How to speed up old Mac | Speed up my old Mac OSX running slow

How can I speed up my Slow old Mac ? Some tips to boost old Mac performance without much expenses. The Mac users who have bought their machines 5 or 6 years ago, find the sluggish behaviour their Mac and likely lusting over impressive fast performance of newer models and their specifications. A new Mac could be a solution but, not the only one to resolve the issue.

How to make slow old Mac fast ?

A few hardware upgrades could be considered to boost Mac performance. So, first we to identify the upgrades for your machine which may count replacing hard drives, adding RAM or even new optical drives, such as DVD and Blue-Ray.

The user may also consider swapping the processor (not suggested for home users but for professionals).

How RAM helps to speed up Mac system ?

During any process, the RAM assigns more data to the chips without relying on hard drive. It helps to enhance the rate of data accessibility and thus makes quicker switching between applications, avoiding the spinning beach ball.

Before purchasing a new RAM its important to ensure compatibility like type of RAM, number of slots etc. Please don't follow the idea that bigger is better with every model, especially in case of older machines.

Role of Hard drive in speeding up your Mac

Its important to note that Mac OS uses free space on drive as virtual memory. So, the more of it is available, the more it can be used. Its suggested to keep at least a quarter of drive size free for this purpose. But, its not easy to maintain with small drives in older Mac's plus ever-growing media libraries.

In order to create free space in your machine, options include purchasing an external hard drive but the task is little technical.

Another way goes for using cleanup software to release some space erasing unnecessary data from drive. Stellar Speed Up Mac is one such application which tool to gain free space on hard drive.

Limit the number of login items

In accounts section, clicking the Login Items tab lists all the software that launch when your Mac boots up. These applications do nothing except eating away your precious RAM? Stop them if you don't need them.

Clear out your apps

Its a well tried and tested method for sprucing up your system. This method shows you an instant difference in performance before and after deleting unwanted apps from your machine.

This can be done automatically with the application mentioned above with simple drag and drop option and plain user friendly environment.

Keep your old Mac applications up to date

Its all in favour of old Mac users that Apple still releases updates for software in their machine – even for PowerPC machines – using which can boost your Mac. The same is true fot drivers for printers, scanners and other software. Please ensure that they're all up to date to keep.

For more tips visit: http://www.stellarspeedupmac.com/

Apple says No need to defrag Mac| Mac reduces fragmentation

Why there is no option in Apple disk utility to defrag Mac drive. Why there is no need to defragment Mac disk ? The only answer to this question is – Mac OS is smart to minimize the chances of fragmentation.

How does Mac OS handle fragmentation ?

The Mac OS X later than 10.2 have some built-in safeguards to prevent fragmentation of files. Lets see the techniques behind it.

• The HFS+ file system of Mac doesn't allocate the recently freed space to save a file. Instead, it tries to allocate the larger free space first. It reduces the chances of fragmenting the files to make them fit in available space.
  
• OS X gathers small files and rewrites them into new location on same drive with larger free space. It helps to defrgament all the files in the group.
  
• Hot file adaptive clustering in Mac OS X is another technique to reduce fragmentation. Here the frequently-accessed files (read only) are moved to a special zone so as to make their access faster.
  
• Delay in allocating memory to file. The OS X allocates memory in bunches. This reduces chances of saving fragments of a file in separate locations.
  

These safeguards reduce the level of fragmentation upto very significant extent and that is the reason Apple disk utility doesn't need to offer an extra option to defrag Mac drive. As we know that every technology has some limitations, so is the case with Mac also. 

If the size of Mac files exceeds 20 MB , then the OS can take care about fragmentation of that file. In those situations, one needs to defrag the files via some third party tools like Stellar drive defrag.

Also, when the size of free space get lesser than 10% of total size of drive, the OS X can't defrag the files automatically. So, one must keep adequate free space on drive by removing useless applications, unnecessary language files, unwanted universal binaries etc..

How to fix Mac running out of space- Declutter Mac drive

How to remove clutters from my Mac ? How to declutter Mac completely? Is my Mac running out of space? Why should I remove clutters from Mac Lion to regain speed ?

Some very obvious questions being asked by Mac users facing the dialogue box popping “your startup disk is full”. This confirms that your Mac is running out of space and its the time to declutter your Mac drive.

When a user buys a new machine he takes it granted that the drive is never going to full. But, with the passage of time he keeps storing everything irrespective of significance of the items. This leads to accumulation of useless items (clutters) in drive. The list includes duplicate items, useless language files , cache files, universal binaries etc..

Causes of cluttering Mac drive ?

Before discussing the solution its intelligent to give a thought to the cause of the problem. Try to remember those applications which you installed to use them only once. They used few Gigabytes which are still in use but unnecessarily.

