Speed of hard drive

I have noticed that my iBook is running much more slowly than it used to. A PC user friend said, 'You need to defrag your hard drive' -- useful statement in some cryptic way. Any idea how I can get my iBook back up to speed? And why it might be slower now than it was a year ago when I got it?
Thanks!

Hi mindwanderweg,
How much free space do you have on you HD?
Also: You should update to 10.4.3.
See my tips here, for a healthy, smooth running Mac:
More than maintenance, it is about preventing file corruption, that doesn't happen too often anyway.
All you have to do:
- Back up.
- Keep enough free space on the boot volume (10-15% is fine).
- "Repair Permissions" with Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder), after you used Software Update or after you used an Apple application installer.
- Run the three nightly Periodic scripts — once a month is fine — as they are not yet completely automated.
More prudent:
Before an OS Update or Upgrade,
- Disconnect all periphericals.
- Run a "Disk Repair" with Disk Utility from the install DVD.
- Much better: rebuild Directory with DiskWarrior.
- You can also clean all (each separately) user account's User, Browsers and Fonts caches (Yasu), and
- Check for corrupted Preferences (Preferential Treatment).
Software:
In theory we should not need any extra utility, as we already have Terminal and Disk Utility.
But some small applications like Yasu, OnyX, TinkerTool System or Cocktail for example, offer a nice, friendly GUI to many useful Terminal commands.
File defragmentation is not really needed in OS X
— Even (very rarely needed) free space defragmentation is more risky than a simple (and quite fast since Tiger) OS reinstallation —
but DiskWarrior has a very good approach of rebuilding the Directory.
- Read the Readme and Help files, and do not run a task if you don't know what it does.
- Do not install an application before you know how to uninstall it.
(example Anacron or Macaroni: they work well but redundant and about uninstall (???), or some Microsoft apps that too often gets us used to unnecessarily give our admin password...)
- Software Updates: no hurry! Do not download too much at a time, install the OS updates separately, and note that there is (in menu Update) an option "Update and Keep Package" that can fit to your backup strategy.
See also this other excellent approach:
(The X Lab) Maintaining Mac OS X
Good maintenance!
Axl
219

Similar Messages

Best speed External Hard Drive to use with Final Cut Pro X ?

Hey all
I'm looking at getting a new USB 2.0 external hard drive to use with FCPX, I was wondering what everyones thoughts were on minimum speeds and what everyone else uses.
I am looking at least 1-2TB.

I will warn you now that I am somewhat of a lone voice on these forums for recommending USB 2.0s.
I have used the 7,200rpm types with their own mains supply over the last 6 years (and exclusively for the last 3) and had no problems of any kind.
Having said that I am not a pro with tight schedules (or underwear!) but I have used DV, HDV, AVCHD with and without ProRes and AIC.
Most of my projects are short though I have done a number of 2 hour projects with comparatively simple editing and a few effects etc. One ongoing project has some 12 hours of DV which I dip into occasionally.
I have a couple of LaCie FW HDs which I stopped using a couple of years ago in favour of the much cheaper USB 2.0s and didn't notice any difference, though as I said I don't have pro time constraints.
Now is not the best time to buy HDs cheaply as the autumn floods in Asia knocked out many of the main suppliers, prices doubled overnight and have still not got back to last summers figures (2TB WD Essential £69 with free delivery).
Look at the price now!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Elements-External-Desktop/dp/B003IPC21Y/ ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1330504588&sr=8-11

Fans are running at full speed after hard drive upgrade. Used same brand drive.

My Western Digital 500GB hard drive crashed. The date on it is Aug. 2010. I swapped it out for a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB. All plugs were identical including the temp sensor cable. My fans now run at full speed. What gives? BTW. This is th 3rd WD hard drive to fail at my office in multiple iMacs. I have a 21.5 iMac i3 3.06ghz. I have tried the SMC reset,.. no luck. Reset the PRAM,.. no luck. Hard drive and computer function perfectly, it just sounds like a loud annoying PC.

