Mid-2012 Macbook Pro slow as molasses

[HCHTech]

On my bench now. I figured from the description, I was looking at a bad hard disk, but I'm not finding that. The machine takes at least 3 minutes for the progress bar to complete when logging in. Once in, things run without errors, but everything is just slow. I pulled the drive and checked it out with gSmartControl. No smart errors, and passed both a short and long test. It's a 750GB drive w/ about 250GB used. Currently running Yosemite.

I imaged the drive, then reinstalled it. Ran the full Apple diagnostics (took forever) with no errors. I ran disk utility, and it pointed to some file corruption. I also noted that the disk was encrypted, so that is responsible for some of the slowness, I'd guess. Got the message that I couldn't repair the disk while it was in use, so I did a Cmd-R boot, ran the disk utility to verify disk (took forever), found a couple of problems, so did a repair disk (took forever) which fixed a few things. Ran verify permissions (took forever) which identified a couple of problems, so ran repair permissions (took forever) which fixed a few things.

Booting back into OSX (took a long time again). No real difference. I ran Adware Medic (now part of malwarebytes) and it found about a dozen things, conduit, other junkware, but no apparent change in symptoms.

I'm starting to think it's time to reinstall OSX or just replace the disk. Is there anything I missed?

 

[Bizybone]

Boot to a known good OS via external HDD or even an internal OS and see if you experience the same slowness. That's the only thing else that I would do. How much Memory is installed and what is its CPU usage like?

 

[Markverhyden]

Sounds like a bad HD. Especially if you ran repair disk permissions from rescue mode. That machine came with USB 3. So, as @Bizybone mentioned, install it on an external USB 3 drive. If it was me I'd actually image to existing drive to the USB 3 one.

 

[Mainstay]

I wouldn't trust SMART as your HD diagnostic.

Definitely sounds like a bad drive.

What does mhdd say?

If you clone it to one of your shop drives, what is the performance?

Have you tried making a new profile just to see if there is a difference?

 

[kisk]

I might reimage your image to a known good working drive just to rules that out hdd issues 100%. Even if smart and diagnostics aren't flags doesn't mean its totally in the clear.

Edit: Mark and Mainstay beat me to it. I have a habit of leaving tabs open

 

[cyabro]

What's the battery state?
If the battery is faulty in a Mac that will slow down the machine.

 

[HCHTech]

Ok, it is clear that I don't work on enough Macs. I cloned the disk with Clonezilla to a brand new WD drive. When installed, I booted the Mac holding down the command key, but the new disk is not detected, so I cannot select it for boot. If I just boot without holding the command key, I get a white screen, and an eventual prompt to connect to a network. I'm pretty sure I've done this for another customer in the past when we were just replacing his disk with a larger one, but I don't remember the exact details.

I've done some Googling, but that isn't really pointing to the problem either. Some say only use Disk Utility to make the clone in the first place, others say hook the disk up externally to select it for boot, then install it in the machine. I was hoping to learn something new here, but I'm just flailing. Little help?

BTW - I do have a yosemite installer on a flash drive, but I don't want to just install from scratch on a new disk because that will be changing TWO things, and if it works, won't tell me what the actual problem was (corrupted OS vs. bad disk). Plus, would still have to migrate the data. I'm hoping I can make my clone work, and find that it functions normally or not. Then I'll either be done, or know for sure that a reinstall is needed.

 

[cyabro]

We have also had quite a few MacBook pros with faulty hdd cables.
That can cause the machine to do some strange things like you are describing.

 

[HCHTech]

Here's an update, for what it's worth. If I connect my clone externally via USB, I can select it as the boot disk and it boots and runs pretty much like normal. That means the problem WAS in fact the hard disk. If I reinstall it internally, it will not boot, and is not detected if I boot with the option key depressed. I've done some more reading, and I'm starting to thing this might be an "Apple thing", not liking the particular disk. I've got a little time later today for some more research, but I'm off on a call for now. Maybe I'll have to order a hard drive cable just to remove that from the suspect list.

 

[TAPtech]

I would keep that clone on a separate drive, then just use Carbon Copy Cloner to make duplicate. Let it go all day/night. Swap drives and see if it fires up. It sounds like you've already sunk a ton of time into this one.

 

[HCHTech]

It sounds like you've already sunk a ton of time into this one.

Yes - another learning opportunity.

Do you mean start over and use CCC to clone the original disk again, or clone the clone backwards onto the original drive. I don't quite follow you.

 

[TAPtech]

Sorry for the confusion.

1) Transfer the clone to another drive for safe keeping (in case the old HDD dies on you before you get a solution)
2) Boot the original HDD, install CCC, plug in the new HDD via USB and clone to it.

