HT4007 Aperture is Slow - What do I do?

Almost everything I do in Aperture is slow and it's gotten worse over time.  This doesn't happen with other applications it's specific to Aperture.
Clicking the import tab takes several seconds.
Clicking to a project causes a beach ball
My library is huge. 35,000 pictures
The Vault requires 178GB.
I'm running Aperature 3.5.1 on an imac 2011 with 8GB of RAM. Everything is updated.
What should I do to improve performance?
Will breaking down the library in to parts help? How do I do that?
Thank you for your help!
Bob D. in Huntington Beach.

My library is huge. 35,000 pictures
The Vault requires 178GB.
Is your library on an external or the internal drive? How full is the internal drive? Do you have at least 20GB free on your System drive?
Do you use plug-ins? If yes, have you checked, if they are compatible?
When did the slowness start? After updating software or installing new software? After importing new images?
Will breaking down the library in to parts help? How do I do that?
The library size alone cannot cause the slowness, so spliting it will probably not help.
Try to narrow down the problem;
You may have imported media, that cannot be processed;
Your library may need fixing,
your user account may have wrong settings,
or you may have a system wide problem.
To check for corrupted media in your Aperture library, launch Aperture, while holding down the Shift key. Is Aperture still slow?
To check if the library is causing the problem create a small test library - just use the command "File > Switch to Library > Other/new" and create a new library; import a few images and test.  Do you see the same slowness?
If even a new library does not help, repeat the experiment, but while working in a different user account. Is Aperture more responsive, if you are using a different account?
Then post back, with the results of your experiment.
Léonie

Similar Messages

  • HT4007 aperture running slow

    I am running aperture and it runs very slow and freezes up any suggestions?

    No one reading can possibly form an intelligent response from the information you've provided.
    Post
    - what the problem is
    - how you have confirmed that it is a problem
    - what you have done to rectify the problem
    - what the results of your attempt to rectify the problem were
    and
    - what version of Aperture
    - what version of OS X
    - your hardware configuration, inc. system drive free space
    - whether you changed anything recently
    - whether you are have problems with any other applications.

  • Why is aperture so slow

    for me aperture is slow to start, slow to operate and slow to shut down?  Am about ready to go back to iPhoto.

    In addition to the reasons Corky02 listed (how much RAM and what kind of processor do you have,BTW?) Aperture may become slow, if your hard drive fills up - keep more then 20% of your hard drive free.
    How long have you been using Aperture? If you are just starting to use Aperture and doing the initial setup of a large library, Aperture still may be busy with the initial processing of thousands of images. It will be much more responsive when this initial processing and indexing has been done.
    You may wish to turn on Aperture's  "Activity" viewer while you observing an an natural slowness - so you can see what tasks are performed and watch the progress. You also may pause tasks (indexing Faces, creation of previews), that you want to postpone and rather run over night. The Activity viewer can be started from Aperture's main Applications Window:
         Window -> Show Activity
    Two more diagnostic utilities (from Applications -> Utitilities) are useful: the "Console" and the "Activity Monitor". These will show you if any processes are crashing or logging diagnostic messages, and also how much processsing time Aperture  is using, or if other processes are competing with Aperture for processing time.
    Apart from the initial import of a large library Aperture may show slowness if you have a serious problem with your library:
    You may have imported a corrupted, incompatibable image
    or your library got corrupted (maybe by using a drive not formatted MAcOS X Extended, or by Force Quitting Aperture).
    Then the Aperture First Aid Tools may be able to fix this: Try to repair the permissions and to repair the library, as describe here:
         Aperture 3: Troubleshooting Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3805
    Report back, if this does not help.
    Regards
    Léonie

