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My husband has a mid-2012 MacBook Pro 13” that is running really slow. We’re not really in a position to replace it at the moment, so I was wondering what options we have to make it run better? I ran an etrecheck report, which I’ll try and attach in the comments. It looks like the battery, HDD and RAM all need replacing, so now I’m wondering whether it’s really worth it.
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.14
Most likely the hard drive is worn out or even failing on a laptop this old. Even when new the hard drive on this model was never very fast. Replacing the hard drive and upgrading to an SSD will give a good performance boost this laptop. The Crucial MX500 SSD is a good option as it is a good compromise on price and performance. Stay away from the BX500 SSD though since it is a low end budget economy model that is just as slow as a hard drive and it tends to overheat easily.
You may also have a software issue so make sure to post the entire EtreCheck report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.
Most likely the hard drive is worn out or even failing on a laptop this old. Even when new the hard drive on this model was never very fast. Replacing the hard drive and upgrading to an SSD will give a good performance boost this laptop. The Crucial MX500 SSD is a good option as it is a good compromise on price and performance. Stay away from the BX500 SSD though since it is a low end budget economy model that is just as slow as a hard drive and it tends to overheat easily.
You may also have a software issue so make sure to post the entire EtreCheck report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.
Most likely the hard drive is failing, but if you want to confirm this run DriveDx and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.
The EtreCheck report also shows you using almost 2GB of Swap which usually indicates you are running low on memory. You can try closing other apps when you are using a memory intensive app. Whenever Swap is used items in the fast memory are moved to the extremely slow hard drive which most likely is even slower than usual because it is worn out or failing. Replacing the hard drive with an SSD can help with the Swap performance, but it may not be enough without replacing one of the 4GB memory modules with an 8GB module for a total of 12GB of memory. Only use memory from Crucial or OWC since Macs are very particular about the memory they use. Even then make sure to only order the exact part number suggested by the tools on their respective websites.
Google Chrome is also known to be CPU and memory intensive. I've also seen some reports that some cloud syncing sites may cause system slowness as well due to how they implement their file syncing, but I'm not sure which ones are guilty of this.
The "Service Battery" condition indicates that macOS has detected a hardware fault with the battery.
Thanks for this! Here's the full report:
MacBook Pro 2012 running slow
