Tips to fix Mac slowdowns | How to speed up a slow Mac computer

It doesn't matter whether you are at Mac or Windows or at any other OS, but, a computer , sooner or later, starts running slow. The situation goes persistent with the passage of time, specially when we load our machines almost full. Sorry to users of other OS because here we are discussing the situation for Mac only. One can try the following fixes to speed up slow Mac machine.

Try Restarting Mac

The first and the most effective step you can try is restarting your Mac. It cures mac slowdowns by quitting processes and applications running in the background. When we restart Mac machine, the RAM gets freed and refreshed to serve only the usefull applications.

Is your Internet connection OK?

Almost for everything we do at our machine, we need internet. Right from surfing the Web to checking email and writing applications—requires Internet connection. Many of us believe that a slow internet means a slow Mac. This is not correct. If you are struggling with internet speed then it doesn't mean that your Mac is slow. Improving your net connection can fix the issue.

Check Network preferences: If you see spinning beach ball in Safari, you can't say whether pages are taking longer time to load or whether your net connection is actually broken. So, need to go to Apple menu > System Preferences, and choose Network. Click Assist me and follow the instructions there after.

Free up Mac disk space

As I mentioned earlier, we keep storing our every digital stuff in Mac. A time comes when hard drive feels short of free space. This is one of the most prominent causes of sluggish Mac.


Use built-in disk usage: Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Usage . It's important to mention here that one should have at least 10 GB of free space available in drive. The limit is optimum if we maintain about 10 percent of the drive size as free space. If the free space in your Mac is below this level then you should clear some additional space.



Search for large files: Use Spotlight to locate large files that you may no longer need. In the Finder, press Command-F, click the plus (+) sign, click the Kind pop-up menu, and select Other. Select File size from the resulting list, and then click OK. Set up the criterion to read File Size and delete the files that you don't need.


Delete cache and log files: Ordinarily, cache files help your Mac run faster and the Log files keep track of past events on your Mac. For most of the users these are none of any importance and can be deleted without any adverse consequences.

The most safe and and quick way to delete these unnecessary files is to use Mac cleaning app like Stellar Speed Up Mac. The application can be applied to delete all sort of unnecessary data (duplicate files, large files, cache , leftovers, system junks), either from entire drive or from a single volume.

Check CPU usage

The task can be assigned to activity monitor to see % of CPU being consumed. Launch Activity Monitor and select My Processes from the pop-up menu at the top of the window. Next, click the % CPU column to sort by that criterion.
If an app consistently remains at top of the list of the % CPU usage, that app may be considered to quit.

Check memory usage

An OS performs with the combination of physical and virtual memory. Virtual memory is the space in Mac drive which is used temporarily. Physical memory is the RAM installed in Mac machine. Its important to note here that physical memory is faster than the virtual so, more your Mac depends on virtual memory, the slower it will perform. The swapfiles are created in virtual memory that keep increasing in size over time and can contribute to Mac slowdowns by consuming disk space. You don't need to worry or delete these files because they get cleared when system restarts.

Spend money

Money is the ultimate cure for stubborn slowdowns.



Add RAM: If your Mac doesn’t have adequate memory installed then you must go for upgrades. Its a common practice among us that we just care about upgrading OS and leave the other requirements as such. Adding RAM is the quickest and most perfect fix for slow Mac. If one can't afford or wants an alternative, then optimizing Mac is best solution for him.


Get a bigger hard drive: A larger capacity hard drive could add more speed to your snailing Mac. Shifting from an HDD to an SSD drive will be a smarter move and can help to speed up Mac applications too.


We have tested and verified the tips mentioned above believe the ideas would help you to get rid of snailing Mac performance.

Boost Mac performance by defragmenting Mac drive - how and when?

Now-a-days, slow Mac has become a common issue for Mac users. Slow Mac operations caused by fragmentation of files after the long usage of machine. Fragmentation is the process of splitting of files into parts or fragments at the time of storing them in different locations on the hard drive. When one attempts to open some application or file then accessing or fetching time gets increased as processor consumes time to search for the supported file fragments in the drive. So, by this way fragmentation of files results in slowing down the system's performance.