After a little more research the only thing I found for 21.5" mid 2010 imac were three part numbers for three sensor cables which are a function of vendor:
922-9215, Hitachi
922-9216, Seagate
922-9622, Western Digital
The strange thing here is these are vendor specific and not model within vendor specific. So you started with a WD drive and replaced it with different model, but still a WD drive. So you would think it would require the same sensor cable.
Maybe the drives are different enough for this to matter. Or maybe you should check the connections one more time. Be it model of drive or connections, whichever it is, the sensor cable is the source of your problem.

2009 17" Macbook Pro fans running at max speed aafter hard drive upgrade.

I recently picked up a 17" 2009 unibody MacBook Pro with Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8ghz, 4gb RAM, SuperDrive and a Samsung 1TB hard drive. The system did not come with the original hard drive and I don't have any other hard drives to test and verify that the new larger hard drive is the cause. I have tried a clean install of Snow Leopard, Lion and even Mountain Lion but no matter what my fans always running at max speed (5k+ RPM). I have looked at iStat and the temps of any of the components in the machine never show more than 42*C so the fans should never be running at full blast. Oddly enough smcFanControl shows 0* temp but fan speds for both left and right are always 5.5k+ and very noisy. Using HDD Fan Control I am able to get at least the right fan to run at a controlable speed but its silence is drowned out by the left fan that still runs on full blast. I have already done multiple SMC resets and PRAM resets with no change in the condition. These noisey fans are driving me insane! I have run every available update as well. Is there a chance that the hard drive or something elses temp not being supported or detectable by OSX is causing the fans to default to the fail safe constant high speed?!

rriggin wrote:
I will have to try that when I get can find the original discs because I have been unable to boot into the diagnostic utility with my Snow Leopard, Lion, or Mountain Lion discs. More than likely I am thinking a sensor failure because even booting into Ubuntu Live USB thumbdrive the fans still run at max.
Well your just a regular pirate. There is no Mountain Lion disks, it's not even out of Beta and avaialble to the public yet
We thought you were just mistaken but now your tech handy enough to boot a Mac off a Linux live USB, so that means you've been bad and downloaded MT Lion off a P2P network or something.
If your beta testing 10.8 your bound to secrecy and not allowed to be discussing it and posting this sort of question on this forum, but the other one.
If you know anything, OS X must "talk" to the hardware or else the default setting is to race the fans. Linux doesn't do this by default as it's designed for generic PC's which a Mac may appear to be one it's not really. Apple only supports OS X and Windows 7 on Mac's, not Linux.
Obviously something on your machine is SEVERLY messed up in hardware, likely a dead sensor, you bought a used lemon that someone didn't want to pay to get fixed.
Want to try Linux?, read this

Fans running full speed after hard drive replacement

I have a 24" aluminum iMac (iMac7,1) which had a hard drive failure. I replaced the hard drive myself and all went well. However, now my fans are running full speed. This appears to be because of a problem with detecting my temperature sensors now. During the install I only touched two temp. sensors, the hard drive sensor and the LCD sensor. I made special care to make sure I got the sensors back in place.
Using iStat Pro the only temp. sensors I have readings for are the Hard Drive and Power Supply. I am missing ambient, optical drive, CPU, and display. Out of those the only one out of the missing ones I touched are the display one. I have since gone back into the machine to ensure the LCD temp. sensor was fully connected and to ensure the HD one was connected (although that one is working).
What is really strange is the ambient sensor appears to be a diode on the main board so I really don't see a way I could have messed that one up. Also, I didn't touch the CPU sensor (didn't even see it), nor did I touch the optical sensor.
Anyway I have tried:
PRAM reset
SMC reset
went back into the box to make sure all temp sensors where in place.
I am out of troubleshooting ideas. Can anyone provide additional insight?

Mechanic man thanks for the response.
Besides for the fan noise the machine is running like a champ. The new hard drive seems to be fine, actually my machine boots up faster now than it ever did (faster drive I suppose). I ran disk utility and did a verify on the new disk and it didn't detect any problems.
The fans run at full speed immediately at power-on (maybe a one second pause). I first noticed it when I booted up from the startup disk to do a time machine restore. So yes, it occurs when booting from a system disk.
I have been unable to run Apple Hardware Test, I saw this step in some google searching and Apple docs but I don't seem to have AHT on any disk. I have tried putting the Snow Leopard disk in and holding "d" at boot time to no affect. I did some further reading and found that AHT may only be included on disks that come with the machine. I am going to try to dig up my Tiger disks and see if I can get AHT to run from there (10.4 was the factory installed OS when I bought my iMac).
I am also considering trying to re-install SMC firmware (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2368). Even though it will be the same version at least I know the SMC reset has taken place.
Since the fans run full speed right at start up that suggests to me that it is a physical hardware problem (i.e. something wrong with the sensors) or a firmware issue. I am leaning toward firmware.

