MacBook Pro is sluggish

[kolax]

Any maintenance I should be doing?

* Repaired Disk Permissions
* Restarted Mac (I usually put it to sleep - hasn't had a restart in a few days)
* Cleaning up hard drive to keep 10GB free for Virtual Memory

The last day or so, I've noticed my MBP really become sluggish - taking about 5-7 seconds to load Firefox, changing track in iTunes takes about 3-4 seconds to come into place etc.

My hard drive is getting low on space - I mentioned I should try and keep 10GB free, but right now I'm awaiting a big download to finish before I can move it onto my external drive so I can't free up space until then.

Do you think it is lack of hard drive space (I've got about 2GB's free) that is causing the slow down or something else?

 

[djejrejk]

Any maintenance I should be doing?

My hard drive is getting low on space - I mentioned I should try and keep 10GB free, but right now I'm awaiting a big download to finish before I can move it onto my external drive so I can't free up space until then.

Do you think it is lack of hard drive space (I've got about 2GB's free) that is causing the slow down or something else?

I have a MBP with a 120 gig drive. I keep at least 40 gigs free at all times. You need an external drive,.. like a wd passport,.. to keep all of your extra files. I would start there. I bet that you will see a big speed increase after clearing some space.

 

[aliquis-]

Maybe it's just the torrent (?) clients read and writes which makes the disc rather busy and therefor slows down your itunes and application startup performance.

 

[vicious7]

To minimize torrents' read/writes slowing down the computer, you can direct downloads to an external drive. I've got about three double digit gig-sized torrents downloading right now and I'm not experiencing any slow downs. And I've got Firefox, Mail, Adium, PS and Livetype running concurrently.

 

[kolax]

I closed Transmission and performance was fine - I guess it is Transmission.

I'll move the download files to the external drive, cheers for the advice!

 

[aliquis-]

I closed Transmission and performance was fine - I guess it is Transmission.

I'll move the download files to the external drive, cheers for the advice!

I ordered my MBP with the default drive and will buy and replace it with a decent hybrid/flash drive once available, that will make this issue a non-issue =P

(Current sandisk hybrid drives got similair read/write speeds as desktop drives with over 70MB/s but they also do that with an "unlimited" amount of IO/s and with low access time, so those will be faaaaast.)

 

[galstaph]

could also try d/ling onyx, it has some good maintenance features (provides a gui for the unix commands and allows you to clean crap out really well)

 

[djejrejk]

I closed Transmission and performance was fine - I guess it is Transmission.

I'll move the download files to the external drive, cheers for the advice!

Actually, I have been having the same problem with Transmission. Hogs all of my memory.

 

[MIDI_EVIL]

Actually, I have been having the same problem with Transmission. Hogs all of my memory.

Yeah gotta be a memory leak somewhere.

I went with Azureus, mainly because OiNK recommends it, but Transmission was just a pain in the butt in the end. Too much leaking memory.

I find that if you repair permissions, you can sometimes get the memory back.

 

[aliquis-]

Yeah gotta be a memory leak somewhere.

I went with Azureus, mainly because OiNK recommends it, but Transmission was just a pain in the butt in the end. Too much leaking memory.

I find that if you repair permissions, you can sometimes get the memory back.

Bittyrant would probably download faster for you.

 

[djejrejk]

Yeah gotta be a memory leak somewhere.

I went with Azureus, mainly because OiNK recommends it, but Transmission was just a pain in the butt in the end. Too much leaking memory.

I find that if you repair permissions, you can sometimes get the memory back.

I had some problems with Azureus as well.. its a resource hog as well. The strange thing about Transmission- I never noticed this problem until that last update... hmm. Hopefully an update will address this issue.

 

[kolax]

I had some problems with Azureus as well.. its a resource hog as well. The strange thing about Transmission- I never noticed this problem until that last update... hmm. Hopefully an update will address this issue.

Yeh, I noticed it after the last update too.

Hopefully they know about it.