Speed up my macbook pro?
October 28, 2013 1:29 PM Subscribe
My macbook pro is old (2009) but i've upgraded memory and all that, which helped. but not enough. any recs for (preferably free) software that will clean up my hard drive some? i imagine after all this time, it's pretty bogged down with stuff i don't need.
the computer itself is still in great working order and it's not so slow that i'm going to get rid of it. but i would like to get it operating at peak performance. i upgraded to mavericks, which has made it a little slower, but it's been a building problem for the last year. thanks.
the computer itself is still in great working order and it's not so slow that i'm going to get rid of it. but i would like to get it operating at peak performance. i upgraded to mavericks, which has made it a little slower, but it's been a building problem for the last year. thanks.
For the most part on the Mac you will want to
- upgrade the memory (you did that)
- clear up old crap and stuff you're not using - I use a program called Onyx
- watch your start up programs (the things that turn on when your mac starts up) to make sure you're not running a ton of stuff at once that you don't care to be running
There's no real equivalent to disk defragmenter for Macs, they don't really need it. There are a lot of decent articles about what else could be causing your mac to run slowly. Here's one with a few simple tips.
posted by jessamyn at 1:44 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]
- upgrade the memory (you did that)
- clear up old crap and stuff you're not using - I use a program called Onyx
- watch your start up programs (the things that turn on when your mac starts up) to make sure you're not running a ton of stuff at once that you don't care to be running
There's no real equivalent to disk defragmenter for Macs, they don't really need it. There are a lot of decent articles about what else could be causing your mac to run slowly. Here's one with a few simple tips.
posted by jessamyn at 1:44 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]
For clearing out the cruft:
AppZapper lets you uninstall all the files associated with a particular app.
Xslimmer can remove the PPC binaries and other localizations to free up some space, though you might want to use it sparingly.
Also, what % of your hard drive to have free? Someone with more compu-knowledge can tell you the exact amount, but once you get to low storage space (~10 GBish?) your computer will slow way down. You could, if you're no longer in love with the optical drive, put a second HDD in there for storage and get, like BillMcMurdo said, an SSD as your boot disk. That'd be enough to make your computer feel real zippy.
posted by Maecenas at 1:48 PM on October 28, 2013
AppZapper lets you uninstall all the files associated with a particular app.
Xslimmer can remove the PPC binaries and other localizations to free up some space, though you might want to use it sparingly.
Also, what % of your hard drive to have free? Someone with more compu-knowledge can tell you the exact amount, but once you get to low storage space (~10 GBish?) your computer will slow way down. You could, if you're no longer in love with the optical drive, put a second HDD in there for storage and get, like BillMcMurdo said, an SSD as your boot disk. That'd be enough to make your computer feel real zippy.
posted by Maecenas at 1:48 PM on October 28, 2013
Cleaning out your hard drive will not make your computer faster. Computers don't work that way,* contrary to popular opinion.
It's worthwhile to go through your Login Items and make sure there isn't software starting at boot time that you don't need.
I'd also disable or uninstall any browser extensions that you don't use all the time. They can slow down your browser, and if your browser is where you spend most of your time that will make the "computer" feel slow. And make sure you've updated everything, most browsers have gotten faster in recent years. And be aware of how many tabs you keep open at a time; as websites have gotten more bloated, keeping tabs open means more memory is taken up by each one. On my machine, each Facebook tab consumes 90MB, Google+ is 150MB, MeFi is ~60ish, etc. Enough open tabs can cause your machine to swap (causing hard drive activity and slowness) when you switch back and forth between tabs or between the browser and other memory-heavy apps.
Deleting files off of your hard drive will not give you any particular speed boost, except occasionally during full backups and the occasional Spotlight reindexing, so that's not where you should spend your time if the intention is just to make your computer faster. (Cleaning up for the sake of cleaning up is fine, I guess, but I'd err on the side of not deleting things if you question whether you might need them. Storage space is cheap, reconstructing something you didn't mean to throw out isn't.)
But all this tweaking is just playing around the margins; maxing out your RAM (if it's not maxed already) or upgrading to an SSD will make a much more perceptible difference.
* There's a narrow exception for a computer that has basically zero free space left on the disk drive, but most modern OSes will warn you if that starts to happen and it's really rare given today's hard drives. Unless your free space is less than a few multiples (say 10x on the outside) RAM, this is almost certainly not causing your perceived slowness.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:49 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]
It's worthwhile to go through your Login Items and make sure there isn't software starting at boot time that you don't need.
I'd also disable or uninstall any browser extensions that you don't use all the time. They can slow down your browser, and if your browser is where you spend most of your time that will make the "computer" feel slow. And make sure you've updated everything, most browsers have gotten faster in recent years. And be aware of how many tabs you keep open at a time; as websites have gotten more bloated, keeping tabs open means more memory is taken up by each one. On my machine, each Facebook tab consumes 90MB, Google+ is 150MB, MeFi is ~60ish, etc. Enough open tabs can cause your machine to swap (causing hard drive activity and slowness) when you switch back and forth between tabs or between the browser and other memory-heavy apps.
