book pro to external hard drive? I have tried dragging but it is like my hard drive has a block on it? Please help

brogand wrote:
Thanks for that, it was really helpful.
Glad to hear that worked for you. While formatting an external drive with a Mac format is best if it will be used only with a Mac, if the files on the drive have to be accessible to a PC also, it's possible to format it in an exFAT format, which both the Mac and a PC can read from and write to. However, if you do that, do the actual formatting while the external is connected to the PC.

My whole catalogue was nearly lost due to a failed external hard drive. Professional help recovered photos but I can't find my smart tags. Is it possible they were lost on failed drive?

My whole catalogue was nearly lost due to a failed external hard drive. Professional help recovered photos but I can't find my smart tags. Is it possible they were lost on failed drive?

Hi,
In order to recover the tags/albums, etc, you need to have the catalog db. Since currently you only have images, the organization done in the older catalog is probably lost.
Which version of PSE you have and is there any chance, that you have access to catalog location (default is : %programdata%\adobe\elements organizer\catalogs on Windows and ~/library/app support/adobe/organizer/catalogs on MAC) ?
Thanks
Andaleeb

Pavillion dv6-3216us win7 clone hard drive worked only with HDClone 4.1

Pavillion dv6-3216us win7 64bit clone hard drive worked only with HDClone 4.1 tried many others that seemed to work but not boot.
cloned to WD 750 GB took about 2.5 hours

The originals were over 3 yrs old low end consumer models and 'due' for retirement to less frequent backup duties.
The Black or Blue Caviar 640GB costs slightly more but also 10-15% faster.
I wouldn't worry about temps, but I would monitor them, and if necessary boost the fans 200-300 rpm to help out.
Make sure everything is SL versions now (DW 4.2).
Normally I zero a drive and reformat more than others, and definitely with new OS.

Every time I try to back up my Macbook Pro with an external hard drive using Time Machine, I receive the error of "the disk does not have enough space". I have a 500GB hard drive and only 120GB Macbook. It worked fine before the latest Maverick's

Every time I try to back up my Macbook Pro with an external hard drive using Time Machine, I receive the error of "the disk does not have enough space". I have a 500GB external hard drive and only 120GB Macbook. It worked fine before the latest Maverick's update. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My guess would be it has created an entirely new backup of your drive when you upgraded to Mavericks.
See Here: http://pondini.org/TM/1.html
And here: http://pondini.org/TM/9.html
Peruse the whole site. There is a lot of information there.

Ello, I changed my Imac hard drive which no longer worked. I installed a hard drive Western Digital 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA3 WD5002AALX 32M Black. Sometimes I see the hard disk in the utility on the Starter CD, but access seems very slow. By cons when I want

Hello, I changed my Imac hard drive which no longer worked. I installed a hard drive
Western Digital 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA3 WD5002AALX 32M Black. Sometimes I see the hard disk in the utility on the Starter CD, but access seems very slow. By cons when I want
install OS X 10.4.2 on the hard drive, I do not see the disk. What is the problem?

Thanks for the help
I started on the installation CD OS X 10.4.2, I used Disk Utility
to partition the disk according to the document that you have proposed. unfortunately
I have not succeeded. When I partition the disk, even if I called it Macintosh HD, it
does not keep the name and it shows disk0s3 instead. I did an erase on disk.
When I mount the disk it tells me that I must repair. When I tried to repair, I got
the following message:
Volume check failed
The underflying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error.
I also had a message:
Invalid b-tree node size.
Note: The disc is new, but it has already been formatted on a computer Imac 27 inch 2011 OS X Lion.
I used a USB 2.0 to SATA cable to adjust the formatting.
What to do to fix it?

HT201372 used this to make a bootable copy for a new hard drive installation. copied the install find but gave error code 110 when making the disk bootable.. Any help in what this code is

Used createinstallmedis to make a copy of the Mavericks app for use in a new hard drive install.. Copied find but gave error code 110 and failed to make the flash drive bootable.. Any help in what errror code means?

Did you partition and format the flash drive first? See the following:
Make Your Own Mavericks, Mountain/Lion Installer
After downloading the installer you must first save the Install Mac OS X application. After the installer downloads DO NOT click on the Install button. Go to your Applications folder and make a copy of the installer. Move the copy into your Downloads folder. Now you can click on the Install button. You must do this because the installer deletes itself automatically when it finishes installing.
2. Get a USB flash drive that is at least 8 GBs. Prep this flash drive as follows:
Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
After DU loads select your flash drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the leftside list. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list.
Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to an hour depending upon the flash drive size.
Make your own Mavericks flash drive installer using the Mavericks tool:
Mavericks has its own built-in installer maker you use via the Terminal:
You will need a freshly partitioned and formatted USB flash drive with at least 8GBs. Leave the name of the flash drive at the system default, "Untitled." Do not change this name. Open the Terminal in the Utilities folder. Copy this command line after the prompt in the Terminal's window:
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction
Press RETURN. Enter your admin password when prompted. It will not be echoed to the screen so be careful to enter it correctly. Press RETURN, again.
Wait for the process to complete which will take quite some time.

Hard drive is only 1/2 full, but computer runs very slow. Is there a defrag function like on a PC?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for