Macbook pro mid 2012, getting slower and slower on bootups on 1 TB SSD on high sierra. Is it Security updates?

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Macbook pro mid 2012, getting slower and slower on bootups on 1 TB SSD on high sierra. Is it Security updates?

Since the very late of 2019 to this day of having installed series of security updates I am experiencing slower and slower overall Macbook Pro mid 2012. Even on 1TB SSD.

Drivedx reports as 100% health on the SSD. Although can anyone confirm if the Amorphous Diskmark report is normal for an SSD?
Even though I absolutely swore I turned on TRIM ever since years ago when I initially bought the SSD via separate app...interestingly only yesterday I noticed that under System Report it shows TRIM support says "NO". So I tried force enabling it and still not a difference, in fact I am noticing things are slower.
First Aid on disk utility reports that the drive "appears to be ok".
Malware bytes reported nothing of ordinary.
I recently also had to buy new battery replacement from CoconutBattery app's warning. My hunch tells me that this may be a confounder but switching back and forth to the old battery to me does not seem to correlate as both battery seems slow.
SMC resets and NVRAM resets multiple times does absolutely nothing. Although I am noticing that after doing these I am noticing an EVEN SLOWER bootup sequence - to the point whereby it takes up to TWO minutes to get that loading bar to finish to the login screen.
Beachballings and slowdowns also appearing more frequently. The snappiness of that SSD magic everyone's familiar fades away.

My hunch tells me it is a software issue, as I noticed the very first sign of slowing down was as soon as I installed a series of important security updates. I thought I could live it with it and ignored it way back as my best guess in very late 2019.

Hence my questions as follows...

Does anyone else experiencing these same issue or pattern since last year?
Should I have to start over from scratch? Eg. boot via any macos USB installer, wipe the drive clean, reinstall high sierra and migrate via timemachine.
Do I really have to upgrade to Mojave? I'm still hesitant as I am aware that all Geforce M drivers are not yet working or supported under Mojave...

If anyone does share these issues please share.

Regards for any thoughts.

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.13

Posted on Feb 13, 2020 9:17 PM

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Answer 1

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BDAqua

Level 10

240,035 points

Feb 15, 2020 1:32 PM in response to Cascad85

Diagnostics mode... was disabled by Firmware updates in 10.13.6 for older Macs.

EtreCheck is a simple little app to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac.

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Pastebin is a good place to paste the whole report...

https://pastebin.com/

Or use the paperclip at the bottom of a Reply to attach the full report here. :)

Workable but harder for me to work with...the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck.

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Answer 2

Cascad85 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 15, 2020 7:53 PM in response to BDAqua

More problems seems to come up - in addition to minute -long loading bars, also experiencing lags inbetween mouse clicks, general unresponsiveness in general.

Upon switching back and forth between previous battery to the new one (which I consider to be a poor OEM version), there appears to be overall less slow instances of lags and the like if I'm using my previous battery. Although the chronically long one minute+ bootloading & much slower than usual loading apps still persists even on 1TB SSD).

So in the etrecheck attached I'm still using the previous battery. I'm returning the other battery as I suspect that is giving me more of these serious laggy instances whilst also placing an order for another one.

By laggy instances, I mean serious overall unresponsiveness from general mouse clicking, starting apps, closing down apps, delays in menus. All these problems from my clear memory - does not happen last year at all.

Seriously contemplating also on formatting and reinstalling high sierra from scratch.

Thank you for your willingly support.

from etrecheck

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Answer 3

Cascad85 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 14, 2020 9:18 PM in response to BDAqua

Yes, now it says TRIM Support: Yes. But what seemed strange was that I did enable it years ago (El Capitan days I believe in 2016), with a separate app Trim Enabler.

...Although now that I think about it - I wasn't using APFS filesystem before it was mandatory in all Sierra OS onwards (was using HFS extended). Perhaps that was a reason...but then again I do not recall Apple saying anywhere as a disclaimer by warning its users to manually re-enable TRIM....

A couple more things I've tried with no luck:

I cannot even get into Diagnostics mode (hold down the D key method upon boot up) it displayed "cannot load efi/drivers/testsupport.efi".
Got into Safe Mode and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, ran First Aid, took quite a long time (about 30-40 mins?) on the SSD till it completes - no problems found.

What else is there...FileVault? I've not used it once, ever. Rumours suggested it even slows things down even more.

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Answer 4

Cascad85 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 16, 2020 7:20 PM in response to Cascad85

....And so it's been a couple of hours post reset from scratch (wiped the drive, reinstall high sierra, restore data via timemachine backup).