Deleting files off of your hard drive will not give you any particular speed boost, except occasionally during full backups and the occasional Spotlight reindexing, so that's not where you should spend your time if the intention is just to make your computer faster. (Cleaning up for the sake of cleaning up is fine, I guess, but I'd err on the side of not deleting things if you question whether you might need them. Storage space is cheap, reconstructing something you didn't mean to throw out isn't.)
But all this tweaking is just playing around the margins; maxing out your RAM (if it's not maxed already) or upgrading to an SSD will make a much more perceptible difference.
* There's a narrow exception for a computer that has basically zero free space left on the disk drive, but most modern OSes will warn you if that starts to happen and it's really rare given today's hard drives. Unless your free space is less than a few multiples (say 10x on the outside) RAM, this is almost certainly not causing your perceived slowness.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:49 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]
Install Mavericks. Really. Most people have reported that, in addition to the standard cleaning of caches that often accompanies operating system upgrades, it seems to shrink swap and hibernation file space. Additionally, it has a number of optimizations that lead to better use of memory and less use of swap space. I'm not sure if there is a diminishing returns curve when it comes to hardware, but this has seemed true on my mid-2010 Macbook Pro.
posted by mikeh at 1:53 PM on October 28, 2013
posted by mikeh at 1:53 PM on October 28, 2013
I have a Macbook Pro from that same period, and I'm still using Snow Leopard for a number of reasons, so I'm not sure how much of this will apply.
So, as some have noted above, disk space and speed may not have a direct relationship, but it may be worth looking at what you have on there anyway for a couple reasons. First, I was finding that my computer was really bogging down when it was indexing for Spotlight and during some Time Machine and other backups. One source of problems were some corrupt files. I don't really understand entirely what happened, but there were about 3 or 4 random jpegs and a couple other files on my computer that had gotten corrupted and certain processes would hang on those all the time. I was actually able to track them down by looking at the logs of what files were problematic through Crashplan -- the online backup service I use. While those processes were bogging down on those corrupt files, the overall machine would often slow down as well.
I also found the program Grand Perspective to be helpful. This was a while back, but there were some incredibly large files I had that were easy to see once I used that app. I think the problem was virtual machines I was creating through VMWare. Somehow they were getting changed and then Time Machine would try to back up this gigantic file. I basically just told Time Machine not to look in that directory.
posted by This_Will_Be_Good at 2:21 PM on October 28, 2013
So, as some have noted above, disk space and speed may not have a direct relationship, but it may be worth looking at what you have on there anyway for a couple reasons. First, I was finding that my computer was really bogging down when it was indexing for Spotlight and during some Time Machine and other backups. One source of problems were some corrupt files. I don't really understand entirely what happened, but there were about 3 or 4 random jpegs and a couple other files on my computer that had gotten corrupted and certain processes would hang on those all the time. I was actually able to track them down by looking at the logs of what files were problematic through Crashplan -- the online backup service I use. While those processes were bogging down on those corrupt files, the overall machine would often slow down as well.
I also found the program Grand Perspective to be helpful. This was a while back, but there were some incredibly large files I had that were easy to see once I used that app. I think the problem was virtual machines I was creating through VMWare. Somehow they were getting changed and then Time Machine would try to back up this gigantic file. I basically just told Time Machine not to look in that directory.
posted by This_Will_Be_Good at 2:21 PM on October 28, 2013
Unless your free space is less than a few multiples (say 10x on the outside) RAM, this is almost certainly not causing your perceived slowness.
OS X can get pretty greedy about swapping over time; a browser like Chrome can get pretty greedy about temporary files. I've found, even with a 250GB SSD and 8GB RAM on a 2011 MBP, that it's necessary to keep about 20GB free to avoid slowdowns.
Use GrandPerspective or DaisyDisk to get a visual overview of your filesystem. Check your Login Items and Activity Monitor for stuff that's running in the background. While clean installs aren't as necessary on OS X as Windows (back when I used Windows) I ran a clean install for Mountain Lion that allowed me to get past some old crud dating back to Tiger. If you do feel inclined to buy a SSD, then a clean install and selective migration of your old stuff should keep you going pretty well. Any apps that you haven't used in ages simply won't get installed on the new build.
posted by holgate at 2:34 PM on October 28, 2013
OS X can get pretty greedy about swapping over time; a browser like Chrome can get pretty greedy about temporary files. I've found, even with a 250GB SSD and 8GB RAM on a 2011 MBP, that it's necessary to keep about 20GB free to avoid slowdowns.
