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0157988944 · Jan 8, 2009, 08:26 PM

So, all of the sudden my MBP has started to be slowish and noticeably less responsive. The place I noticed it most was Flash videos (YouTube, etc.) dropping crazy frames in Safari, and Time Machine taking a half an hour to back up 1 GB. Noticing typing lags too.

I tried a couple of things, like unplugging my external HDDs, because I know they can slow the Finder down if they have issues. I also trashed Flash and reinstalled. No dice.

Where do I go next?!

ibook_steve · Jan 8, 2009, 09:40 PM

Have you checked what's taking up the CPU cycles in Activity Monitor?

Steve

0157988944 · Jan 8, 2009, 09:57 PM

Yeah, and nothing is out of the ordinary. I'm suspecting Hard Drive here, as I've noticed it making a constant little scratch noise, but interestingly video played from the hard drive doesn't lag, and video played from some other flash players doesn't lag (NBC.com)

To me the slow as molasses (1 KB/s) backup to a USB hard drive points to Hard Drive issues, but the information is all kinda conflicting.

(Side note, why is there a constant stream of about 1 MB of data being written to the hard drive? This is normal across all Macs I've seen, but what is being written? It happens even with all programs but Finder quit.)

amazing · Jan 8, 2009, 10:03 PM

Does indeed sound like the HD. Have you got a laptop SATA drive in an external case? Easy enough to put one together, and getting cheaper by the minute (check dealmac.com for laptop bargains, then just slap it in the case of your choice, with whatever ports you want, like fw-400 and usb, etc.)

Anyway, put a system on the external HD and startup off that. If your problem goes away, then it's the HD, although you could verify it's not some niggling 3rd party software by doing an archive and install.

0157988944 · Jan 8, 2009, 11:20 PM

Here's the next question.. what should I show Apple to make them buy it? It's not a huge slowdown, so it doesn't scream "ISSUE!" and the sound the HD is making is much too quiet to hear in an Apple Store. I'll show them the dropped frames on YouTube, but thats really all I got. Worst of all, SMART status and Disk Verify say the disk is OK... and that's probably what they're going to go on.

ibook_steve · Jan 9, 2009, 01:12 AM

How old is your machine? If it's within the first year or you have Applecare, what's the harm in having them check it and fix it? Or you could just replace the hard drive yourself since it seems to be leaning in that direction.

Hope you're backing up!

Steve

0157988944 · Jan 9, 2009, 07:42 AM

It's within AppleCare, but I don't have a nearby apple store and don't want to go all the way there to be told the hard drive's fine.

amazing · Jan 9, 2009, 01:23 PM

And, you know, I may have been too hasty in suggesting a struggling HD--so, I'd definitely go with trying some diagnostic stuff. First step is always setting up a second admin account and logging in as that user--to see if the problem goes away. Second step is an archive and install.

Main thing is to have an excellent backup strategy--which is why having an external HD (in addition to your Time Machine backup) and then cloning your HD to that external drive (on a weekly basis) is a good idea.

0157988944 · Jan 9, 2009, 06:11 PM

Well the HD died, so I think we were right

I have quite a few redundant backups so I'm set there. Do Apple Geniuses to while you wait repair if they have the part in stock?

Gankdawg · Jan 9, 2009, 06:15 PM

Originally Posted by amazing

Main thing is to have an excellent backup strategy--which is why having an external HD (in addition to your Time Machine backup) and then cloning your HD to that external drive (on a weekly basis) is a good idea.

I clone the TM drive every couple of weeks onto a separate drive and also clone my main hard drive about once per month on yet another hard drive (which I store offsite).

0157988944 · Jan 13, 2009, 07:45 PM

Ok... great. The drive is working fine. Disk Utility had said that filesystem verify had failed, but after cloning by drive as a third backup, it says its all OK and everything is just chuggin along as normal. I don't want to trust it, but at the same time, Apple isn't gonna replace a "fine" hard drive. What to do!?

polendo · Jan 13, 2009, 08:28 PM

For reliability´s sake I would change the hard drive.

0157988944 · Jan 13, 2009, 08:32 PM

Yes... But how do I get apple to replace what appears to he a working HDD?

vmarks · Jan 13, 2009, 08:51 PM

Apple Store Geniuses do not typically do 'while you wait' repairs.

Even if the job is small, they typically have such a backlog that it's unusual to do a repair out of order - yours might be the exception on a MacBook, where the drive change is a few seconds, but wouldn't happen on an MBP where the job has 10 screws to get the top case off and four (+/-) more to get the drive swapped out after that.

And that's only if you said 'I've got backups, put in the new drive, needs no OS installed.'

So you see, unlikely.

You're also going to have some difficulty getting them to swap a functional drive that the system reports is functioning correctly.

polendo · Jan 15, 2009, 12:24 AM

You would have to do some real convincing to do first. But, since you have applecare have you tried calling over apple and explain just how you see the whole ordeal? you might get lucky and they might replace it.
There are other considerations you need to think over like how much space is left? have you tried to repair permissions? sounds far fetched but is there any possibility that some program you might be using or recently installed might be eating up memory making things to slow down considerably? Have you tried doing a clean install of the OS ?
Having said that, if all of the above doesn't work, with or without applecare I wouldn't wait for a hard disk to fail on me.. I certainly would change it before it creates a mess.

fisherKing · Jan 15, 2009, 11:47 AM

CALL apple, discuss options, before u trek to an apple store...

amazing · Jan 15, 2009, 12:46 PM

Your main hope is that the Apple Genius would have more sophisticated diagnostics that would indicate a problem.

Barring that, buy one of these very reasonable USB 2.0 external portable drives, clone your HD, then open the case and switch out the drive. When you've verified that everything's OK, reformat the drive with a zero-out option which should map around any possible bad sections.

solofx7 · Jan 15, 2009, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by adamfishercox

So, all of the sudden my MBP has started to be slowish and noticeably less responsive. The place I noticed it most was Flash videos (YouTube, etc.) dropping crazy frames in Safari, and Time Machine taking a half an hour to back up 1 GB. Noticing typing lags too.

I tried a couple of things, like unplugging my external HDDs, because I know they can slow the Finder down if they have issues. I also trashed Flash and reinstalled. No dice.

Where do I go next?!

I went through something similar.
It ended up being the hard drive.
i would look into that possibly.