Chosen Solution
I am working on a client’s Macbook Pro, Mid 2012 Model. i7 processor, 8 GB RAM. It’s running OS-X High Sierra 10.13.6 prior to Mojave. I suspect is a bad SATA cable. Possibly, the Hard Drive going bad as well. It has a 750 GB storage - but there is only 65-70 GB on disk. My client only uses it for his business. The main application he runs is QuickBooks. He creates text documents, reads email, surfs the net and that is about it, The computer takes a long time to boot. It’s slow to respond with everything. Even the finder, clicking on menus, looking inside folders, etc … takes 5-20 seconds to respond. Even emptying the trash. I have checked the Activity Monitor (looks normal). I have run a Hard Drive Test with Disk Utility. No errors or problems found. I have run Malware Bytes to see if there is a rogue program taking over the system. There were some things, but they are deleted. More tests finds nothing. I checked the battery cycles (around 570) and System Info says that is normal. I’m running Apple Hardware Test on the system as I type this. It appears this model has had issues with the SATA cable that exhibits this same behavior. I am getting ready to order an SATA cable from this site and put in a 250 GB SSD. This should make the computer much faster in my opinion. Tell me if I am on the right track. )) Thanks for any info. Update (10/03/2018) Success! Received the new HD cable. Installed. Followed Dan’s suggestions. Installed the new Samsung SSD. Booted into recovery mode. Used Disk Utility to format the drive. Then installed Mohave. With a fairly fast internet speed and new SSD, from beginning to finish took about 25 minutes. Also, following Dan’s suggestion, I used Migration Assistant to move data files, and Apps from the old HD in an external enclosure. The only problem I had was with QuickBooks. A quick search on Intuit’s site, I saw info about others having the same problem - migrating from an old to new computer. Followed their steps. And now everything is working great for my client. iFixit users helped me tremendously! Thanks to all!
Hard Drives often get fragmented files which will slow the system down. You would need to use a tool which can see the fragmentation as well as fix it. I would first replace the SATA cable as you are about to do. I would place a strip of electricians tape across the uppercase where the cable crosses as the rough aluminum tends to wear the cable. Be careful in your placement as you don’t want sharp folds but smooth arcs. Many people think you can bend the cable any which way which is in fact not true! The foil conductors can be damaged as well as the shielding with the sharp folds. After replacing the cable is when you want to run the defragmentation using a tool like this: Drive Genius 4. Even though the drive is mostly empty the scatter plot of the data blocks can cause the head assembly of the drive the need to cross one side to the other which slows the reading or writing. Replacing the HDD to a SSD will also improve performance, which is a good direction to go as well. Frankly all laptops should use SSD’s today.
Such slowdowns might be caused in my experience also by other possible hardware issues, battery included. You might try disconnecting the battery and run off the mains only..if that solves your issue you have your culprit. Other sensors failures might throttle the CPU too..if you have an external bootable drive, try booting from that after disconnecting the internal hard disk cable and see what happens..if slowdown persists, you can rule out a cable failure and concentrate on other possible causes.
Just making sure you have tried a SMC, PRAM and NVRAM reset. 99% of Mac problems can be solved by these handy tricks.
How to reset the SMC, PRAM and NVRAM on a Mac Laptop
So did the SATA cable do the trick? I have exactly the same problem. minutes to load some webpages in chrome and safari…
So many times, People are complaining about a slow performance issue due to several reasons. The startup is loaded with lots of programs.Presence of the virus.Files are not organized or update required. These are some basic reasons for slow performance. you should keep the minimum programs on the startup files. Now run a good antivirus on your mac pc. it will clean up the mac and make your computer secure. if briefing, you may visit: why is my MacBook Pro running slow?
90% of Macbook Pros with their original hard drive from this era are so slow upon first boot that I want to throw the thing into the garbage. I used to boot up and run malware scans and check the small things before getting into installing MacOS on the new SSD, but that is a huge waste of time. I would rather get the SSD up and running before and transfer user files with all their virus than trying to navigate this machine on a hard drive. These Macbook’s specs are not spellbinding, but the hard drives in these are a HUGE bottle neck…that’s why they are such amazing bang for buck if you know about the SSD upgrade.
