Why is my Mac running so slow? - Part One

“Why is my Mac running so slow?” This may be the most common issue that I hear from my clients, so I thought that I would lay out the reasons why this happens. Because I’d like to go into detail about each of the various reasons, I will be breaking this topic into several segments.

The first and most common reason your Mac is running slowly is that the hard drive is too full. The hard drive is the mechanical device that stores all of your Mac's information. Without it’s protective outer plate, it looks like this:

It’s not to be confused with memory, also referred to as RAM, or random access memory. Not having enough memory can also cause slow downs, but I’ll cover that in another article.

When you start your Mac, it loads it’s operating system from the hard drive into RAM. Also, when you launch an application, it, too, is loaded into memory, as well as any documents you may have created or opened. The operating system also needs to use the hard drive for temporary storage as you work. It creates what's known as virtual memory on your hard drive, accessing it constantly.

You can find out how much free space you have on your hard drive by clicking once on the icon for your hard drive to select it, then a) From the "File" menu, choose "Get Info" or b) right click on the icon and choosing "Get Info." You should see a window that looks like this:

This is the “Get Info” window for the 500GB hard drive in my MacBook. You’ll notice that the capacity is listed at 499.76 Gigabytes. The actual usable capacity of the drive will vary and will always be lower that what the manufacturer lists on the box. Just round up to the next highest round figure.

Of the 500 GB on my hard drive, about half is available. If your drive is too full, performance is affected dramatically. You need to keep at least 10% of your total hard drive space free for the operating system to use for optimal performance.

So then, what can be done to solve this?

You could start moving files off the hard drive to external storage, either to an external hard drive or to optical media (CDs or DVDs). The problem is that you will probably need to move a large amount of data to make a dent in the overcrowding. Most of the space will be taken up by, in order of size, videos, music, images and other documents. There will be very little that can come from the system folders and the applications are usually necessary and don’t take up much space anyway. So, unless you have a ton of music, movies and pictures that you don’t mind not having on your computer (and, by the way, not backed up), this is not the best solution.

The best solution is to replace the hard drive with a larger one. Fortunately, the cost of hard drive storage has fallen quite a bit. For instance, if you own a MacBook or MacBook Pro, a new 500 GB hard drive can be bought for less that $100 and can be installed fairly easily. For other Macs, replacement maybe more involved. I can replace the hard drive in a MacBook in about 5 minutes. An iBook, on the other hand, involves removing about 30 tiny screws to complete the 90-minute job.

After the new hard drive is installed, all the data needs to be transferred from the old hard drive to the new one. Data transfer can take several hours and requires a tool which will allow you to hook a bare drive up to your Mac.

As you might have guessed, hard drive replacement is one of the services I perform for my clients. For most modern Macs, hard drive replacement, including the new, 500 GB hard drive and data transfer, is only $199. Other hard drive sizes are available as well.

After the hard drive has been replaced, you will notice a marked difference in the responsiveness of your Mac. There is an added benefit as well. Remember, every hard drive will eventually fail and the older the drive is, the greater the chances of failure. So, a new hard drive will not only make your Mac faster, it will give it a new lease on it’s digital life.

Thanks for the read,

Your Genius