Which speed internal hard drive should I get for FCP editing on a Mac Book

I am going to buy a new Mac Book Pro notebook to edit a feature documentary with FCP. My footage is all on 7200 rpm G-raid external drives. Question: should I buy the 4200 rpm, 5200 rpm, or 7200 rpm hard drive for the notebook? I really like having more hard drive space - but I want to be able to edit quickly, play back thru my deck to a television, etc as well. Editing is miniDV with typically 4 tracks video + audio. Appreciate hearing from anyone who has direct experienc and has compared.

Instead of focusing on the internal drive, I would
advise getting an ExpressCard/34 firewire card to
create a second FW bus for capturing footage to the
G-Raid externals.
Hmm, is that better than just using the FW400 port for the camera and the FW800 port for the external harddrive?

Transfer speed from Hard Drive

Am I correct in thinking that data access is faster from an internal drive than an external one?
I've got a stock MBP (5400 rpm?) drive and an external Firewire drive that runs at 7200 rpm. Is it faster to use the external drive as a scratch disk for video capture? Is it just as fast as an internal 7200?

It's going to be faster with the 7,200 RPM drive. If they were both the same RPM, I'd go with the internal, but since the external is a faster drive, it should more than make up for the slight difference in transfer speed with Firewire.
So, yes, you are correct in that an internal drive would be faster, but since your internal is slower than your external, this is nolonger the case. Use the external for a scratch disk.
Alternatively, you could consider having a 7,200 RPM drive installed in place of your existing 5,400 RPM drive. But that can be a complicated matter, and a topic for another discussion...
MacBook PRO 17 Inch Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Maximum speed internal hard drive configuration

Barefeets posted an interesting speed test using 2 velociraptors as the boot drive. I am considering the same setup. I also want to use three other internal drives (a total of 5 drives) set up as a PS swap raid and Image files raid. The fifth drive would be in the lower superdrive bay.
I'm using Seagate 1.5T 7200.11 drives and creating three partitions on each drive. The first partition on each drive will be 15GB for a total of 45GB for PS Swap. The second partition on each drive will be 100GB for a total of 300GB for writing and reading PS files. The remaining partitions on each drive (about 1.14T) will be left alone and will act as stand alone drives. I will move data from the 300GB raid to one of the remaining large partitions and chronosync to the other two drives for redundancy. Routinely that data will move off the computer to outboard backup drives. If I have a drive failure I have the two remaining drives, plus outboard, to rely on. Does all of this make sense? Am I missing anything?

Some results on CS4, Geekbench and CineBench:
http://www.barefeats.com/nehal03.html
*A Case For More Memory on your Nehalem Mac Pro*
Adobe After Effects CS4 (and CS3) spawns subprocesses -- one for each core -- when 'multiprocessing' is enabled in Preferences. Each of those subprocesses can grab up to 3GB of RAM. We typically use the Total Benchmark created by Brian Maffitt to benchmark with After Effects. If you run Activity Monitor during the rendering, you can not only observe the multiple subprocesses but you can observe how much real memory each of them is appropriating as the second phase of the project render progresses toward completion. When we had 16G installed, we observed 13GB of real memory in use.
*PHOTOSHOP CS4*
Only certain functions/filters in Photoshop use multiple cores. Some "MP aware" functions include Rotate, Gaussian Blur, Motion Blur, Radial Blur, Lighting Effects, Lens Flare, Pointilize, Sharpen Edges. These "MP aware" effects use all available cores.
As for memory usage, Photoshop is able to grab more than the 3GB memory cache defined in preferences. If you overflow that and there is memory to spare, OS X Leopard will allocate unused memory as a virtual scratch volume. If you are editing RAW photos with lots of layers and lots of history states, having the 8 memory slots on the 8-core is a big advantage.
http://www.barefeats.com/nehal04.html
You want 16-32GB of RAM. Turn off Spotlight on scratch volume and never ever use the boot drive for primary scratch pref or for media files, once you get into large files that is paramount. Even the stripped boot will help a lot.
4GB files can really push a sytem to the limit, and require optimizing everything.
Adobe believed it was safe to use Carbon code rather than learn new coding, new and different compilers. And a lot of programs are not dealing with more than 2 cores all that well, and even Intel keeps updating their compilers they offer to help improve code. - So yes, and now is perfect time with the move to Snow Leopard for CS5 to go 64-bit, but just as important, multi-core aware. They already know how, on Windows 64, to use a GPU for rendering images in CS4 (look up the Quadro CX) for "GPGPU."
With RAM and properly configured storage, and multiple discreet arrays, each on their own drives probably, I've seen G5 owners with 3-5 10K VelociRaptors load large apps and files in sub-zero bounce - and breath new life into G5.

