Improving nMP SSD performance?

[sboerup]

I was an early purchaser of my nMP and have had it since the first week they started shipping. I went with the 1TB SSD, and it sits less than half full at the moment.

However, I was most excited about the SSD being a huge factor to making the day to day operation lightning fast. I have lots of small files and use spotlight frequently. I also use the "quick look" feature in Finder, where you hit the space bar to get a preview of the file while its selected.

Lately, in the last 3 months, the system appears to be getting slower. It doesn't feel as fast as it did before in regards to using Finder and purely accessing files. It stays on overnight, but it usually reboots once every 2 weeks or so. Even after reboot it doesn't feel any faster.

Any recommendations on returning the performance back to what it was before?

 

[VirtualRain]

I was an early purchaser of my nMP and have had it since the first week they started shipping. I went with the 1TB SSD, and it sits less than half full at the moment.

However, I was most excited about the SSD being a huge factor to making the day to day operation lightning fast. I have lots of small files and use spotlight frequently. I also use the "quick look" feature in Finder, where you hit the space bar to get a preview of the file while its selected.

Lately, in the last 3 months, the system appears to be getting slower. It doesn't feel as fast as it did before in regards to using Finder and purely accessing files. It stays on overnight, but it usually reboots once every 2 weeks or so. Even after reboot it doesn't feel any faster.

Any recommendations on returning the performance back to what it was before?

Could be a few things... Perception, SSD is degraded, some app or process is causing issues or OS X is bogged down. If your SSD is feeling slow, run some benchmarks to verify (Quickbench is recommended). A possible remedy is to clean up any junk files and empty your trash and then let the machine idle overnight for a complete garbage collection and TRIM cycle to work. Also make sure spotlights not indexing some giant external or networked drives inadvertently. Check Activity Monitor for any resource hungry tasks or processes. Then failing that, do a clean reinstall of OS X.

 

[fuchsdh]

Could be a few things... Perception, SSD is degraded, some app or process is causing issues or OS X is bogged down. If your SSD is feeling slow, run some benchmarks to verify (Quickbench is recommended). A possible remedy is to clean up any junk files and empty your trash and then let the machine idle overnight for a complete garbage collection and TRIM cycle to work. Also make sure spotlights not indexing some giant external or networked drives inadvertently. Check Activity Monitor for any resource hungry tasks or processes. Then failing that, do a clean reinstall of OS X.

Seconded.

Do you have any actual benchmarks you ran when you got the computer? I've found that it's a tossup whether or not issues are real or just caused by other related issues (everyone's computer seems to get slower over time, sometimes for no reason.)

Wiping the computer will prolly take it back to like-new performance unless there are mechanical issues.

 

[dollystereo]

You could boot in single user mode (command+S) and do a trim of unused sectors in the disk. The command is:
>>fsck -ffy
>>reboot
This restored the performance of my SSD (samsung 840).
I am not really sure if this helps in a mac pro, but give it a try. (It won't hurt).

 

[sboerup]

Thanks for the tip guys! I went through and cleaned up the home folder this morning, emptied the trash and repaired permissions (one of them was off). It seemed to improve a bit.

Brand new with a fresh install, I used the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test, with 4GB file text, and was at 1006MB/s write and 883MB/s read.

I tested it before rebooting to fun the 'fsck -ffy' as dollystereo had recommended (didn't think of that). It was in the 780/780 range.

Rebooted into single user mode, ran the fsck, and after reboot it appears to be in the 950/950 range again.

Feels snappier and Finder loaded without any issues. Thanks for the tips!