So, one can optimize the hard drive performance by combining fragmented parts of a file called defragmentattion. The only problem is defragmenting hard drive is a time consuming process, it can take hours but its not universal.

Although you don't need to perform it everyday. Your Mac OS X has built-in features HFS+ file system that can defragment files very smoothly but upto certain level(20MB file size). Actually, defragmentation of Mac drive is required in Mac or not has been a contradictory topic. Because, some people think that Mac has its inbuilt defragment tool, however its not true. Mac OS X has HFS+ file system of Mac that can only defrag files of size 20mb. As a result, you should only consider defragmenting an option under certain circumstances.

When to defrag Mac?

Once you realize that your Mac machine is running slow, you should check for fragmented files created on the disk because it might be a big reason for slow Mac or Slow PC.

Defrag your PC:

In your computer, there is an inbuilt tool to defrag your hard disk. To Defragment your PC drive:

Right click on My Computer -> then Select Manage -> Go to Storage -> Click on 'Disk Defragmenter'. It will show you by graphical representation the status of fragmented files and it will notify you according to fragmented level of files.

Defrag your Mac Hard disk:

Unfortunately, no inbuilt free Mac application is present for defragmentation in Mac machine. Here this means you must need to go for a third party Mac application to defragging Mac.

According to Apple research on this contradictory topic of need of defragmentation in Mac, a user should defrag his drive if he has many large files(like video files) or in case of less free space available in his drive.By defragmenting Mac drive one can optimize Mac performance and speed up his Mac like a day one.

Recommended third party software for Mac defragmentation:

Mac users have need to opt for some reliable and efficient third-party defragmenting application like Stellar Drive Defrag.

The Stellar Drive Defrag have advanced features of monitoring drive temperature and give alerts if find temperature of drive above the optimum. This software checks for frequently-used system files and keep these files together on your drive so as to decrease the time taken by processor in searching for their components while it's booting up and during running of background services.

Stellar drive defrag following operations and prominent features:

Defrag metadata : This option defrags the information (metadata) about a file. It includes file length, creation date, inter-linking information, license information etc.

Full defrag: All the files and free spaces are bring together into separate continuous memory locations.

Quick defrag: By uisng this tab, it automatically arranges the scattered pieces of files into contiguous memory locations on drive.

Optimize: This option is unique as it used to take out all the scattered free spaces from different location and place them together into a chunk of memory.

This defrag mac application with user friendly interface and capability to handle all the levels of fragmented files and hence optimizing Mac performance.

Do you need Mac cleaning application for your Mac machine?

Regularly using Mac cleaner application performs a big role in getting rid of that beach ball in your slow Mac. It also plays important role to speed up Mac performance efficiently and give you feel like you did when your Mac was brand new. These applications are required by users because these not only have a fantastic features of cleaning all unwanted junks along with many useless files and hence increase Mac performance.

In my next paragraphs, I'm going to provide you some great features that must be in suitable and reliable Mac cleaning application that might assist you to choose and find optimum one among a large number of software available in the market. So, this way you can select best Mac cleaner application and can say good bye to sluggish Mac performance.

The most fascinating thing you experience by having Mac cleaner apps is that it simply clean unneeded files and prevent your Mac from clutters. This keeps free space available in drive as well and provides enhanced speed experience to users.

Advantages of Mac cleaner software:

The easiest way to fixed sluggish Mac is actually to delete clutters, cache files,logs etc. from drive. Probably many Mac users don't realize that even after deleting some apps, there leftovers will remain in the drive.

So, in order to delete such leftovers you should clean your drive thoroughly. I think for sure like me, you also love your Mac, so, to keep it stay and working use an awesome Mac cleaner like Stellar Speedup Mac.

You should know that it's not an intelligent decision to spend a huge amount of cash over a brand new machine or Mac drive.

About Stellar Speedup Mac, I can proud to say that it not only has a large number of advanced features but as well as the fairly low price of just $29 that I think is unquestionably worthy of having.