External hard drive speed for backups and archiving

I'm planning to buy a pair of external FireWire hard drives to backup and archive my iBook G4. I've read a couple of product reports that compare read and write speed of hard drives which seems to be a function of each drive's rotational speed.
I then noticed that my iBook's internal hard drive is slower (at 4200 RPM) than either of the external drives I'm now considering (7200 RPM and 5400 RPM). A test report I read showed the 7200 RPM drive duplicating 1GB twice as fast as the 5400 RPM drive when connected via FireWire to a G5.
Will my slower internal hard drive limit the speed of duplication so that there is little or no advantage to the 7200 RPM drive over the 5400 RPM drive for me?
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Probably should have been clearer in my initial question. The 7200 RPM drive I'm looking at is a desktop model, and a bit cheaper than the 5400 RPM drive, which is portable. I like the smaller footprint of the portable drive (and the convenience of it being bus powered) but don't want to pay more for those benefits only to be disappointed with its performance.
So, I'm actually trying to decide between a higher speed/lower cost/desktop vs. lower speed/higher cost/portable. If I could determine that the actual performance difference between these was not very significant when used solely to backup and archive my iBook, I'd gladly pay a bit more for the convenience and small size of the portable.
If there indeed is a big performance difference, I'd find space on my desk for the desktop drive and pocket the savings.

Upgrade hard drive and RAM

What is the maximum size & speed of hard drive that I can put into my new MacBook Pro?
Any problems anticipated with a WD 1TB SATAIII 7200RPM 64MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive?
I also want to upgrade to 16MB RAM. Any problems anticipated with that?
Thanks!

Ooops. Yes. Sorry for that silly typo. It is 2 TBs. Here's the info on memory:
Maximum Memory
16 GB (Actual) 8 GB (Apple)
Memory Slots
2 - 204-pin PC3-12800 (1600 MHz) DDR3 SO-DIMM
Good sources for memory include:
OWC
DataMem
Crucial.com

Running Creative Suite 4 from External Hard Drive

I recently purchased Adobe Creative Suite 4 (student edition), however, I do not have enough space install it directly on my MacBook. What I would like to do instead is install the programs onto a portable external hard drive, and always run them from there.
I am not sure exactly what capacity and speed external hard drive to purchase for these programs to run well, I am trying to decide between the Western Digital 500 GB Passport Studio with a 5400 RPM, and the LaCie 320GB (maybe even the 200GB) hard drive with 7200 RPM. Is the faster RPM more desirable, or would more space with a slower RPM be a better choice?
Is it best to use firewire or is USB an okay connection between the computer and the drive for smooth functioning?
Additionally, is it possible to have some of the programs that I use more frequently on the computer, and the rest on the external hard drive? Or must all of the files be in the same place?
WD Passport Studio: http://store.westerndigital.com/store/wdus/en_US/DisplayProductDetailsPage/categoryID.1309 4300/parid.13092300/catid.13093000
LaCie 320GB 7200 RPM: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000WPG31I/ref=noref?ie=UTF8&s=electronics

I'd highly recommend either:
1. Moving large files on your internal drive (movies, music etc) to your external to clear up space for the Adobe applications. They should be run from the system drive, not an external.
or
2. Get a bigger hard drive.

