Is High Sierra more suited to Macs/MBPs with SSDs?

Thank you so much for your response, sharughan.

I should have provided more details about the machine's configuration: it's running an Intel i7, and has 8 GB of RAM already. I cannot afford to buy an SSD just yet though. I am wondering if it will survive by the time I am able if the current issues continue though.

Thank you for your response, roverny!

My RAM is dual channel indeed -- 2 x 4GB.

Looks like you've outlined my choices here then:

- upgrade RAM (I am not sure my machine supports it though, it said it was upgradable only to 8 GB); and

- upgrade to SSD; or

- try an older OS (guess I will have to go with this for now if the overheating problem persists, and see if that changes anything)

I have seen some other posts here about overheating and I am going to try to get some diagnostic info from http://etrecheck.com/tool and see if that leads to anything other than my hunch about the OS.

Thanks!

For my own record's sake, and if anyone enjoys any detective work with these reports 😀, I am just posting what etrecheck found on my machine below.

EtreCheck Report

EtreCheck version: 4.3.1 (4D024)

Report generated: 2018-05-29 17:39:11

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 2:57

Performance: Excellent

Problem: Computer is restarting

Description:

Major Issues:

Anything that appears on this list needs immediate attention.

No Time Machine backup - Time Machine backup not found.

Minor Issues:

These issues do not need immediate attention but they may indicate future problems.

Upgradeable hard drive - This machine’s hard drive could be replaced with an SSD. This would dramatically improve your machine’s performance.

32-bit Apps - This machine has 32-bits apps that may have problems in the future.

Abnormal shutdown - Your machine shut down abnormally.

Hardware Information:

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011)

MacBook Pro Model: MacBookPro8,2

1 2.4 GHz Intel Core i7 (i7-2760QM) CPU: 4-core

8 GB RAM - At maximum

BANK 0/DIMM0 - 4 GB DDR3 1333 ok

BANK 1/DIMM0 - 4 GB DDR3 1333 ok

Battery: Health = Normal - Cycle count = 230

Video Information:

Intel HD Graphics 3000 - VRAM: 512 MB

AMD Radeon HD 6770M - VRAM: 1024 MB

Color LCD 1440 x 900

Drives:

disk0 - Hitachi HTS547564A9E384 640.14 GB (Mechanical)

Internal SATA 3 Gigabit Serial ATA

disk0s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB

disk0s2 [Core Storage Container] 299.48 GB

disk1 - M****1 (Journaled HFS+) 299.11 GB

disk0s3 - Recovery HD (Journaled HFS+) [Recovery] 650 MB

disk0s4 - M********A (Journaled HFS+) 339.66 GB

Mounted Volumes:

disk0s4 - M********A 339.66 GB (338.94 GB free)

Journaled HFS+

Mount point: /Volumes/M********A

disk1 - M****1 299.11 GB (280.64 GB free)

Journaled HFS+

Mount point: /

Network:

Interface en0: Ethernet

Interface fw0: FireWire

Interface en1: Wi-Fi

802.11 a/b/g/n

One IPv4 address

2 IPv6 addresses

Interface en3: Bluetooth PAN

Interface bridge0: Thunderbolt Bridge

System Software:

macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 (17E199)

Time since boot: Less than an hour

System Load: 1.55 (1 min ago) 1.42 (5 min ago) 1.09 (15 min ago)

Security:

32-bit Applications:

One 32-bit app

System Launch Agents:

System Launch Daemons:

Launch Daemons:

User Launch Agents:

User Login Items:

SmartDaemon Application (Justin Johnson - installed 2018-05-29)

(/Library/Application Support/CleverFiles/SmartDaemon.app)

Internet Plug-ins:

QuickTime Plugin: 7.7.3 (installed 2018-03-28)

Time Machine:

Time Machine Not Configured!

Top Processes by CPU:

Top Processes by Memory:

Top Processes by Network Use:

Top Processes by Energy Use:

Virtual Memory Information:

Diagnostics Information (past 7 days):

2018-05-29 17:20:03 Last Shutdown Cause: 0 - Power loss

End of report

Hey Luis Sequeira1, thanks for responding. This is the first thing that I did when I replaced the original hard drive suspecting it to be the culprit for the initial restart-loops + lack of any UI on boot-up.

The only thing I didn't open up was the keyboard. I removed the logic board and gave everything a thorough clean-up from any dust particles or dust bunnies sitting in there. Also cleaned up the contacts on the RAM sticks, and refitted both. The fans are running smoother since the cleanup. One thing I noticed since installing HS is that the fans do not make as much noise as they did before under load, even when the body is getting super hot. It would be great help if someone could suggest a good tool to monitor fan speed when things start heating up under the hood. I have performed an SMC reset after cleaning everything up and doing yet another fresh install of the OS (earlier it failed beyond repair as soon as I applied a security update; and on this new install I have disabled automatic updates for now and did not apply any updates on top of 10.13.4; pleased to report that I have been able to use the machine a bit since making that decision. I have no idea how much that is relevant, it's just based on general observation of two consecutive failures immediately after applying automatic updates that arrived on top of 10.13.4.

The machine started working a bit in cooler weather and gives me a couple of hours of working time during cooler nights since the cleaning operations. But it's still unreliable. I believe the only thing left to be done to prolong its life would be to try an SSD upgrade, I guess, but that will have to wait for some time until I can buy a reasonable sized SSD.

Hi etresoft, thanks for responding. I suspected my original mechanical HDD as the source of the problem when the machine first went dead -- reason being it was beginning to make some crackling noises off late and it has been in service since early 2012, has seen quite a few incremental OS updates and the OS environment was crying out loud to be rejuvenated with a fresh install but since everything was just working I just couldn't bring myself to do that; but the same thing happened when I replaced it with another hard drive (mechanical still); wiped it clean and did a fresh install of HS. After this point, I have tried connecting the original drive to see if I can salvage data from it and to my pleasant surprise, that drive still holds all my data and it is easily accessible as long as I have a way to connect it to the computer, but refuses to boot from it. The only thing that wasn't working was the the bootup from that drive for whatever reason.

I don't know what are odds of both HDDs going bust consecutively. But I do accept that OSs these days are getting more and more demanding and mechanical drives seem like dinosaurs already. I am willing to try SSD on this machine and report back on this thread whenever I am able. BTW, I haven't read too deeply into it but I just happened to stumble upon this article which seems relevant to my OP: High Sierra's APFS optimized for flash storage & SSD, incompatible with legacy HDDs and possibly Fusion Drives; of course, this is more about APFS and my drives were automatically formatted as HFS+ (IIRC), but I am beginning to see a pattern of preferring SSDs for newer software updates.