So, if you find any of your friend facing sluggish Mac, its your duty to recommend to have this superb Mac clean up software.By using this remarkable great tool, you are able to give new life to your old sluggish Mac machine and have it working like the day one.

Believe it or not, but it can certainly help you to stop running slow and very easy to use apps.

Don't wait just Check out and download the Stellar Speedup Mac,your fastest cleaning application to get a quick clean fast Mac because this app has much more to provide apart from a cleaning action, it can be a lot more fascinating with its unique and more advanced features.

Keep Backup of your Mac to restore original data

Protection of your data against loss can be maintained by cloning entire drive in some external drive or by having Time Machine(TM) incremental backups. You must create backup which can restored, when desired, to get the original data back in their previous shape.

Friends, I am a Mac user and a big fan of Mac. Taking regular backup and cloning is a very significant task from security point of view and should be paid proper value by all the users. Because , without proper backup strategy or clone of your drive, your data can be lost any time while performing activities like reformatting,partitioning drive, drive failure,volume corruption etc. And this can happen to anyone without giving notice in advance and can cause your data to be lost.

You have only way to avoid data loss but no way to avoid these situations which cause drive failure.

When one of my friends bought Mac , I made him aware in the very beginning for taking timely backups but, he ignored it and said that cloning &backup are time taking and 'boring' processes.

Finally, he realized that without cloning Mac drive, his data is always at risk. I suggested him to see for some software like Stellar Drive Clone which can make the task of cloning very easy and fast.

Some other options for hard drive cloning are Superduper, CCC. Both of these are very popular Mac cloning tool but the only problem they don't give support to your multi boot mac machine. They don't support ExFat, FAT32 file systems and MBR like Stellar cloning application. Stellar Drive Clone also give support to SSD(Solid State Drive).

By downloading Stellar Drive Clone free trial version user can perform following things:-

• Use can Restore volume from folder
• Restore Mac volume from image file
• Create clone to any folder
• Create clone to network drive

Features available after buying software:-

• Can create clone to any volume
• Can create bootable dvd of your Mac disk
• Minimal system(create bootable clone quickly by copying only default apps)
• Can facilitate you by Imaging Mac drive or specific volume

Can I Move home folder of Mac SSD to another disk?

If you want to move home folder of your Mac OS X SSD drive to another disk than it is advisable not to try same but something similar a way better.

As you know SSDs are fast than traditional drives that is a big reason of increasing number of Mac heads is buying them. When you choose to move your home folder (full of docs, photos, songs and movies) to some external drive, they fail to understand that there’s Library in the home folder that should be left on SSD. Library is a collection of caches, settings and contains supporting files for those apps we want start up faster.

And that's not the only reason or you can say the story doesn't end here. In a big iTunes library, you might want to keep its contents like ~/Music/iTunes/ on the SSD too. (excluding iTunes Music). I said excluding iTunes music because it loads faster and you can't even see its icon bounce.

There’s a simpler way to do all this but without moving your home folder. It can be done by moving most of its contents and then use symboliclinks point to the new location. 

 

Symbolic links are created in the Terminal, and one can remember this syntax: ln -s

<where-to-link-to> or <what-to-call-it>

So let’s perform it in a form of a checklist with 7 easy steps:

The first most important step is quiting all apps and stop your Dropbox etc.

1. Open Finder to access your home folder. Now, select everything except Library in your Home folder.Now, drag all your selected content to the new storage drive.

2. After copying is done, delete everything from your home folder except for Library and Music/iTunes.

3. Open Terminal. Right now you should be in your home folder. Now start linking:  

ln -s /Volumes/StorageDisk/Downloads
You have your first symbolic link. You can look at it in Finder.

4. Now, do the same for all other content that you’ve moved: Documents, Movies, Pictures, Sites, Dropbox etc. except for the Music.

5. Finished it with #5? Now for Music, delete iTunes Music either from the Finder or Terminal doesn’t matter. Now, can create a symbolic link to iTunes Music on the storage:
cd Music/iTunesln -s “/Volumes/StorageDisk/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music”

The best part of doing this way is: you don’t need to change anything in your daily workflow. Everything is in the form to which you’re used to.