And it's still just as slow as before. Intermittent lags even as I'm typing this - characters won't show up till one or two till some beachballing is over.

Interestingly, I cannot seem to select the NVIDIA web driver. It's greyed out.

Perhaps unrelated yet minor annoyance - for some reason icloud now has to reupload everything from scratch.

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Answer 5

BobHarris

Level 9

53,465 points

Feb 15, 2020 8:10 PM in response to Cascad85

Yes, now it says TRIM Support: Yes. But what seemed strange was that I did enable it years ago (El Capitan days I believe in 2016), with a separate app Trim Enabler.

The app that enabled TRIM years ago will no longer run, and its setting was not persistent.

With Yosemite, Apple added a way to enable TRIM, and this is persistent.

TRIM tells the file system to report any storage blocks that are part of a deleted file to the SSD so that the SSD can start the cleaning process on those blocks so they are ready for a new write.

But this means you need to actually go through the process of deleting some files. Previously deleted files do not count and the SSD does not know anything about them.

Thus it takes time for normal operations that will create and delete files over time to eventually get all the blocks on the free list giving to the SSD for pre-cleaning.

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Answer 6

Cascad85 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 16, 2020 3:14 AM in response to BobHarris

Decided to bite the bullet and reset everything from scratch.

Wiped the drive. Reinstall high Sierra. And using time machine backup now as I'm writing this, already about two hours. 6 hours remaining at restoring approx 650gb worth of backup.

I'm really surprised also at how slow time machine backups lately. It says it's transferring @ 23MB/s. Even though DriveDX reports the drive's health at 77.7% yet all parameters stays consistent at 100%.

We'll see how it performs once this migration is complete.

Thank you to all who participate this discussion to help.

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Answer 7

HWTech

Level 9

56,222 points

Feb 17, 2020 12:10 PM in response to Cascad85

First off you should test out the laptop with a clean reinstall of macOS before you migrate or restore from a backup. Once you migrate or restore from a backup you bring back potential software issues.

Have you tried connecting this SSD externally to see if you have the same problems? While a USB connection will be a bit slower than an internal installation it will allow you to see if the SSD may be incompatible with the Mac. Or you may have an issue with the internal hard drive cable.

If you suspect the SSD has an issue, then you can try performing a hardware secure erase on the SSD which will reset the SSD to factory defaults and restore any lost performance. It can sometimes fix other odd issues. To perform the hardware secure erase requires using a Linux utility. You can create a bootable Parted Magic USB drive using Etcher (Mac/Windows/Linux). Option Boot the USB drive and select the orange icon labeled "EFI". Parted Magic is a customized Linux utility boot disk and is the easiest way to perform the hardware secure erase if you are not familiar with using Linux.

There should be an icon on the Parted Magic desktop for erasing drives. Within the app make sure to select the "ATA Secure Erase" option as this is the only option which will reset the SSD to factory defaults as the other erase options will just cause wear on the SSD and not fix any issues. The app will prompt you to sleep & wake the laptop as well as to provide a temporary password for the erase. Just use a simple password such as "abc" since you will need this password later if the erase procedure fails or is interrupted.

You can get the last free version of Parted Magic from the MajorGeeks' download link here. Here is information on the secure erase procedure for the latest version of Parted Magic. While the app is a bit different, the basic steps are similar.

https://partedmagic.com/secure-erase/

FYI, many utilities do not always properly report the health of an SSD. It is best to examine the SMART Attributes manually if you are having issues. Feel free to post the DriveDX report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper. You can also try running the SSD's built-in long/extended self-diagnostics from DriveDX. If you only have the trial version, it is possible to use the command line to run the long selftest by accessing the "smartctl" utility in the app bundle.

You should also check to see if there are any firmware updates available for your SSD. Most SSD vendors do not provide an OS independent SSD firmware updater so you may have trouble updating the SSD's firmware or even finding out if there is a newer firmware available since many vendors do not disclose this information outside of their proprietary Windows app.

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Answer 8

Cascad85 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 20, 2020 9:27 PM in response to Cascad85

Once again, as an update, I am waiting for my next battery replacement to arrive and hopefully then we'll see this helps.

Right now it is getting slower and slower to the point whereby Adobe CC lags and beachballings are consistent. And it takes at least three minutes from cold boot up and for me to arrive to the desktop.

HWTech, thank you for series of thoughts and yes, I should have resetted everything anew, with new user account. However work cannot wait themselves in luxury by me manually reinstalling the apps accounts and whatnot....nonetheless I appreciate all suggestions proposed thus far.

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