My macbook pro mid 2012 suddenly started being extremely slow

Welcome!

I think something is seriously out of order with your SSD. Your scores:

Performance:

System Load: 1.96 (1 min ago) 2.66 (5 min ago) 3.46 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O speed: 1.66 MB/s

File system: 126.05 seconds (timed out)

Write speed: 196 MB/s

Read speed: 516 MB/s

From my 2012 13-inch MBP also retrofitted with a 6GB/sec SSD, but from OWC:

Performance:

    System Load: 1.61 (1 min ago) 1.60 (5 min ago) 2.94 (15 min ago)

    Nominal I/O speed: 0.15 MB/s

    File system: 28.20 seconds

    Write speed: 487 MB/s

    Read speed: 482 MB/s

1) Your Write speed is far below nominal

2) File System check went over two minutes and timed out

The File System time and your description suggests intermittent stalls, and that could be an easy fix.

When you installed the SSD, did you replace its ribbon cable at the same time? If not, that could be the problem.

The only weak spot in the 2012 non-Retina MBPs is the drive cable. It is super-thin, bascially a flexible printed circuit board. The insulation is also thin and, because of a circuitous routing over some sharp metal edges on the chassis, the insulation can wear with the vibration of normal use and transport after 3-5 years. Symptoms of a worn cable can mimic those of a failing hard drive.

The good news about the cable:

• • It is cheap (about US$15)
  • it is available ( Apple Hard Drive / SSD Cable For 13-inch MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) main drive bay)
  • it takes less that 30 minutes to replace at home.

For what you have posted (we greatly appreciate your including very good details) I would replace the cable before doing anything else.

If that does not improve things, consider a different SSD. Samsung was once the gold standard for SSDs but that rep is getting tarnished. Best results seem to come with Crucial and OWC solid-state drives.

peter_watt wrote:

FWIW I have a very similar MacbookPro9,2 with EVO860 and it is very fast with the standard cable. Write speed 503.

I have Trim=yes

It also has 16GB RAM which your version will not take - no idea why.

Peter,

EtreCheck RAM Max values are based on what Apple specs show--which are now outdated--not on what more recent RAM improvements allow. Crucial and OWC both show 16 GB kits for that model, as does EveryMac and the MacTracker database. But this:

Available RAM: 4.17 GB

Swap Used: 0 B

does not point to RAM starvation, at least at the time fo the test.

The intermittent nature of the OP's symptoms and the drive data in the report strongly suggest a worn cable and not the drive itself. I mentioned the SSD only as a secondary consideration well after a worn cable because of other posts here over the last couple of years where Samsungs did not perform up to expectation.

TRIM is based on manufacturers' recommendation. OWC says their SSDs handle TRIM internally, so I did not engage it on mine. Do you know what Samsung recommends?

The hard drive SATA cable is definitely a good place to start. If TRIM is not being used on an SSD, then I suggest unchecking the "Put hard disk to sleep" option in the Energy Saver System Preferences so that the SSD's internal garbage collection routines have time to run when the laptop is not being used. In the mean time you can try to get the SSD to run the internal garbage collection routines by Option Booting the laptop by holding down the Option key just after the startup chime. Leave the laptop at the Apple boot picker menu for a few hours so that the SSD has time to perform its internal maintenance which includes properly preparing the recycled NAND blocks for re-use.

You can also check the health of the SSD by running DriveDx. Post the complete health report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper. DriveDx doesn't always provide an accurate automatic assessment of SSD health so manually reading the health report is necessary.

I've also seen reports that some older Samsung SSDs may have compatibility issues with some Macs, but I don't recall the specific models involved.

Check to see if there are any firmware updates for your Samsung SSD. Personally I would replace the hard drive SATA cable first before attempting a firmware update on the SSD so that you minimize the chances of something going wrong during the updating of the SSD's firmware.

FWIW I have a very similar MacbookPro9,2 with EVO860 and it is very fast with the standard cable. Write speed 503.

I have Trim=yes

It also has 16GB RAM which your version will not take - no idea why.

I did notice

" Launchd: ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.php@7.2.plist

Executable: /usr/local/opt/php@7.2/sbin/php-fpm --nodaemonize

Details: Domain name invalid - possibly adware"

so running Malwarebytes Free edition could help

Do you need Homebrew??

I would also boot up into Safe Boot at least once.

Then run Etrecheck again after giving it full disk access.

When did this problem start? I agree that recent Flash installations look suspicious. You are also running an open-source database and web server. Are you aware that software is running? The dates in MySQL aren’t recent, but older dates aren’t always reliable. Software can be installed with older dates.

Thanks for the follow-up, It will help others. The intermittent nature of the problem and how Etrecheck reported it was a big clue to the the cable being the issue. EC is a great tool.

and I learned something too!

It has been too long Allan I just know I probably followed somebody's advice about trim. Point is yes that drive should be writing faster and the cable is a good place to start but I would also shovel out the dung and maybe even a clean install with as little utility software as possible.

I always suspect a recent Adobe Flash player install may have malware payload.