Remember to run your Dropbox again.

Note: Before moving, migrating data from one folder to another, or from one drive to another it is recommended to create clone of Mac drive using some reliable tool. Creating Copy of Mac applications using reliable software ensure you bootable clone of your programs .

Clone your Mac hard drive to avoid data loss

Many times, you would have heard to ensure your data protection from disaster by cloning your hard drive”. But, most of us ignore its importance in our personal as well as professional life. Today, in this advanced technology era, the most important thing is our – data. 

So, its not your hard drive responsibility to keep your data safe , you need to have some good cloning application for your Mac drive. So, if anything goes wrong with your data you are the only one who is responsible for it. Then you'll have to spend for some data recovery tool but remember, its not always possible to regain data completely and sometimes the loss goes permanent.

So, in order to ensure your data protection it is essential to clone your Mac disk. I can't forget the day when I lost all my stuff including documents, movies, songs and all family snaps that I took at family events, due to my drive failure. After this big loss I realized the importance of backing up plan or drive cloning.

For Mac users, Apple made backing up data easy with Time machine, in Mac OS X. Yet, majority of Mac users don't backup their data regularly because they believe that its a complicated process. 

 

But, the main problem with the majority of users is – they don't have reasonable idea of what and how to backup on Mac drive.

So, this article is explaining the difference between cloning and backup methods and how to decide that when and what to clone or backup.

           Cloning                                                             Backup

Clone is an exact copy of your Mac disk or volume to your desired destination drive or volume. It creates Bootable backups.	Backup of your drive is created in image form and used as a backup for disaster recovery purposes. Backups are not bootable.
This allows you to transfer all your content including OS and installed applications	Backups contains everything including your OS but can't create image of installed applications so you need to reconfigure or reinstall on your destination backup drive.
Cloning is less flexible. It is mainly required at the time of hard drive migration or upgradation of drive. So, we can say its a one time operation gives bootable clone that one need at critical condition when Mac is not booting.	Backup are more flexible and can be scheduled. You can recover or restore your backup from the moment that you need.

Now come to the point we were about to discuss that What should you Backup or Clone:-

To determine what data should you clone or backup, you have to just suppose a situation of losing a particular data type and feel how much it make you terrible. I think this is an easy and best approach to find out your priority wise important data.

Personal data is irreplaceable: It is obvious that personal stuff must be backed up first as it holds special place in your heart. For example: some letters to your love or parents are important to you, so backing up this is the foremost step you should do. As per my views, photos and multimedia files including video of our family events are irreplaceable or you can't be recreated if lost ones. 

 

Clone your OS or important office files :

It is important to clone Mac hard drive so that your data have been secured as a clone on external disk always. And your important files will not go anywhere even after drive failure etc. So, you need not worry about your data safety after having clone of your Mac disk.

Such confidential and important files include documents that are not backed up and lost due to some accidental deletion or error cause a big loss.

Why I need to take backup of my drive | significance of Mac cloning

Your data is vital, irreplaceble, priceless and very expensive to recover (sometimes beyond the reach of recovery). So, it is advisable to backup your Mac regularly to secure it from any loss. If you are like me then your data must contain following stuff:-

Photos (Wedding, Children, family tour,occasion)

Music

Movies

Conference talks

Documents (Business receipts, Scans of all diplomas, licenses, etc. )

Research papers etc

There are so many strong reasons why one should take atleast continuous backups using Time machine. Anytime your drive fails or can be stolen and also wiped by hackers. Infact I must say that its good to have some offsite backups also. However, here I will talk about special type of backups called 'Clone backups'.

A clone is an exact copy of your Mac drive including user data and OS files. Clone gives bootable copy which can be used to boot your Mac if the primary drive fails or gets corrupted.

Prominent reasons for why to clone Mac drive:

• It is useful In Testing Apps and Trouble shooting issues
• During replacement of Primary hard drive
• Its a great way to have functional backup of entire machine