  • Aperture horribly slow on retina 16gb

    Since a few days i am using my new macbook pro retina i7 2.3 16gb ssd. and i am surprised how slow aperture is.
    i used it on a ssd macbookpro 13" i5 with 8gb for 2 years and always was ligtning fast.
    its not useable at all right now. when i scroll to photos (without preview mode) each photo takes up to 1/2 seconds which is just to slow. when i dodge and burn cursor gets choppy, and when i adjust levels it takes 2/3 sec to take any effect.
    Just noticed that when i only browse the cpu goes up to 113%+
    Since i just used it as temp library (later i will import that in my full archive) the library is only a 2.000 to 4.000 images large.
    Here some other information
    Macbook Pro 2.3 i7 16gb ram and 265GB SSD.
    Clean new install mountain lion (only adobe suite, chrome, aperture, dropbox and skype are installed)
    Turned off faces, and geo location in aperture, and also set previews to quality 6 and half size. no other apps running.
    by the way not only aperture gets slow, but when i just did some changes to a image and i command tab into a other app. its slow as well..
    getting crazy
    current activity monitor stats
    ram 12.7 gb used 3.2 free
    1.8 gb swap used
    disk activity small peaks of around 900kb so nothing exciting here
    network almost not used. (so no backup or anything is on
    for cpu with a idle aperture in the background is just normal
    93% idle
    skype uses some 3%
    chrome 2%
    photoshop 1.2%
    my other system is a i5 8gb macbook pro 13" with 8gb of ram and also a SSD and a lot of **** on it, and harddisk for 95% full and that one is lightning fast.
    so im really stuck here :-(

    I did a couple of things to resolve this issue and it was very succesful for me from what I can tell so far.I would like to share this information with everyone. For the record, I recently bought a standard MBP with the i7 2.6GHz CPU, discrete GT650M GPU with DDR5 1GB, and the Hi-Res AG screen. I dropped in 16GB RAM from Crucial and a Samsung 830 512GB SSD. So technically, my MBP with the exception of the retina screen should be pretty identical to the tech inside the rMBP. The SSD I installed also uses the same ATA controller as the Apple OEM NAND in the rMBP.
    Thanks to Linc Davis I used his suggestion to look for memory leaks within the Aperture application and my findings so far seem to dictate that he's probably right. I did some comparison with other editing software that I use and none of those exhibited the same behavior. The leaks detected with the "Aperture" process were exponentially higher than say "Photoshop" or "Elements." I think Apple has some code repair to do with Aperture. They rushed 64-bit and Retina support and somewhere the code got sloppy. As Linc also stated, it's tough to track a memory leak, but I find it strange that Aperture reports more leaks than other similar applications?
    After doing quite a bit of research, because I do like Aperture a lot as a workflow engine, I had to try my best to fix this. Personally, I don't think this has anything to do with our hardware. Everyone on this thread has the maximum amount of memory supported by their MBP's, so there's not much more that can be done here. Also, the rest of the tech is high-quality IMO. The problem I believe is the order that things have flowed with OSX updates, released, the most recent Aperture update, and the move to 64-bit forced by Mountain Lion. That said, here's what I suggest:
    Make sue that you have all of your updates for OSX, Aperture, and iPhoto if you're using a shared library.
    Backup your machine with TM. When this is done, moved on to #3.
    Download "Rember" and test your RAM just to make sure it passes all the checks.
    Check SMART status and make sure your SSD is not reporting any I/O errors. If all is good, continue.
    Download and install the latest version of ONYX 2.6.7.
    Using ONYX, go to the "Cleaning" tab and do a generic cleanup of all the crap on your machine.
    Using ONYX, go the "Maintenance" tab and repair permissions, run all the Scripts, and most important - rebuild Launch Services and the DYLD shared cache.
    Reboot your machine.
    Start Aperture holding down the OPTION and COMMAND keys. You will get prompted to REBUILD the database. Do this, not REPAIR (that does't really help). After the rebuild is complete, launch Aperture.
    Within Aperture, go into PREVIEWS tab, and set "Share previews with iLife and iWork" to NEVER.
    Go ahead and try... what do you think? For me, it runs much better, more reliable for sure.
    Now for the last and most controversial topic that has to do with TRIM. Problem is, people with an rMBP can't disable TRIM support on their SSD from what I can tell. Maybe I'm wrong? However, call me crazy, but when I had the TRIM hack enabled for my SSD, I saw some screwy things happening with I/O during Aperture use. According to everything I read from extremely knowledgeable people of the subject, TRIM is one of those uncertain grey areas. In theory the tech sounds logical, but in reality, I'm not sure if it's impacting I/O by making it unreliable? After all, those commands between the OS and the ATA controller have to be perfect in every way possible - otherwise it will create problems. In the case of Apple usage with there OEM NAND, it seems to be engineered. Can't say the same for Trim Enabler?? Just use caution IMO. Like I said, for me, I saw some weirdness, mainly beachballs. As soon as I disabled the TRIM patch, they went away. If you have a quality SSD like a Samsung or Intel, just rely on the firmware's GC. Do what I do, just let your system sit at the login prompt idle once a week.
    Another suggestion; use the PMSET command and change the default values for 'standbydelay" from 1600 to 86400 (24 hours). This will tell your MBP to stay in standby mode longer and only after 24 hours will it execute 'Standby' mode (which will write memory contents to the SSD - this just burns NAND P/E cycles unnecessarily). Don't know about you, but who the **** leaves their MBP in stanby mode for 30 days (based on Apple's logic)? I use it daily, so 24 hours fof sleep for me is fine. And, the MBP battery is great and can easily stay in sleep mode for at least 7 days untouched. Point is, less hibernation is better. The command is >>
    > sudo pmset -a standbydelay 86400
    Good luck!

