Mac Pro late 2011 model Memory 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 Processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5 extremely slow performance

Take a look at this user tip for possible remedies:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3521

Ciao.

As you might surmise there are a multitude of reasons for slow performance of a MBP. Without some specific information for the reason of a given problem. specific advice is difficult if not impossible to give. A forum such as this with its limitations in communications cannot hope to go through a multitude of possibilities.

I would suggest that you find a tech savvy individual and sit down with him/her and go over your MBP to identify the problem(s). That way you should learn a few things that will clarify some of the items in the link that I refered you to as well as possibly speeding up your MBP.

Ciao.

That read & write speed is about right for the slow 5400RPM drives Apple uses in there default configurations.

But if your drive is near full that will slow it down.

Have you rebooted the system lately? A complete shutdown and restart.

Sopo Sam wrote:

My Mac Pro early 2012 model has lately been very slow and spinning beachball is a common phenomenon now a days. Black Magic speed tester only shows 35 Write and 50 Read speed on my mac. Can anyone help me boost the performance of my machine?

That 350, if you are talking MBs of data, is with a SSD (Solid State Drive). No standard hard drive could ever transfer data at that rate.

The Spinning beachball is a sign you have other problems then just the slow drive used in standard MBPs. Could be hardware problems, like a failing drive, to a host of other hardware.

Stop what you're doing and find out what is causing poor performance.

Back up your data. The symptoms you describe may be caused by a failing hard disk but there are many other potential causes, and a backup is essential if the information on your Mac is important to you.

Read: OS X Mountain Lion: If your Mac runs slowly The article is very cursory, but be sure to read through to the end. Unfortunately the link there is broken, so use this one: Disk Utility. You must boot from the Recovery partition to repair a disk.

If Disk Utility finds any errors report what they are.

Reply with your results.

Good news.

Rather than ask a dozen addtional questions for more details about the problem consider the following:

Apple Support Communities contributor etresoft wrote a very useful app to quickly gather certain system information that may help point to a cause of this problem. Go to his website, download and run EtreCheck:

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Etrecheck will be in your Downloads folder. Open it from there. You may see the following dialog box:

Click Open - etresoft contributes to this forum frequently and can be considered a trustworthy developer.

It will take a moment to run as it collects its data.

Copy and paste its output in a reply.

Do not be concerned about anything that says "Problem" or "failed".

EtreCheck was designed to remove any personal information (such as your computer's name and serial numbers) but if you see anything that looks like an email address or any other personal information that should not be divulged to others, please delete or obscure that information when you post the reply.

When you are finished with EtreCheck, quit the program. It occupies very little space, and you can keep it or drag it to the Trash as you wish.

All bets are off if you download torrents, so it will be difficult to find what system corruption or data theft may have resulted from doing so.

It may be possible to eradicate whatever system modifications may be present or what required components may be missing or corrupt, but the safest course of action in your case would be to erase your system, reinstall OS X, change your passwords, and don't download torrents.

I am suggesting that torrent clients are capable of bypassing OS X's protections, and that anything downloaded from such sites should be considered unsafe. This is especially relevant for someone who would characterize himself as layman with computers in general.

If you are not absolutely certain of what you are installing on a computer, its intended purpose, what you expect it to do, how to use it, and how to get rid of it, don't install it. OS X's built-in Gatekeeper is intended to limit the availability of programs to recognized developers, and its built-in Xprotect normally checks for known malware every day. Both of these features are circumvented by downloading torrents. It's your Mac, and nothing can prevent you from doing that if you so choose, but you must accept responsibility for whatever havoc can occur as a result.

You have a number of Internet add-ons that may be problematic, as well as some third party system modifications such as NTFS-3G, MacFUSE, and Growl that may be outdated, and could be responsible for your complaint. To uninstall system modifications, you have to consult the developer's documentation. To uninstall Internet add-ons in Firefox, use Tools > Add-ons and uninstall what you don't need. Having said that, the largest unknown is the torrent client and what it may have installed. It is difficult not to throw up my hands and conclude anything is possible with an unknown of such magnitude, which is the reason for my recommendation to erase your system and reinstall OS X. It may be overkill, but given this unknown factor it is the only way to guarantee a system that can be used and maintained in the way it was designed.

4 GB is not an abundant amount of memory but I have systems that run perfectly well with that much, without frequent appearance of the "wait cursor" as you describe. More memory may help, but it will only mask the underlying problems that must be addressed.