 

[Markverhyden]

Here's an update, for what it's worth. If I connect my clone externally via USB, I can select it as the boot disk and it boots and runs pretty much like normal. That means the problem WAS in fact the hard disk. If I reinstall it internally, it will not boot, and is not detected if I boot with the command key depressed. I've done some more reading, and I'm starting to thing this might be an "Apple thing", not liking the particular disk. I've got a little time later today for some more research, but I'm off on a call for now. Maybe I'll have to order a hard drive cable just to remove that from the suspect list.

What tool did you use to clone the drive?

 

[HCHTech]

What tool did you use to clone the drive?

I used Clonezilla from one of my Linux bench machines. I will try the dance with CCC when I get some more benchtime tomorrow. I'm glad the poor sap ins't in a hurry.

 

[kwest]

Someone beat me to it but it is the cable or harddrive. If this was on my bench I would have done the following.

Take drive out and boot from it via USB device. If it runs normal it is the hd cable

If not then I would throw another harddrive with existing Mac OS on it and test internal.

With those two steps you could have narrowed down the issue in about 20 minutes.

If issues continued after that try new ram. If that didn't work do research.

 

[Markverhyden]

I used Clonezilla from one of my Linux bench machines. I will try the dance with CCC when I get some more benchtime tomorrow. I'm glad the poor sap ins't in a hurry.

That should have worked fine. Given that you had a problem with another working drive using the same cable I'd bet there is a problem with the cable. Like @kwest said use the existing drive on a USB adapter and see how it behaves.

 

[HCHTech]

If not then I would throw another harddrive with existing Mac OS on it and test internal.

Being primarily a PC shop, this was not among my options. How does one obtain "another harddrive with existing Mac OS" for this purpose? Should I just clone the drive from my "Bench iMac" and keep it available for this purpose? Also, considering that this option would never work on a PC, it never occurred to me that it might be something to try on a Mac. I still have a hard time believing that a drive with an OS installed on different hardware would even run when connected to any random Mac that came along. Is OSX hardware-independent or something?

 

[Markverhyden]

Being primarily a PC shop, this was not among my options. How does one obtain "another harddrive with existing Mac OS" for this purpose? Should I just clone the drive from my "Bench iMac" and keep it available for this purpose? Also, considering that this option would never work on a PC, it never occurred to me that it might be something to try on a Mac. I still have a hard time believing that a drive with an OS installed on different hardware would even run when connected to any random Mac that came along. Is OSX hardware-independent or something?

There is no such thing as a hardware independent OS. OS X is just another flavor of Unix. A BSD derivative to be specific. And those have always been easier to deal with when it comes to hardware. Just like linux. Even when it's setup with LVG, you can just take a drive and pretty much hook it up to another similar piece of hardware and things should work fine.

When it comes to a regular OS X install, using the Apple tarball, you can put it onto a USB drive. At this point in time it will bootup on any machine that has a compatible firmware. That basically boils down to what version of OS X came on the machine originally. For example, if the machine came with 10.7 you will not be able to boot from a HD that has 10.6 or earlier installed. You will be able to boot into any later version as long the machine is supported. And you can carve up the USB drive so you can have several flavors installed on separate partitions. Same goes for bootable installers.

The only limitation I've run into recently was related to doing a restore from Time Machine backups using recovery mode. I've had a few times where it choked saying the restore could not be done as it was backed up on different machine. Did not bother investigating it more, might have been a firmware issue.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

We have also had quite a few MacBook pros with faulty hdd cables.
That can cause the machine to do some strange things like you are describing.

If I had a dollar for everyone of these I've seen (especially with the 13-inch Mid 2012). I guarantee this is the issue with the OPs machine....
Take the drive you cloned and install it internally and see if it acts the way it is supposed to? Or, like many others have said, place the drive in a SATA/USB dock and boot it externally. Obviously, it may run a little slower going through the USB bus. But it should still boot and run relatively normal.

 

[Digital Sage]

Someone beat me to it but it is the cable or harddrive. If this was on my bench I would have done the following.

Take drive out and boot from it via USB device. If it runs normal it is the hd cable

If not then I would throw another harddrive with existing Mac OS on it and test internal.

With those two steps you could have narrowed down the issue in about 20 minutes.

If issues continued after that try new ram. If that didn't work do research.

This is the best answer, and what i'd do also.

The hard drive cables die on these all the time, and it can screw with your diagnosis.

Easy as to diagnose as kwest said - just put the external hdd in an external enclosure. If it boots faster, it's the cable. DONE.

Sometimes the hard drive will be failing as well. For this, i cannot recommend software drive dx enough. It's free for 10 days, so just keep the installer handy, and install it as needed on machines. It tells EVERYTHING about the hard drive, best SMART diagnosis tool i've seen on both Mac's and PC's, period.