Hi! I hope I posted this in the right place. My dad bought me a 250GB hard disk, the maximum, I think, for my MacBook. It takes so long to start up. Launching programs is slow too. Is this normal for a maxed-out hard disk? :redface: The new hard disk was cloned using SuperDuper! Does that affect the slowness? Thanks
maybe using super duper does affect its slowness... (not sure though) i always make a clean format. things you can try though, 1. reset pram 2. make a clean install (after #1)
There's already a thread about this because i experienced this too. No, SuperDuper hasn't got anything to do with it. Please go to System Preferences and select your boot disk to be your new 250GB drive. Although it's already selected, please select it again. Mac OS X needs to be 'oriented' on the new drive apparently. Upon boot, it keeps on looking for the old drive that's why it takes a while to boot. Let me know if this worked.
Indeed. Follow IronMan's instructions. I too had a problem with prolonged startup times when I upgraded my HDD, as in it would take a noticeably long time for the "Apple" to show up and the log-in screen to show up. Go to System Prefs>>Startup Disk>>Select your onboard HDD>>Restart After you do this, it'll startup as fast as it did before you upgraded. DO NOT. I REPEAT, DO NOT RESET THE PRAM OR DO A CLEAN OS INSTALL! The instructions IronMan and I have given you are all that you should need. If it doesn't work, post back here again. We all had this problem before, until someone was nice enough to post this solution for us. PS-The max should be 320GB, although there are 500GB HDD available, I haven't seen too many available here locally.
same with my case, from time machine to new HDD, it's definitely slow. Just waiting for the Snow Leopard, then i'll install a 7200rpm hdd with it.
Exactly! Raf, i actually saw your post on that thread. I have to reinstall that 320GB a second time and it worked. I'm not sure if i'll upgrade it again to 500GB though. Btw, did you notice a decrease in battery life? I noticed some. But i'm not sure if it was caused by my HD upgrade. I also upgraded my RAM to 4GB kase eh.
@badw33d: What do you mean from Time Machine to new HDD, it's definitely slow? When you install a new drive to Time Machine, IT WILL be slow because it backs up your entire hard drive to the TM Drive. Every subsequent backup is faster because it only makes incremental backups of only things that have changed. And iceicekendi's talking about slow startup times, nothing to do with Time Machine. @IronMan: If I find a 500GB at the right price, I might get it. I'm down to 50GB free space, with more room taken up each week by my iTunes downloads. Once the new LOST season starts, it'll fill up fast. Didn't notice any decrease in battery life. Are you running anything in the background? I upgraded my RAM to 4GB within a month of buying my MB. Plus, whenever I run off battery I do a host of "battery saving" measures to prolong battery life: -Turn down brightness to one bar -Mute the volume -Turn off Time Machine -Turn off WiFi, if not in use -Use the Trackpad instead of my wireless mouse -Remove all unneeded peripherals -Remove all optical media -Set Power Option to "Best Battery Life" I get a good 3-4 hours of battery life doing all this. Less, if I'm using a resources intensive program. And according to iStat, I've gone through 59 battery cycles since I got this battery (8 months use).
so am i right to assume that "any" harddrive make/model for laptops would work on the macbook? would upgrading the harddrive void the warranty?
@iceicekendi, are you sure Spotlight wasn't indexing your new hard disk? You'll take a hit on performance while it's indexing. As far as I remember, Spotlight will re-index your hard disk, even if you just cloned it.
Indeed. Spotlight always indexes *ANY* drive it sees the first time it gets connected to the system. That's why i don't do anything while it's doing so.
How does Php6500 sound to you? Right enough? I can point you to a seller. My responses in RED. Yeah, i still get more than 3 hours of battery life. But as for battery cycles, i already have 106 in 6 months.
Thanks! I'll do what you guys said after this post. Do I have to do something about Spotlight's indexing?
I finished it already! And it's faster than usual. But still slow. Haha! I selected the only disk available: Network Startup. I'm not even sure if it's the right one. Thanks for the help!
Just don't do anything while Spotlight is indexing, i.e., while there's a dot inside the magnifying glass.
There's no other disk available! Only the network startup one. My MacBook is still sloww!! Argh, this is so frustrating. Makes me want to go back to the smaller hard disk.
No... I actually did that. I went back to 160GB for a while. But after reading Raf's post on that thread [which i don't remember], i reloaded the 320GB, updated the Startup Disk and voila! Boots fast like before. I still have my 320GB now. I don't have my Mac now but have you tried what's described below? http://www.brighthub.com/computing/mac-platform/articles/2116.aspx
Yep I've tried what the website suggested. My dad re-installed Leopard na lang. The pinwheel kept appearing, but after a while performance was better. Maybe the cloning/formatting of the new disk was wrong. After the re-installation, I saw the hard disk in the Startup Disk menu already.. I'll try to get my dad clone the disk again and we'll see what happens. Thank you!
