Why is Lion so slow?

chr2 one of the most ignored solutions that had great results [with me at least] is upgrading the firmware for the hard drive in your mac. I had the exact same problem as you, absolutely non of the proposed solutions worked, but I found a firmware update for my hard drive and now I've speed as fast as leopard without any stalling at all. been running same install for last month or two without the slightest hiccup. if you're unable to find a firmware update, you might could try a newer hard drive. my drive is a ST95005620AS which is a hybrid drive. my slowdowns and stalls were unbearable and nothing would fix it. I updated the firmware for that drive and it was an instant cure with no reoccurance of the problem.

I'm running a late 2008 macbook pro with 4 gigs of ram. I can assure all who complain about it being a memory issue that it's not one. if it was my preformance would be low as well. I do honestly believe it's a flaw with the way lion accesses some hard drives which seems to be resolved by a firmware update for most.

"sudo tmutil disablelocal"

Seems working ... applications are opening faster than before....but when coming back from locked screen, it's taking quite a while.

Thanks, Bstone. Appreciate your response of substance, as opposed to the Don't Worry Be Happy Neil seems to be selling. Just checked now for firmware updates, but none seem to be available for my MacBk Pro 2.8 ghz Core 2 Duo from 2010, with 4gb RAM & a Seagate 7200 rpm 500gb HD upgrade I put in about 6 months ago. Downloaded all the firmware updates that might apply but each one's installer says not for you.

thanks also DJ_Mac; I turned off Time Machine completely ... let's see if that helps ....

chr2! You are so right. Mr Neil from Oz seams to live in a box right now. He should listen to veterans in stead of attacking.

OT.

I really want this OS (Lion) to work. I also know that my friends want it to work, but non of them has ever been on a forum like this and will not be.

Had my third clean install og Lion yesterday. It started to slow down instantly after logging in. Errors popping up in disk utility that cant be removed. Tried the smcFanControl without any luck. Now I am running with "zero" extra sw but it still lags the usually 28 second when running Apple sw as QT, iPhoto, iTunes, Safari.

Mr Neil fro Oz! You should take a look around and you will see that people are complaining about this on multiple forums (and of course I have reported this and a lot more related to it to Apple).

.f

nice first attempt chr2, but I did specify hard drive firmware, not mac firmware 😝

please get the full model number off of your hard drive, go to seagates website and search for firmware for that drive 🙂

if you need some help finding the firmware update and applying it just message me with your drives full model number chr2... also I left a pretty good post about 5 or 6 pages back that walks you through process.

Ah gotcha, bstone, and thanks for clarifying. Will give it a shot this eve & report back. Does the update wipe the drive, btw?

Thanks, Dusanofrode, totally agree with you. At this pt, we Apple vets don't need any help in distinguishing between real and imaginary problems. If ppl have something substantive to contribute, by all means have at it. Otherwise pls just let the adults talk amongst themselves.

no it does not wipe the drive, but with all major updates like this it's advisable to have a full backup just in case. chance of something going wrong is minimal, but always better to error on side of safety

Lion put SD26 firmware on my disk. It also affected my SL after downgrading.

Now, after listening to bstone109, I installed SD28 and I can tell already now that this is a success 🙂

SD26 was never a "good" version from Seagate (if we can trust the comunity). So why Apple delivered it with Lion is a question we of course never will get an answer to. But it has for sure made a lot of people busy and frustrated.

Hopefully I can feel happy now!

apple didn't deliver it with lion, that is the version that ships on the hard drive. the firmware you updated has absolutely nothing to do with lion. these problems actually began with the latest patch of snow leopard when apple seems to have changed the way osx handles sata devices, possibly to make way for the new way time machine is able to store local snapshots. I first started having this problem after installing the so called patch for snow leopard that was supposed to prepare it for the future release of lion, and the problem remained even after the upgrade.

to all those having this issue, please check your hard drive manufacturer for firmware updates [not apple] and install them. if there are no updates avaliable you might need a newer drive or to hound your manufaturer for a new update.

good luck everyone

So any idea where I can find a firmware update for my SSD, namely Apple SSD TS256B?

I just did a search for your update.. sadly I cannot find one for that ssd, but you can try checking to see if trim is enabled in lion as I do not know if it's enabled by default, it might help increase your speed a little.

Thanks for the search!

TRIM is enabled in my system.

As I've written before I beleive the slowness is related to disk operations.

chr2 wrote:

Ah gotcha, bstone, and thanks for clarifying. Will give it a shot this eve & report back. Does the update wipe the drive, btw?

Thanks, Dusanofrode, totally agree with you. At this pt, we Apple vets don't need any help in distinguishing between real and imaginary problems. If ppl have something substantive to contribute, by all means have at it. Otherwise pls just let the adults talk amongst themselves.

Ha ha Vets would still be using AppleMac II and Clarisworks, probably. I actually run the same drive as you have detailed you are running and there was no need to upgrade firmware for it whatsoever. In fact none existed! If you are such a grown up user, you should be able to help yourself install a new system by having your computer up to date for it, have done some research before crying that the dropping of Rosetta has caused your 1951 Office docs to freeze and your experience should make you adapt even quicker to the new system. But hard to teach old dogs on the other hand and as this thread is exposing, a bad tradesman always blames his tools.

It's 2011 around here. Check what decade your computer is set to.

Cheers and happy days to the Vets.

as it would appear.. you seem to be an idiot. if you have the same drive as me then it may already be running latest firmware if you've had no problems. please drop the pride and attitude and contribute something helpful rather than just critisizing others for searching for solutions to the problems you obviously seem lucky enough to not have. I btw do have an apple II, and a large range of other systems. I don't brag about them because frankly they have nothing to do with the problem at hand, and apparently you don't either neil. one request, stop filling the topic full of useless info, since you don't have the problem please get out or offer USEFUL information to those who do. obviously not all systems are effected by this problem, but it all boils down to a definate flaw with the way mac os lion reads and writes to hard drives. many drives have a problem with lions write methods, but not all do.

bstone109 wrote:

as it would appear.. you seem to be an idiot. if you have the same drive as me then it may already be running latest firmware if you've had no problems. please drop the pride and attitude and contribute something helpful rather than just critisizing others for searching for solutions to the problems you obviously seem lucky enough to not have. I btw do have an apple II, and a large range of other systems. I don't brag about them because frankly they have nothing to do with the problem at hand, and apparently you don't either neil. one request, stop filling the topic full of useless info, since you don't have the problem please get out or offer USEFUL information to those who do. obviously not all systems are effected by this problem, but it all boils down to a definate flaw with the way mac os lion reads and writes to hard drives. many drives have a problem with lions write methods, but not all do.

X2 what he said!!