SSD slow writing speed

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Level 1

9 points

SSD slow writing speed

Hi, I'm using a MacBook Pro Mid 2012. I changed to SSD about 3 months ago. Everything was fine until recently i noticed that my laptop is lagging. It's fine for about a few minutes then it lags over and over again. I checked my Activity Monitor but I think it's fine. My storage is fine too. There's 140gb free space. I repaired the SSD using disk utility but the outcome is still the same. I'm using a Samsung SSD 860 EVO Sata III Solid State Drives 2.5" ( MZ-76E250BW - 250GB ). I checked using the Etrecheck that my writing speed is 350mb/s which I think is pretty low?

MacBook Pro

Posted on Jan 22, 2019 1:45 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

dwb

Level 7

33,310 points

Jan 23, 2019 6:59 AM in response to atina160

I'd expect significantly better write speeds than what you are getting. Software incompatibility is possible so Safe mode is worth trying and so is creating a new user account. But whenever I see 2012 MBP and slow SSD I immediately think SATA cable. It would also be worth throwing your EtreCheck results here. But if the tests show no change and we see nothing in the EtreCheck results, I'd swap out the SATA cable.

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Answer 2

Joseph_S.

Community Specialist

Jan 23, 2019 6:45 AM in response to atina160

Hello and welcome to Apple Support Communities atina160,

I understand that your MacBook Pro is lagging for you. I'd be happy to go through some steps with you that can help with this issue.

Let's begin by making sure you do not have any pending software updates. If your software is up to date, then go ahead and start your MacBook in to safe mode and test to see if the issue remains. The following article will guide you through those steps, if needed.

Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac

If the issue still remains while in safe mode, the next thing you'll want to do is test on another user account.

How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac

Let me know the results.

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.

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Answer 3

atina160 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jan 25, 2019 3:17 AM in response to dwb

Hardware Information:

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)

MacBook Pro Model: MacBookPro9,2

1 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 (i5-3210M) CPU: 2-core

4 GB RAM - Upgradeable

BANK 0/DIMM0 - 2 GB DDR3 1600 ok

BANK 1/DIMM0 - 2 GB DDR3 1600 ok

Battery: Health = Normal - Cycle count = 1741

Video Information:

Intel HD Graphics 4000 - VRAM: 1536 MB

Color LCD 1280 x 800

Drives:

disk0 - Samsung SSD 860 EVO 250GB 250.06 GB (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)

Internal SATA 6 Gigabit Serial ATA

disk0s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB

disk0s2 [APFS Container] 249.85 GB

disk1 [APFS Virtual drive] 249.85 GB (Shared by 5 volumes)

disk1s1 - U******d (APFS) (Shared - 94.32 GB used)

disk1s2 - Preboot (APFS) [APFS Preboot] (Shared)

disk1s3 - Recovery (APFS) [Recovery] (Shared)

disk1s4 - VM (APFS) [APFS VM] (Shared - 4.29 GB used)

disk1s5 - SSD (APFS) (Shared - 2 MB used)

Mounted Volumes:

disk1s1 - U******d 249.85 GB (150.55 GB free)

APFS

Mount point: /

Encrypted

disk1s4 - VM [APFS VM] (Shared - 4.29 GB used)

APFS

Mount point: /private/var/vm

disk1s5 - SSD 249.85 GB (150.55 GB free)

APFS

Mount point: /Volumes/SSD

Network:

Interface en0: Ethernet

Interface en4: iPhone

Interface fw0: FireWire

Interface en1: Wi-Fi

802.11 a/b/g/n

Interface en3: Bluetooth PAN

Interface bridge0: Thunderbolt Bridge

System Software:

macOS Mojave 10.14.2 (18C54)

Time since boot: About 2 days

Security:

GatekeeperEnabled

System Integrity ProtectionEnabled

Kernel Extensions:

/Library/Application Support/Malwarebytes/MBAM/Kext

MB_MBAM_Protection.kext (Malwarebytes Corporation, 3.6 - SDK 10.14)

System Launch Agents:

[Not Loaded] 16 Apple tasks

[Loaded] 190 Apple tasks

[Running] 92 Apple tasks

[Other] One Apple task

System Launch Daemons:

[Not Loaded] 36 Apple tasks

[Loaded] 204 Apple tasks

[Running] 94 Apple tasks

[Other] One Apple task

Launch Agents:

[Running] com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2018-10-19)

[Loaded] com.microsoft.update.agent.plist (Microsoft Corporation - installed 2019-01-18)

[Running] com.adobe.GC.AGM.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2018-12-24)

[Not Loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist (? ffb65062 - installed 2018-10-22)

[Running] com.malwarebytes.mbam.frontend.agent.plist (Malwarebytes Corporation - installed 2018-12-07)

[Not Loaded] com.adobe.GC.Invoker-1.0.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2018-12-24)

Launch Daemons:

[Running] com.malwarebytes.mbam.rtprotection.daemon.plist (Malwarebytes Corporation - installed 2019-01-13)

[Loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2018-12-18)

[Loaded] org.cindori.TEHelper.plist (Oskar Groth - installed 2019-01-23)

[Running] com.malwarebytes.mbam.settings.daemon.plist (Malwarebytes Corporation - installed 2018-12-07)