Sometimes my computer takes too long to connect to new website. I am running a pretty powerful work program at same time, what is the best solution? Upgrading speed from cable network, is it a hard drive issue? do I need to "clean out" the computer?

Many times my computer takes too long to connect to new website. I have wireless internet (time capsule) and I am running a pretty powerful real time financial work program at same time, what is the best solution? Upgrading speed from cable network? is it a hard drive issue? do I only need to "clean out" the computer? Or all of the above...not to computer saavy. It is a Macbook Pro osx 10.6.8 (late 2010).

Almost certainly none of the above! Try each of the following in this order:
Select 'Reset Safari' from the Safari menu.
Close down Safari; move <home>/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Cache.db to the trash; restart Safari.
Change the DNS servers in your network settings to use the OpenDNS servers: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
Turn off DNS pre-fetching by entering the following command in Terminal and restarting Safari:
defaults write com.apple.safari WebKitDNSPrefetchingEnabled -boolean false

Do I need to have an external hard drive that has a certain spindle speed, like 7200?

In the past, when I did audio or video editing, the specs on the software required a certain rotational speed if I were using an external hard drive. Most of the time it was 7200. Do I need to use a specific spindle rotational speed for Final Cut Pro, or will drive 5400 or above do fine?

That still applies today as well. Helps to also use faster connection ports like Firewire 400 or 800, USB 3.0, or Thunderbolt rather than USB 2.0.

Speed up early 2009 macbook5,2 by switching mechanical hard drive to SSD

I am running Mavericks on an early 2009 Macbook5,2 4gb RAM CPU@2ghz Intel core 2 duo. It is running at an unacceptably slow speed. Network performance is very hopeless too. I am wondering if switching mechanical hard disk to a SSD would revive this macbook enough to keep it for a few more years. Please advise if this approach has a chance to improve its performance adequately. If yes, what steps to follow to migrate software on my existing hard drive to SSD?

Your Macbook has a SATA bus.
1. This is what I recommend. Some drives which are SATA 2/3 compliant do not support SATA 1. http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Electronics-2-5-Inch-SATA_6_0_gb-MZ-7PD512BW/dp/B0 09NB8WTI/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1405128604&sr=8-3&keywords=samsung+840+pro
I have used this in SATA 1 systems without any issues (the OCZ Vector is an example of problems with SATA 1).
2. Replacing the drive can be done using these steps - https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Core+2+Duo+Hard+Drive+Replacement/514
3. I suggest you use an external drive and make a Time Machine Backup of your MB, before you make any changes. If you have a Time Capsule, it can help as well (otherwise see if you can find a USB/FW external drive for backup).
4. Once you have a good backup, replace the drive using steps in 2. Take the old drive from the MB and put it in an external SATA enclosure (preferably one that has both USB and Firewire), so it becomes your external boot disk. If you do not want a SATA enclosure, you can also consider a FW only enclosure.
5. You can now boot from the external disk. Restore the TM backup in step 3 to the internal SSD. You will have to format the internal SSD (because it is usually unformatted). FW connectivity will allow you to daisy-chain the TM backup and your external boot drive. The restore also makes your internal drive bootable. All your applications/settings/accounts/passwords will also be preserved this way. You are essentially restoring everything from the old drive to the new drive.
If you need help regarding TM, let me know.

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009) - Maximum internal hard drive size and speed?

What is the maximum size of hard drive and speed for an internal hard drive to my Macbook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009), please?
I bought myself a Technics 1TB, 7200 rpm internal hardrive. Made a clone successfully in Super Duper.
It fits, but It is not available for starting up my Macbook Pro. Not available in System Prefs, but visible and grey in Disc Utility.
Although it starts up my Mac Pro just fine.. but not my Macbook Pro.
Is there a limit of hard drive specifics?
What is the maximum size of hard drive and speed for an internal hard drive to my Macbook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009), please?

Thanks for the reply
I cloned the Technics HDD ( 2,5" HGST Travelstar 7K1000 - 1 TB : HTS721010A9E630) from the MBP.
I tried to boot it up with my Technincs ( 2,5" HGST Travelstar 7K1000 - 1 TB : HTS721010A9E630) installed in my MBP (as my internal hard drive).

Speed of hard drive

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