Use GrandPerspective or DaisyDisk to get a visual overview of your filesystem. Check your Login Items and Activity Monitor for stuff that's running in the background. While clean installs aren't as necessary on OS X as Windows (back when I used Windows) I ran a clean install for Mountain Lion that allowed me to get past some old crud dating back to Tiger. If you do feel inclined to buy a SSD, then a clean install and selective migration of your old stuff should keep you going pretty well. Any apps that you haven't used in ages simply won't get installed on the new build.
posted by holgate at 2:34 PM on October 28, 2013
i upgraded to mavericks, which has made it a little slower, but it's been a building problem for the last year. thanks.
This is a bit odd to me. I have the same macbook pro and noticed an increase in speed upon installing mavericks. Not a tiny one either.
I'd do a manual backup(as in, copy all the documents you want to keep to an external drive) before i'd do a time machine backup unless there were lots of apps installed you REALLY didn't want to reconfigure/reactivate the licensing on, and then do a clean install.
If i was still unsatisfied then, and i'd figure i still would be(5400rpm drives suck. end of story) i'd do a time machine backup and buy a small(120gb~, so around $90-100, this is an excellent choice and highly regarded) ssd and put your old drive in one of these.
You already did the ram, SSD is the main upgrade you can do to these machines. The higher clock core2duos in the old-ish unibody macbook pros made them slightly faster than everything up to almost the current macbook air.(and held strong against the 13in pro for quite a while as well, basically until the 2011). For non CPU or GPU intensive work putting an SSD in will make it feel like a brand new machine.
That, is likely the upgrade you want. You can verify it's not a software issue by wiping the drive and doing a clean install, but somehow i think the performance you seek will only be had with a hardware upgrade.
Oh, and if you haven't already take the bottom shell off and clean out the heatsinks with an air compressor. Be prepared to remove the fans(VERY easy, couple screws and they lift out) when dust bunnies get horribly lodged in them from this. You're likely not getting any thermal throttling yet, but it's worthwhile to clean out the fans anyways if only to extend the life of the machine.
posted by emptythought at 2:57 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]
This is a bit odd to me. I have the same macbook pro and noticed an increase in speed upon installing mavericks. Not a tiny one either.
I'd do a manual backup(as in, copy all the documents you want to keep to an external drive) before i'd do a time machine backup unless there were lots of apps installed you REALLY didn't want to reconfigure/reactivate the licensing on, and then do a clean install.
If i was still unsatisfied then, and i'd figure i still would be(5400rpm drives suck. end of story) i'd do a time machine backup and buy a small(120gb~, so around $90-100, this is an excellent choice and highly regarded) ssd and put your old drive in one of these.
You already did the ram, SSD is the main upgrade you can do to these machines. The higher clock core2duos in the old-ish unibody macbook pros made them slightly faster than everything up to almost the current macbook air.(and held strong against the 13in pro for quite a while as well, basically until the 2011). For non CPU or GPU intensive work putting an SSD in will make it feel like a brand new machine.
That, is likely the upgrade you want. You can verify it's not a software issue by wiping the drive and doing a clean install, but somehow i think the performance you seek will only be had with a hardware upgrade.
Oh, and if you haven't already take the bottom shell off and clean out the heatsinks with an air compressor. Be prepared to remove the fans(VERY easy, couple screws and they lift out) when dust bunnies get horribly lodged in them from this. You're likely not getting any thermal throttling yet, but it's worthwhile to clean out the fans anyways if only to extend the life of the machine.
posted by emptythought at 2:57 PM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]
Mod note: Comment removed - if you have your own tangential question, please feel free to post it to AskMe
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:21 PM on October 28, 2013
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:21 PM on October 28, 2013
Before you can fix your performance problems, you need to understand whats causing them.
What do you use your computer for? What applications do you typically run? Which applications do you typically run at the same time? What applications are you running when your computer seems slow? What specific actions seem slow?
How big is your hard disk? How much space is free?
How much memory do you have?
Run Activity Monitor, look at the CPU, Memory, Disk and Network sections. What is the CPU load when your computer isn't doing much? How much Swap memory is used when your usual set of apps is open? What do the data written & received numbers and graphs look like?
Try using your computer, when it seems slow, switch to activity monitor and see if any of the graphs has changed dramatically.
Cleaning up your hard disk can make a difference if you are really tight on disk space, but otherwise, isn't going to help. Cleaning up your hard drive can mean deleting startup items that don't need to be running. If that is actually your problem, you also need to be more circumspect going forward about what you install in the first place
As for Mavericks, it seems to have made my wife's RAM constrained 2008 MacBook Pro noticeably faster and more responsive. If installing it made things slower, then it could be that it is either because it is doing some maintenance triggered by the upgrade, like rebuilding spotlight indexes, or preparing a huge TimeMachine backup.
posted by Good Brain at 3:22 PM on October 28, 2013
What do you use your computer for? What applications do you typically run? Which applications do you typically run at the same time? What applications are you running when your computer seems slow? What specific actions seem slow?