  • Running Aperture and Slow Performance on MacBook Pro

    I am running a MacBook pro w 4 GM interal memory, lost of HD space, and OS 10.8.4.  Often when working with Aperture system performance seems very sluggish to the point of becoming unuseable.  Export of 20 images to mail can take 10 min.  It just becomes so slow as if strangled for memory.  I find I shut down other apps but don't think this should be necessary with current OS technology.  Any suggestions?  Thanks

    Have you checked what it going on, when Aperture becomes sluggish?
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    The Activity Monitor: Launch it from the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. This window will tell you, which processes are using the cpu, the RAM, and doing page outs to the disk. You can see, if other processing are competing with Aperture and slowing it down, orif Aperture is starved for memory.
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    Is your library on the internal drive or an external drive?
    Do you see this slowness only with your main Aperture library, or also, if you create a new, small library with a few test images?
    Regards
    Léonie

  • Mac running slow, what to do?

    My mac is running slow, what should I do to clean it up?

    Things You Can Do To Resolve Slow Downs
    If your computer seems to be running slower here are some things you can do:
    Start with visits to:     OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney;
                                      The X Lab: The X-FAQs;
                                      The Safe Mac » Mac Performance Guide;
                                      The Safe Mac » The myth of the dirty Mac;
                                      Mac maintenance Quick Assist.
    Boot into Safe Mode then repair your hard drive and permissions:
    Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions Pre-Lion
    Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
    Repair the Hard Drive - Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
    Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the Utilites Menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD disk icon and click on the arrow button below.
    When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
    Restart your computer normally and see if this has helped any. Next do some maintenance:
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    Note: Alsoft ships DW on a bootable DVD that will startup Macs running Snow Leopard or earlier. It cannot start Macs that came with Lion or later pre-installed, however, DW will work on those models.
    Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
    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 was significantly reduced since Tiger.  These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or later 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.
    Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection
    An excellent link to read is Tom Reed's Mac Malware Guide.
    Also, visit The XLab FAQs and read Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware.
    See these Apple articles:
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              OS X Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
              OS X Mountain Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
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    I recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX, Mavericks Cache Cleaner, or Cocktail that you can use for removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Corrupted cache, log, or temporary files can cause application or OS X crashes as well as kernel panics.
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      1. Carbon Copy Cloner
      2. Get Backup
      3. Deja Vu
      4. SuperDuper!
      5. Synk Pro
      6. Tri-Backup
    Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore.  Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files. For help with using Time Machine visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
    Referenced software can be found at MacUpdate.
    Additional Hints
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    Add more RAM. If your computer has less than 2 GBs of RAM and you are using OS X Leopard or later, then you can do with more RAM. Snow Leopard and Lion work much better with 4 GBs of RAM than their system minimums. The more concurrent applications you tend to use the more RAM you should have.
    Always maintain at least 15 GBs or 10% of your hard drive's capacity as free space, whichever is greater. OS X is frequently accessing your hard drive, so providing adequate free space will keep things from slowing down.
    Check for applications that may be hogging the CPU:
    Pre-Mavericks
    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu.  Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
    Mavericks and later
    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the View menu.  Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
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  • After closing large documents (drawings) the window closes but the process runs still in the background. I open the next document, the same procedure and after dowing this several times the RAM is full the system becoms very slow. what can i do???

