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Heavy · Aug 18, 2010, 10:37 AM

Hi folks, I have one of the first MB's from '06. It's been great, been serviced once way back and runs very cool. Lately, I notice it booting up very slow and it doesn't even do that little greeting sound, when starting up anymore. 80 gig hard drive is almost full.

I do the updates, but never really done any maintenence of any kind for cache's or defragmenting hard drives or ... is there certain things I should be doing regularly or a special program to clean up? Thanks.

OreoCookie · Aug 18, 2010, 11:12 AM

That's a common symptom if OS X has too little disk space.
You should leave at least 5, better 10 GB free. In your situation, I would probably just get another harddrive: they're cheap and prolong the life of your machine.

If you want to have a look at what's gobbling up all that precious disk space, have a look at Omni Disk Sweeper. It's a free app by OmniGroup.

Waragainstsleep · Aug 18, 2010, 11:17 AM

Getting a new drive is good advice. I have an original MacBook rocking a 500GB. Though that is pretty much full too....

Biggest you can fit in there should be 640GB unless the 750 or 1TBs have gotten slimmer recently.

Heavy · Aug 18, 2010, 02:48 PM

Thanks. I just picked up a portable 500 GB drive for backup and to store some stuff I don't need on my MB. Nothing else to do? Just free up space?

besson3c · Aug 18, 2010, 03:25 PM

How much RAM does it have?

reader50 · Aug 18, 2010, 04:49 PM

Newer drives are not only bigger, they are considerably faster too. So if you replace the internal drive with a bigger modern one, you get a double speed boost.

besson3c · Aug 18, 2010, 04:54 PM

Originally Posted by reader50

Newer drives are not only bigger, they are considerably faster too. So if you replace the internal drive with a bigger modern one, you get a double speed boost.

Is an older SATA 5400 RPM drive slower than a newer SATA 5400 RPM drive with greater capacity?

besson3c · Aug 18, 2010, 04:56 PM

Originally Posted by Heavy

Thanks. I just picked up a portable 500 GB drive for backup and to store some stuff I don't need on my MB. Nothing else to do? Just free up space?

Were you planning on using this drive with Time Machine? If so, you'll want to relocate some data to this drive so that it lives on this drive, and then either not have this data backed up at all or have it backed up to another device. This is where things get clunky. If you are running low on space and there is nothing you can do about that without sacrifices you aren't willing to make, I would get a larger internal drive installed *and* use your external 500 GB drive as a backup.

Then again, it depends on how you define "almost full". If you have multiple gigabytes free I don't think this is your speed problem.

reader50 · Aug 18, 2010, 05:02 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Is an older SATA 5400 RPM drive slower than a newer SATA 5400 RPM drive with greater capacity?

Yes -- provided the storage density has gone up. For example, if the old drive was a 2-platter and the new was a single platter. Or a platter and a half.

If the storage density hasn't increased, it will be about the same speed. Small boost from the bigger caches we get today, but OS X does a lot of that with free RAM anyway.

besson3c · Aug 18, 2010, 05:06 PM

In case you want to get a sense of prices for internal laptop SATA drives of various capacities: Newegg.com - Notebook Hard Drives, Laptop Hard Drives, Notebook Internal Hard Drive, Laptop External Hard Drives, Hard Drive

The 7200 RPM drives are faster. A local Mac store should be able to install the drive for you as well as transfer all of your existing data to it.

besson3c · Aug 18, 2010, 05:11 PM

Originally Posted by reader50

Yes -- provided the storage density has gone up. For example, if the old drive was a 2-platter and the new was a single platter. Or a platter and a half.

If the storage density hasn't increased, it will be about the same speed. Small boost from the bigger caches we get today, but OS X does a lot of that with free RAM anyway.

Good point. Would the jump to a 7200 RPM SATA II drive make an even bigger difference, if fully supported (and I don't know what the original Macbook supported)? If so, and the Macbook will do 3.0gb/s, would you recommend the 7200 RPM drive?

Heavy · Aug 19, 2010, 11:09 AM

I checked and my MB says 23.59 GB available. I thought it was lower. It booted up fine yesterday and this morning. The bootup sound was there as well.

Speed is alright when it's up and running, fine for me. I have a few movies I'd like to put on the backup hard drive and that will free up a lot more space on the MB's HD. So I don't see the point of getting a new HD for my MB. I was just a little worried as it seems to intermittently boot up slow. I only use the power supply for the past year or so, since the battery is about done. I wouldn't think that would matter though.

I see disk utility. I never used that. Should I?

sek929 · Aug 19, 2010, 11:43 PM

As stated before what amount of RAM are you running? 20GB of free disk space is more than enough, that isn't the cause of your slow-down problem.

Heavy · Aug 20, 2010, 11:41 AM

1 GB Ram.

What do you guys recommend for a quality hard drive back up? I bought an iomega from Radio Shack but just read a bunch of bad reviews on it.

-Q- · Aug 20, 2010, 12:06 PM

I've had a 1TB Iomega for about 1.5 years and it's been a great time machine drive.

Waragainstsleep · Aug 20, 2010, 12:52 PM

From Waragainstsleep's rules of external hard drives:

Unless you get a really good deal, build your own. If your drive fails under warranty, the manufacturer will almost certainly not allow you to remove the disk from its enclosure to retrieve data. You'll probably get a longer warranty on an internal disk as well.
I find that external enclosures are generally cheap and nasty. Some are cheaper and nastier than others but it seems madness to me to risk losing your data in the event of a power supply failure or a dodgy USB or Firewire controller.

besson3c · Aug 20, 2010, 02:47 PM

Originally Posted by Heavy

1 GB Ram.

What do you guys recommend for a quality hard drive back up? I bought an iomega from Radio Shack but just read a bunch of bad reviews on it.

A leaky/buggy app or two or three can easily gobble up that 1 GB of RAM... Do you know how to use top/Activity Monitor to see if you are running low on memory and using virtual memory?

tooki · Aug 21, 2010, 05:05 AM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Good point. Would the jump to a 7200 RPM SATA II drive make an even bigger difference, if fully supported (and I don't know what the original Macbook supported)? If so, and the Macbook will do 3.0gb/s, would you recommend the 7200 RPM drive?

It doesn’t make a rat’s patoot of difference whether it’s SATA I or II, because no notebook hard drive can saturate SATA I.

I’ve been running 7200RPM notebook drives since the G3 days, it’s definitely worth the few extra bucks.

sek929 · Aug 21, 2010, 03:58 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

A leaky/buggy app or two or three can easily gobble up that 1 GB of RAM... Do you know how to use top/Activity Monitor to see if you are running low on memory and using virtual memory?

I'd be more interested to see how many pageouts he is getting.