How big is your hard disk? How much space is free?
How much memory do you have?
Run Activity Monitor, look at the CPU, Memory, Disk and Network sections. What is the CPU load when your computer isn't doing much? How much Swap memory is used when your usual set of apps is open? What do the data written & received numbers and graphs look like?
Try using your computer, when it seems slow, switch to activity monitor and see if any of the graphs has changed dramatically.
Cleaning up your hard disk can make a difference if you are really tight on disk space, but otherwise, isn't going to help. Cleaning up your hard drive can mean deleting startup items that don't need to be running. If that is actually your problem, you also need to be more circumspect going forward about what you install in the first place
As for Mavericks, it seems to have made my wife's RAM constrained 2008 MacBook Pro noticeably faster and more responsive. If installing it made things slower, then it could be that it is either because it is doing some maintenance triggered by the upgrade, like rebuilding spotlight indexes, or preparing a huge TimeMachine backup.
posted by Good Brain at 3:22 PM on October 28, 2013
You've gotten some good advice. Though I'd suggest resisting the urge to fool with Onyx and the like. Screwing around with your Mac's innards used to be fun and rewarding in the pre-OS X days. It's a lot more fraught now.
A few things to bear in mind before investing in more ram, flash drive, etc for this laptop:
First, sometime soon, the battery will start showing signs of age. You can at that point buy a new battery from Apple, but bear in mind that they aren't constantly manufacturing new batteries for old models. So while those aging batteries sitting in Apple's warehouse which are sold - at horrendous prices - for older models may have no wear/tear on them, they will feel the effects of time and have a fraction of the life of the original. There will come a time, in other words, when your macbook pro barely holds a charge and there's nothing you can do about it.
Second, one (albeit minor) reason it's slowing down is because as applications upgrade, they often require more processing speed and more memory. Nobody's testing new apps (or new upgrades to old ones) on hardware this old. You are becoming an edge case, and will get edgier over time. Modern apps are designed to work on modern hardware. You can be a hold-back, but it's not without cost.
Third, at some point Apple will cut you off, and the latest system software will not install on your device. You may feel ok with this for a while, because you're content with your ecosystem of applications. But it's only a matter of time before upgrade pressure gets to you.
Fourth, your computer still has some resale value.
You're going against the grain. Which is cool; I do it sometimes, too. But you WILL buy a new computer, sooner or later. And when you do, it will have its own flash drive, and 8gb + of memory, a fresh battery, and all the rest, so the money you spend on that stuff now will never come back to you. So do calculate carefully.
The thrifty way to go, IMO, is to always buy last year's model used (and with Applecare, if possible), and to replace every few years. I've tried "Drive it till it drops", and it was never a happy experience, nor did it save me much money in the end.
posted by jimmyjimjim at 6:33 PM on October 28, 2013
A few things to bear in mind before investing in more ram, flash drive, etc for this laptop:
First, sometime soon, the battery will start showing signs of age. You can at that point buy a new battery from Apple, but bear in mind that they aren't constantly manufacturing new batteries for old models. So while those aging batteries sitting in Apple's warehouse which are sold - at horrendous prices - for older models may have no wear/tear on them, they will feel the effects of time and have a fraction of the life of the original. There will come a time, in other words, when your macbook pro barely holds a charge and there's nothing you can do about it.
Second, one (albeit minor) reason it's slowing down is because as applications upgrade, they often require more processing speed and more memory. Nobody's testing new apps (or new upgrades to old ones) on hardware this old. You are becoming an edge case, and will get edgier over time. Modern apps are designed to work on modern hardware. You can be a hold-back, but it's not without cost.
Third, at some point Apple will cut you off, and the latest system software will not install on your device. You may feel ok with this for a while, because you're content with your ecosystem of applications. But it's only a matter of time before upgrade pressure gets to you.
Fourth, your computer still has some resale value.
You're going against the grain. Which is cool; I do it sometimes, too. But you WILL buy a new computer, sooner or later. And when you do, it will have its own flash drive, and 8gb + of memory, a fresh battery, and all the rest, so the money you spend on that stuff now will never come back to you. So do calculate carefully.
The thrifty way to go, IMO, is to always buy last year's model used (and with Applecare, if possible), and to replace every few years. I've tried "Drive it till it drops", and it was never a happy experience, nor did it save me much money in the end.
posted by jimmyjimjim at 6:33 PM on October 28, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
If you set up a band new user account, restart, and log in with the new account, you can see if that feels significantly faster than your normal user account. if that's the case, you might then look around to see if your main account has a bunch of stuff that running in the background you don't really need.
posted by BillMcMurdo at 1:37 PM on October 28, 2013 [4 favorites]