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  • My macbook pro is very slow. what can i do?

    my macbook pro is very slow. what can i do?

    Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
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    ☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
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    When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
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  • Mac book pro is running very slow what can i do to speed it up?

    mac book pro is running very slow what can i do to speed it up?

    Things You Can Do To Resolve Slow Downs
    If your computer seems to be running slower here are some things you can do:
    Start with visits to:     OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney;
                                      The X Lab: The X-FAQs;
                                      The Safe Mac » Mac Performance Guide;
                                      The Safe Mac » The myth of the dirty Mac;
                                      Mac maintenance Quick Assist.
    Boot into Safe Mode then repair your hard drive and permissions:
    Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions Pre-Lion
    Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
    Repair the Hard Drive - Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
    Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the Utilites Menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD disk icon and click on the arrow button below.
    When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
    Restart your computer normally and see if this has helped any. Next do some maintenance:
    For situations Disk Utility cannot handle the best third-party utility is 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.
    Note: Alsoft ships DW on a bootable DVD that will startup Macs running Snow Leopard or earlier. It cannot start Macs that came with Lion or later pre-installed, however, DW will work on those models.
    Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
    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 was significantly reduced since Tiger.  These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or later 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.
    Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection
    An excellent link to read is Tom Reed's Mac Malware Guide.
    Also, visit The XLab FAQs and read Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware.
    See these Apple articles:
              Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection
              OS X Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
              OS X Mountain Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
              About file quarantine in OS X
    If you require anti-virus protection I recommend using VirusBarrier Express 1.1.6 or Dr.Web Light both from the App Store. They're both free, and since they're from the App Store, they won't destabilize the system. (Thank you to Thomas Reed for these recommendations.)
    Troubleshooting Applications
    I recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX, Mavericks Cache Cleaner, or Cocktail that you can use for removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Corrupted cache, log, or temporary files can cause application or OS X crashes as well as kernel panics.
    If you have Snow Leopard or Leopard, then for similar 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 command line.  Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. Applejack does not work with Lion and later.
    Basic Backup
    For some people Time Machine will be more than adequate. Time Machine is part of OS X. There are two components:
    1. A Time Machine preferences panel as part of System Preferences;
    2. A Time Machine application located in the Applications folder. It is
        used to manage backups and to restore backups. Time Machine
        requires a backup drive that is at least twice the capacity of the
        drive being backed up.
    Alternatively, get an external 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):
      1. Carbon Copy Cloner
      2. Get Backup
      3. Deja Vu
      4. SuperDuper!
      5. Synk Pro
      6. Tri-Backup
    Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore.  Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files. For help with using Time Machine visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
    Referenced software can be found at MacUpdate.
    Additional Hints
    Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity as free space.
    Add more RAM. If your computer has less than 2 GBs of RAM and you are using OS X Leopard or later, then you can do with more RAM. Snow Leopard and Lion work much better with 4 GBs of RAM than their system minimums. The more concurrent applications you tend to use the more RAM you should have.
    Always maintain at least 15 GBs or 10% of your hard drive's capacity as free space, whichever is greater. OS X is frequently accessing your hard drive, so providing adequate free space will keep things from slowing down.
    Check for applications that may be hogging the CPU:
    Pre-Mavericks
    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu.  Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
    Mavericks and later
    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the View menu.  Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
    Often this problem occurs because of a corrupted cache or preferences file or an attempt to write to a corrupted log file.

