Very slow 2012 MBP

ChrisR

ChrisR

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My daughter has an old MacBook Pro, mid 2012 model. It seems to run like treacle; startup takes an age, as does initiating any new apps. It has a 500 GB HDD (about 10% free), and the maximum 8 GB memory. Currently running El Capitan, which I believe is as far as it will go. Activity Monitor doesn't reveal anything weird in the way of running processes; indeed, CPU usage seems quite light. I did a disk check with Disk Utility (while the Mac was running), and everything seemed to be fine.

Is there anything else I should check?

She has not been able to use it much for a couple of years. Usage would normally be light; viewing movies, checking websites etc. Other priorities mean a new Mac is out of the question at the moment.

My feeling is that the HDD might be on the way out. I got good results replacing the HDD in an aged Windows box with a SSD. Would a similar transplant be a good investment? And would there be any issue with a 1 TB SSD rather than a 500 GB?

Thanks for any help!
 
When I had an older Macbook I found it got progressively slower, and after a couple of years needed OSX reinstalling (just like a certain other OS) which would rejuvenate performance for a while.

The HDD is probably fine, but it's no longer acceptable for a computer to take 2min or more to boot. A 1TB SSD should be fine, and will hugely cut boot time after the machine has finished POST sequence (my old Macbook used to take almost a minute before starting to boot).
 
ancient_mariner said:
.... A 1TB SSD should be fine, and will hugely cut boot time after the machine has finished POST sequence (my old Macbook used to take almost a minute before starting to boot).
Click to expand...
Thanks Toni. What is POST sequence?
 
Definitely an SSD. Quite easy to do in a MB of that era. Also, only having 10% free will not be helping, so I'd get free space up to about 20% if possible. 1TB definitely a good idea.

Modern OSX versions have multiple file accesses, so a spinning disk slows them down.

Unless you already have one, something like this is really helpful.

You either set the SSD up while it is connected to the cable, then put it in the machine, or put it in the machine and connect the old drive up externally. Then boot up in Recovery Mode, install OSX on the SSD, start the Mac up and copy the files across.

Shout if you need detailed help.
 
ancient_mariner said:
When I had an older Macbook I found it got progressively slower, and after a couple of years needed OSX reinstalling (just like a certain other OS) which would rejuvenate performance for a while.

The HDD is probably fine, but it's no longer acceptable for a computer to take 2min or more to boot. A 1TB SSD should be fine, and will hugely cut boot time after the machine has finished POST sequence (my old Macbook used to take almost a minute before starting to boot).
Click to expand...

Yes, replacing the original HDD with a Crucial SSD made a huge difference with my wife's MacBook of slightly earlier vintage a few years back, and also on my 2012 Cheesegrater Mac Pro.

Everything was a lot snappier afterward, but the MacBook in particular went from being almost unusable to really pleasant.

I suspect that, in part, solid state drives have raised the bar so far it's sometimes a shock to see how poor 5400 rpm laptop HDDs were in comparison.

If you have about 10% free on a 500GB drive now, 1TB is certainly a good idea. Having only 10% free is almost certainly contributing to your current speed woes.

Ideally, for optimum performance (with any drive) you want to maintain 50% free space; the general rule of thumb is that performance degrades increasingly as free space falls below 25%.

With SSDs, and especially on a machine of this vintage which uses slower SATA connectivity you can perhaps run things a little finer without it noticing.
 
iFixit guides for replacing the HDD on the13 inch and 15 inch Unibody 2012 MBPs may help

www.ifixit.com

MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Mid 2012 Hard Drive Replacement

Use this guide to replace a dead hard drive. If your new hard drive seems slow or doesn’t work correctly, try replacing the hard drive cable. The...
www.ifixit.com www.ifixit.com

www.ifixit.com

MacBook Pro 15" Unibody Mid 2012 Hard Drive Replacement

Upgrade your hard drive for more storage space! This guide will also show you how to replace the hard drive bracket.
www.ifixit.com www.ifixit.com
 
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ChrisR said:
Thanks Toni. What is POST sequence?
Click to expand...

POST is what the hardware does to get up and running so that everything talks to everything else before it starts to run the operating system. When I did one of the updates on my Macbook the pre-OS phase when from being 15-20 sec to more than a minute, presumably because there was some kind of bundled BIOS update that was much more demanding.

If you have your machine backed up with Time Machine (strongly recommended) then you should be able to install OSX on the new disc, then restore from the backup and everything should be like it was before only much, much better.
 
Once the main drive gets to over 90% full the storage space left becomes fragmented. Fragmented storage space means swapping becomes slower

After a long time of using a mac, it's amazing how much junk it manages to collect. It's unlikely to be a hardware problem.

