Most apps "not responding" macbook runs hot, freezes often and constant beach ball of death

jpizzle69 wrote:

I have a time machine backup very recently.

Very good (and so very rare on these forums).

any recommendations of a good SSD/sata cable to upgrade with?

OWC sells the hard drive SATA cables.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apple/8211480/

We've mostly been using Crucial MX500 SSDs (avoid the BX500 series) as they are a good compromise on price & quality. OWC Mercury Electra SSDs are Ok (although I'm personally not really fond of them). A lot of people like the Samsung EVO or Pro SSDs, but they are expensive. These would be my personal choices since so many other brands are really low end and can be as slow as a hard drive. Personally I prefer SSD vendors such as the three I listed who provide an OS independent method of updating the SSD firmware. Most SSD vendors only provide a Windows executable.

Either you have a big software issue or you have a failing hard drive.

Try running the Apple Diagnostic/Hardware Test.

See if you can boot into Safe Mode. If Safe Mode works better, then you may have a software issue since Safe Mode disables a lot of apps from starting automatically. Try running EtreCheck and posting the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

To check the health of the hard drive run DriveDx and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

What is the exact model of your Mac? You can get this information by entering the serial number here:

https://checkcoverage.apple.com/

What version of macOS is being used?

First your hard drive is failing as it has already reallocated over 150 bad blocks. I recommend you replace it with an SSD as that will also give you a good performance boost. Since you have the 13" model you should also replace the hard drive SATA cable since that cable has an extremely high rate of failure on that model especially when using an SSD.

Second, you need to uninstall CleanMyMac and CCCleaner by following the developer's instructions or rather do not reinstall them on the replacement drive. Cleaning apps & anti-virus apps are not needed on a Mac and they usually cause more problems than they solve plus they impact system performance.

The EtreCheck report also shows you have multiple Flash plugins. Flash won't be supported for much longer (at end of the year?) so I suggest you avoid installing Flash on the replacement drive. I haven't had Flash installed on any system in over 6 years or more and I'm not missing anything.

I hope you have a good backup of your data already since it may be difficult trying to transfer data from your failing hard drive. If you do not have a backup, then I highly recommend you stop using this drive immediately since you will only make the failure worse. You may be able to transfer the data from the failing drive using standard tools/utilities while booted from another drive so it minimizes the wear on the bad drive (also turn off Spotlight so it doesn't try to index the bad drive). You may want to consider using Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer the data while booted from another drive as CCC can skip files that produce errors and CCC will log those failures so you know what was not transferred.

Apple did make a better replacement cable once they realized how bad the original cables were, but it is unlikely you will ever get one of the better replacement cables. Just make sure you get a new replacement cable and not a used one. The problem with these cables was that they rubbed against the case causing damage which is nearly impossible to detect.

No adapter is needed for the non-Retina laptops. Adapters are only needed for the Retina model laptops since Apple uses a proprietary PCIe SSD connector on the Retina models. A USB to SATA Adapter is a way of testing for defective hard drive SATA cables or compatibility of the SSD by connecting and booting the SSD externally.