  • My mac book pro is running really slow what should I do?

    My mac book pro is running really slow what should I do?

    Things You Can Do To Resolve Slow Downs
    If your computer seems to be running slower here are some things you can do:
    Start with visits to:     OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney;
                                      The X Lab: The X-FAQs;
                                      The Safe Mac » Mac Performance Guide;
                                      The Safe Mac » The myth of the dirty Mac;
                                      Mac maintenance Quick Assist.
    Boot into Safe Mode then repair your hard drive and permissions:
    Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions Pre-Lion
    Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
    Repair the Hard Drive - Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
    Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the Utilites Menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD disk icon and click on the arrow button below.
    When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
    Restart your computer normally and see if this has helped any. Next do some maintenance:
    For situations Disk Utility cannot handle the best third-party utility is 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.
    Note: Alsoft ships DW on a bootable DVD that will startup Macs running Snow Leopard or earlier. It cannot start Macs that came with Lion or later pre-installed, however, DW will work on those models.
    Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
    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 was significantly reduced since Tiger.  These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or later 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.
    Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection
    An excellent link to read is Tom Reed's Mac Malware Guide.
    Also, visit The XLab FAQs and read Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware.
    See these Apple articles:
              Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection
              OS X Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
              OS X Mountain Lion- Protect your Mac from malware
              About file quarantine in OS X
    If you require anti-virus protection I recommend using VirusBarrier Express 1.1.6 or Dr.Web Light both from the App Store. They're both free, and since they're from the App Store, they won't destabilize the system. (Thank you to Thomas Reed for these recommendations.)
    Troubleshooting Applications
    I recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX, Mavericks Cache Cleaner, or Cocktail that you can use for removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Corrupted cache, log, or temporary files can cause application or OS X crashes as well as kernel panics.
    If you have Snow Leopard or Leopard, then for similar 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 command line.  Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. Applejack does not work with Lion and later.
    Basic Backup
    For some people Time Machine will be more than adequate. Time Machine is part of OS X. There are two components:
    1. A Time Machine preferences panel as part of System Preferences;
    2. A Time Machine application located in the Applications folder. It is
        used to manage backups and to restore backups. Time Machine
        requires a backup drive that is at least twice the capacity of the
        drive being backed up.
    Alternatively, get an external 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):
      1. Carbon Copy Cloner
      2. Get Backup
      3. Deja Vu
      4. SuperDuper!
      5. Synk Pro
      6. Tri-Backup
    Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore.  Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files. For help with using Time Machine visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
    Referenced software can be found at MacUpdate.
    Additional Hints
    Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity as free space.
    Add more RAM. If your computer has less than 2 GBs of RAM and you are using OS X Leopard or later, then you can do with more RAM. Snow Leopard and Lion work much better with 4 GBs of RAM than their system minimums. The more concurrent applications you tend to use the more RAM you should have.
    Always maintain at least 15 GBs or 10% of your hard drive's capacity as free space, whichever is greater. OS X is frequently accessing your hard drive, so providing adequate free space will keep things from slowing down.
    Check for applications that may be hogging the CPU:
    Pre-Mavericks
    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu.  Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
    Mavericks and later
    Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the View menu.  Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
    Often this problem occurs because of a corrupted cache or preferences file or an attempt to write to a corrupted log file.

  • Hi there i have Mac OS X 10.5.8 on a MAcbook i want to upgrade as some programmes are slow what do i upgrade to?, hi there i have Mac OS X 10.5.8 on a MAcbook i want to upgrade as some programmes are slow what do i upgrade to?

    hi there i have Mac OS X 10.5.8 on a MAcbook i want to upgrade as some programmes are slow what do i upgrade to?

    same here, annieeee.  bought a Late 08 running Leopard...i ordered Snow Leopard from Apple store for $20, and installed last night. now it updates apps like iTunes and runs my Office 365

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