[Loaded] com.adobe.acc.installer.v2.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2018-10-22)

[Loaded] com.adobe.acc.installer.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2018-10-22)

[Loaded] com.adobe.agsservice.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2018-12-24)

[Loaded] com.microsoft.OneDriveUpdaterDaemon.plist (Microsoft Corporation - installed 2018-10-19)

[Loaded] com.microsoft.autoupdate.helper.plist (Microsoft Corporation - installed 2019-01-18)

[Loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.helper.plist (Microsoft Corporation - installed 2018-10-15)

User Launch Agents:

[Running] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac4.HealthMonitor.plist (MacPaw Inc. - installed 2019-01-23)

[Loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac4.Updater.plist (MacPaw Inc. - installed 2019-01-23)

[Loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist (Google, Inc. - installed 2018-10-18)

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Answer 4

atina160 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jan 25, 2019 2:53 AM in response to Joseph_S.

I tried both but the issue still remains

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Answer 5

atina160 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jan 25, 2019 5:20 AM in response to dwb

Thank you for taking the time to reply!

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Answer 6

atina160 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jan 25, 2019 3:20 AM in response to atina160

User Login Items:

Launcher (App Store - installed 2018-11-27)

(/Applications/Simple Antnotes.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/Launcher.app)

StartUpHelper (Spotify - installed 2019-01-06)

(/Applications/Spotify.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/StartUpHelper.app)

Internet Plug-ins:

FlashPlayer-10.6: 32.0.0.114 (installed 2019-01-13)

Flash Player: 32.0.0.114 (installed 2019-01-13)

QuickTime Plugin: 7.7.3 (installed 2019-01-01)

AdobeAAMDetect: 3.0.0.0 (installed 2018-10-19)

3rd Party Preference Panes:

Flash Player (installed 2018-12-18)

Time Machine:

Time Machine information not available without Full Drive Access.

Performance:

System Load: 5.18 (1 min ago) 6.80 (5 min ago) 6.16 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O speed: 4.85 MB/s

File system: 120.00 seconds (timed out)

Write speed: 302 MB/s

Read speed: 516 MB/s

CPU Usage:

Type Overall

System 23 %

User 37 %

Idle 39 %

Top Processes by CPU:

Process (count) CPU (Source - Location)

Other processes 202.57 % (?)

Google Chrome 14.56 % (Google, Inc.)

Google Chrome Helper 8.70 % (Google, Inc.)

EtreCheck 7.87 % (App Store)

Creative Cloud 3.28 % (Adobe Systems, Inc.)

Top Processes by Memory:

Process (count) RAM usage (Source - Location)

EtreCheck 351 MB (App Store)

Google Chrome 99 MB (Google, Inc.)

Google Chrome Helper 35 MB (Google, Inc.)

WhatsApp 29 MB (? - /private/var/folders/yl/8lrkd_wj17sdk3949fw566xw0000gn/T/AppTranslocation/7128D2C1-952D-4E62-9DA5-B3D0572853A3/d/WhatsApp.app)

Spotify 23 MB (Spotify)

Top Processes by Network Use:

Process Input / Output (Source - Location)

mDNSResponder 2 MB / 925 KB (Apple)

netbiosd 152 KB / 194 KB (Apple)

Spotify 67 KB / 45 KB (Spotify)

WhatsApp 69 KB / 26 KB (? - /private/var/folders/yl/8lrkd_wj17sdk3949fw566xw0000gn/T/AppTranslocation/7128D2C1-952D-4E62-9DA5-B3D0572853A3/d/WhatsApp.app)

Telegram 25 KB / 3 KB (App Store)

Virtual Memory Information:

Available RAM 782 MB

Free RAM 17 MB

Used RAM 3.24 GB

Cached files 765 MB

Swap Used 1.79 GB

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Answer 7

dwb

Level 7

33,310 points

Jan 25, 2019 5:10 AM in response to atina160

I see 2 things that are bothersome. CleanMyMac isn’t really helping your computer but I don’t think it would have an impact or write speeds. Also, under Top Processes by CPU the first listing is Other Processes 202% ? and CPU usage overall seems high. But again I doubt it is having an impact on write speeds.

As I said in my original post, your write speeds are slower than I’d expect but seeing the EtreCheck report, your read speeds are pretty good. You have 4GB of RAM and with Mojave installed, there’s not much left over for applications. Back when I owned a 2009 MBP I tested whether upgrading RAM or an SSD was more important - that was about the time of 10.10 and 10.11 when the OS was smaller. What I found was that the speed of an SSD made virtual memory more efficient. With a rotational drive the use of VM was almost immediately noticeable but that wasn’t the case when an SSD was installed. I found that my computer was much more usable in low memory situations with an SSD. But just as with a rotational drive, eventually VM use became bad enough to bog down the computer. With an SSD I could use more applications and I noticed the effects less until boom, I hit that wall. That might be what you are experiencing.

Remove CleanMyMac, it does have an impact on computer speed. Watch your memory pressure with Activity Monitor. If the computer is bogging down with low memory pressure it might be worth replacing the SATA cable - they aren’t expensive. But with 4GB of RAM running Mojave, a RAM upgrade is certainly a good idea.

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SSD slow writing speed

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