On 08/09/2010, at 3:16 PM, Rob Phillips wrote:
Hi Ronni
On 6/09/10 2:33 PM, Ronda Brown wrote:
Hi Rob,
Sorry to hear you are still having
problems with your MBP. You are not going to particularly
like what I have to say … sorry :-(
OSX requires plenty of Free Unused
Hard Drive space to run well. Also you only have 2GB RAM,
Snow Leopard really needs 4GB (I know if only requires 1GB
to install, but to run well it needs 4GB).
Yeah. In the past I've always maxed out the RAM, but I
didn't for this machine, because with Leopard it didn't seem
a problem.
A hard drive that fills up and turns
flaky is nearly impossible to get back to normal without
Erasing reformatting.
If you run Photoshop it is best to
have 100GB of free space. If all you were doing is
Microsoft Word and email, I would keep a minimum of 50 GB
free unused space available, this allows the operating
system vital unused space to write its swap files, virtual
memory scratch disk.
Full hard drives also tend to
fragment system and data files and greatly slow disk
access down, too.
Left unchecked, the problem will
likely spread and corrupt the entire install until the
hard drive literally won't mount or the computer won't
boot or run without constant crashing.
This is where you are at …. (I did
warn you that you wouldn't like what I have to say).
This was probably my next option, so it isn't too much of a
surprise! However, I emailed the same info (plus reports of
some recent kernel panics) to the IT people at work, and
they are trying to get me a new machine on warranty. That's
better news than your suggestion! :-)
Hi Rob,
It will be a good win if you get a new MBP on warranty ;-) …
ah, the joys of working in Education …
I would pay the extra and have more RAM installed though.
Also when you have the new replacement MBP, take care to leave
plenty of Free Available space on the Hard Drive or you will
find yourself in trouble again.
I like to keep my computers with at least 20-25% Free
Available space on my Hard Drive.
There are many different types of problems that can manifest
the symptoms you experienced. Insufficient RAM or even hardware
failure can be the culprit.
But one of the most common causes of the problems
you describe is not having enough free space on a startup drive.
Filling your hard drive until it's almost full is fraught with
issues. First, your Mac needs some free space for creating swap
space to manage memory use.
Even when you have adequate RAM, OS X will reserve some space
at startup for memory swap space.
In addition, individual applications usually use some
disk space for temporary storage.
The point is that many pieces of the OS and many applications
use hard drive space, usually without your being aware of it.
When it gets your attention, it's usually because of erratic
system performance.
In general, you should keep as much of your drive free as
possible. As I mentioned above, If I had to put a minimum on
the amount, I would say keep at least 20% of your startup drive
free at all times; more is better. If you're getting to the
point where you worry about your hard drive's free space, it's
probably time to either spring for a larger hard drive or
archive some of the data and get it off the drive.
How did I come up with 20% as a bare minimum?
I picked this value so that some basic OS X maintenance scripts
will have sufficient free drive space to run. This includes OS
X's built-in
disk
defragmentation system, memory swap space, and enough
space to create cache and temp files when OS X starts up, while
still leaving room for basic applications, such as email and web
browsers, to use free space as needed.
Cheers,
Ronni
17" MacBook Pro Intel Core i7
2.66GHz / 4GB / 1067 MHz DDR3 / 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200rpm
OS X 10.6.3 Snow Leopard
Windows 7 Ultimate (under sufferance)
-- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List --
Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml>
Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml>
Unsubscribe - <mailto:[email protected]>
--
Associate Professor Rob Phillips
Educational Development Unit
Room 4.42 Level 4 Library North Wing, Murdoch University
[email protected] Phone: +61 8 9360 6054 Mobile: 0416 065
054
Fellow, Higher Education Research and Development Society of
Australasia
