Why is Lion so slow?

So far I m very happy with the speed ... it improved a lot.....but i guess disabling FILEVAULT isn't good....hence I will turn-on it again, so it will re-encrypt all data....lets see...what happens...will update

Just to note I tried FileVault on and off previously and there was no discernable difference in speed.

I've been off, on and off. Will go back to on again once my SSD is in.

Tried to do it just now. Unfortunately it looks like Crucial SSD drives aren't compatible with the Oxford chipset in my external enclosure. So I'll need to physically install the SSD in my powerbook before I can proceed with the cloning.

Thanks for the info. It seemed to help on my iMac. I was beginning to wonder if I had made a big mistake in udating to Lion,

Thanks APierce24. Sorry I didn't get the name in the first time. It seems to have worked, for me anyway.

@LITruha

That was the solution for me too (SD28 and the same disk as you have).

My Macbook pro is back where it was before installing Lion and everything works SO nice 🙂

There must be a combination of Lion and SD26 that makes these problems. Problems you also bring with you whene you downgrade to Snow Leopard.

But no its finally history for me 🙂

I have a new i5 with nothing installed other than the Lion operating system Mid 2011 system, I am experiencing lags when using apps and slow startup/login.

My older i3 running Snow leopard is much faster with zero lag. I have called Apple support and was told to rebuild my system with the Lion OS(Cmd +r on startup). I rebuilt the system and it is still slow. The system is Not indexing or downloading anything. I ran Geekbench on both systems and came out with descent scores. Running "top"

Explain this: Times it takes to get a launch bar and screen after hitting enter on Login

Lion 14 seconds <------yes that says fourteen(2 week old i5)

Snow leopard 3 Seconds(7 month old i3)

** Mac Lion reminds me of Vista...now that I have migrated from Ubuntu and WinXP I am back to dealing with the Microsoft windows mentality of "re-install" and "restart". Lion seems a heavy hitter in the memory usage and release department which makes me wonder how well it is written. My ubuntu system on a 3 year PC blows Lion out of the water in the speed department..boot up..loading apps like openoffice 😟

After a very happy time with my i3 and Snow leopard I am disgusted and feel ripped off by apple with Lion. I would love a tighter OS and kernel without so many of the frills, I want the speed of Snow leopard on my new machine.

And by reading some of the crap in here like "now I like my lion" makes me want to puke. On a freshly installed OS i have to start downloading software from third party companies to make it work faster ?

Come on Apple.....come clean !

Apierce24 instructions fixed mine...it was hopelessly slow...especially iPhoto and iTunes...now it works as good as before Lion.

I did this other day and did see a difference (improvement in speed). However, now it is EXCRUCIATINGLY slow. I have never, ever had a computer run this slow...there are things I can't even upload now because it is so pokey. I'm not sure what else to do!

Grrr

Woow i already gave up hope and bought ear plugs, so i wouldn't have to hear the disk all the time and i stopped drinking coffee so the computer didn't seem that slow.

APierce24 your sollution Rocks!

It sounds like you've pretty much fixed your problem, but most of the people posting here are those who've upgraded an existing Mac to Lion. I bought a new Macbook Pro 13", 2.4 GHz Intel Core 15 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 with a standard 500GB HD, which is a TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF with revision GP006B. It came with lion installed out of the box.

I had some of the same problems others have had. The system is slightly slow as a baseline, but would have several periods evey day in which it would stall for several minutes with a spinning beach ball while performing mundane tasks.

I finally caught it on the Activity Monitor while it was stalled. I had only 18MB (out of 4GB) memory free. A large portion 1.54GB was used in "AddressBookSourceSync". I haven't noticed this appearing since then. Could this be related to iCloud? I have turned off the Contacts portion of icloud, and it seems a bit faster, but I won't know for sure until tomorrow when I get a full day's work out of it.

Does that make sense? Perhaps it's an iCloud-related RAM issue?

I'm still running good and fast, with switching off the FileVault. 🙂

Hello all,

Came across this post and I.m also having a nightmare with Lion. I have the old Blackbook C2D and I installed a Seagate ST950042AS. ran ok with SL but having upgraded few months back I noticed the immediate slow down of my system. Thought it was my router etc and arrived here.

So now I will have to fork out for a new HDD by the looks of it. Dissappointing that there is no firmware upgrade for the drive. Thanks to bstone109 for the help in identifying the problem. Messing about with jumpers etc aint for me Im afraid.

Regards

Stu

Stu, are you using iCloud?

Hey Winnipeg,

Yeah im utilising iCloud in all its glory. I ran disk repair and permissions and for 5 mins it was ok. Now it has that dragging feel, YT videos can take up to 10 seconds to start and its really slow. Cant really afford an SSD and i have a lot of content on the 500GB like photos, iTunes content so I need the space. Im limited to 2GB so cant upgrade the RAM. Ill try turnig iCloud off and see if it makes any difference.

Regards

Stu

Update :- Seems you cant just turn off iCloud without removing content of the mac. Not good!

I remember loading Bootcamp onto my mac last year back and surfing the net using Chrome in Win XP was always faster than using Chrome ( or Safari) on Snow Leopard. This HDD must be a mac nightmare.

Regards

Stu