I use an app called "CleanMyMac" which is superb. It's free to try and it will make a huge difference in cleaning up the system.

You can download it here. cleanmymac

After running it then have a look at the files on the drive in Finder and delete the old stuff you no longer need. Guarantee there will be a lot.

Then do a full Time-Machine backup.

There are lots of sites that explain how to do a fresh full clean install.

Once you have done a clean install you can then restore your time machine backup.

Your mac will be like new.
 
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SSD.
 
Thank you all. A post I found on Apple discussions suggests the hard drive cable in this particular model is also fragile and worth replacing, as well as the drive.

I also noticed an icon fo Sophos in the dock, and I know she's running Avast. I couldn't see Sophos in the Applications or Utilities folder, though, so maybe it's not an issue.
 
Might be worth keeping an eye on here for a used one: https://bramley-computers.co.uk/product-category/used-stock/

I've just got a replacement iMac for buttons compared to a new one. My old one had gone into treacle mode as well. One solution is to back up the important data and then just wipe the whole thing and start afresh. They get crudded up over the years with upgrades and remnants of older programmes seem to somehow stick around.

I normally migrate from an old computer to a new one but that also carries over some of the junk so I started again afresh and just copied over the profile data I needed. It's been a lot better. Old computer had a decent amount of RAM and hard drive was only half full so they do just seem to start getting slow regardless.
 
ChrisR said:
Thank you all. A post I found on Apple discussions suggests the hard drive cable in this particular model is also fragile and worth replacing, as well as the drive.

I also noticed an icon fo Sophos in the dock, and I know she's running Avast. I couldn't see Sophos in the Applications or Utilities folder, though, so maybe it's not an issue.
Click to expand...
Fire up Activity Monitor and see if there is anything that is hogging processor or RAM.
 
srichards said:
Might be worth keeping an eye on here for a used one: https://bramley-computers.co.uk/product-category/use
Click to expand...
Coincidentally they came up in my twitter feed, so I checked. The cheaper ones were 250 GB drives, so not suitable, sadly. I think we can stick a 1TB drive in for less than £100, maybe a bit more if she gets a pro to do it (we've left it too late to get the parts before she goes home, unfortunately). It helps that this MBP is the last easily upgradeable model...
 
ChrisR said:
Coincidentally they came up in my twitter feed, so I checked. The cheaper ones were 250 GB drives, so not suitable, sadly. I think we can stick a 1TB drive in for less than £100, maybe a bit more if she gets a pro to do it (we've left it too late to get the parts before she goes home, unfortunately). It helps that this MBP is the last easily upgradeable model...
Click to expand...

Amazon could deliver tomorrow, then an hour to install the OS. After that it'll probably take a day for TM to restore everything, but she can do that at home.
 
ChrisR said:
SSD. Would a similar transplant be a good investment? And would there be any issue with a 1 TB SSD rather than a 500 GB?
Click to expand...
HDDs are absolute pain and should not be allowed in any tech as main drive. Problem is you are about 10 years too late to do that. You could pick up a cheap unit and have a play, maybe find secondary use for the laptop, but really age and vintage are doing the inevitable. You are better of selling up and picking up pretty much anything new
 
LongLensPhotography said:
HDDs are absolute pain and should not be allowed in any tech as main drive. Problem is you are about 10 years too late to do that. You could pick up a cheap unit and have a play, maybe find secondary use for the laptop, but really age and vintage are doing the inevitable. You are better of selling up and picking up pretty much anything new
Click to expand...
Agree with your first part, but moving into a new flat means her budget is shot. For what she wants to use it for, I reckon the old MBP will be fine, one a SSD is fitted!
 
Apparently, HDD drives slow down with age. Mine did and the difference after fitting a SSD was wonderful!
 
Download this first and give it a go running the maintenance tasks.

Titanium Software | Operating System Utilities for Mac - OnyX

OnyX is a multifunction utility that you can use to verify the startup disk and the structure of its system files, perform cleaning and computer maintenance tasks, uninstall applications, configure some hidden parameters of many Apple applications, and more.
www.titanium-software.fr www.titanium-software.fr

It's basically a Mac version in the style of CCleaner . Does a great job.

Dougie.
 
Donnie said:
up it to 16 GB memory too, will help quite a bit.
Click to expand...
Not sure you can get 16 GB in that model. Officially not AFAICS.
 
ChrisR said:
Not sure you can get 16 GB in that model. Officially not AFAICS.
Click to expand...
Not officially no but mine took it no problem and with a 256 ssd and putting the 500hdd in a caddy where the cd used to be it made it very useable.
 
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