Secondly, some files which are downloaded via browser or have been received as email attachments consume space. These things get accumulated on your drive either knowingly or unknowingly and consume gigabytes of precious drive space.

It is important to note here that the personal photos or videos that we create with our cameras or camcorders, eat too much free space in drive. Technically speaking , every 10-MP (megapixel) photo consumes about 4MB in JPEG format. An average video (HDV) of one hour consumes about 13GB of data. How about keeping the final video only.

So, its obvious that even the largest hard drive can get full with such practices. Please note that the OS needs at least 10% of free space on drive to keep the files in contiguous order (a process known as defragmentation) and make process uninterrupted. The lack of space may cause the files fragmented and leads to delay in file accessing and ultimately a slow Mac.

As many of our readers know that SSDs solid state drives are much advanced than HDD with fewer chances of fragmentation of files. But, SSDs are costly than HDDs.

 

Gain free space in drive – Declutter your Mac drive

Now is the time to remove useless data from Mac machine and gain some free space. You are required to identify those files which are to be deleted. Its very time taking and close to impossible to delete all such files from your drive manually. So, its recommended to use a cleanup tool to remove clutters from your Mac. The tools like Stellar Speed Up Mac , are capable enough to remove useless data.

This cleanup tool lists all such files and applications which can just be selected and deleted permanently from your Mac drive.

Click here to know more about Tips to clean Mac drive

How and Why to Clean Up MacBook Hard Drive

How can I clean up macbook drive to speed up its performance ? Is it necessary create free space in Macbook drive if it is going to full.

Usually we all save every photo, video , document on our MacBook and eventually, the Macbook drive gets almost full. The side effect could be a slow Macbook. If you are running MacBook with low disk space, it not only pulls down its performance, but also creates risk for your machine. So, it is suggested to clean up your Mac's hard drive and return some much needed space and speed.

How can I remove the useless stuffs from my drive?

1. It is recommended to save your personal documents to disc and label them for quick retrieval later.
2. The documents which you haven't accessed since a long time, are supposed to be unimportant data. Its the time to delete such data from your hard drive. There is no need to worry about such documents since you have already saved them to a disc.
   
3. Open your email client and remove those old emails which you don't need. If you must keep them, save them to a disc. Open your chat client and clear out any chat logs.
   
4. Go to those applications which are not used more then once or twice after you installed them on your MacBook. Please don't delete any application that came with your Mac OS.
   
5. Clean the unnecessary and unused icons from your desktop and try to keep it clean. It is important to speed up startup of your Mac.
   
6. Clean up all the cache and browsing history items from your browser. Its important to push up Safari and other browsers on your system.
   
7. Empty the trash bin as this is also a part of your main drive.
   

Please note that the above tasks can be done manually and using a software also. The Mac cleanup tools like Stellar Speed Up mac. What this application needs is just your command and it will do rest of the tasks. The user can either cleanup the entire drive or a selected volume in one go. Pic 1 shows the list of files this application can remove from your Macbook.

Pic 1

For more details about Stellar SpeedUp Mac visit the official website.

Cleaner for Mac speed up | Disk Cleaning software for Mac

Why should I use cleaner for Mac running slow? Can Mac cleaning software fix issue of slow Mac performance – A very genuine and obvious question by Mac users.

Do you remember those days when your Mac machine fascinated you with its external beauty and internal fast performance. But, gone those days and gone those feelings. Now, its painful to see that spinning ball and slow startup of Mac. Do you know like other machines your Mac also needs some maintenance and occasional repair so that it continue delivering at its best.

If your Mac is running slower, and multitasking has become pathetic then in addition to regular maintenance and repair, you also need to cleanup your Mac drive. Using drive cleaner for Mac can fix the issue of slow Mac upt o some extent.

Role of Mac cleaner in improving Mac performance

Use of drive cleaners for Mac avails you free space which in turn is great resource for running large applications. It removes junk files, duplicate files, caches, removing unnecessary language files, system logs, trashes and leftovers from deleted applications. They also remove applications which you don't need in future and haven't used for a long time.

To use a Mac cleaners like Stellar speed up Mac, there is no need to be techie and know anything technical about a Mac, unlike cleaning or repairing it manually. A Mac cleaning software gives you relaxing experience when you use it to clean your Mac, as it is completely safe and will not harm your Mac. It saves your expenses on up-gradation and other maintenance related tasks.

Visit here to know more tips to Clean Mac

Tune up Mac | Tuneup Mac Lion | How to tuneup slow Mac

How can I tune up my Mac running slow ? Tuneup tools to speed up Mac Lion performance. - A very sought after query among Mac users who have switched to Mac Lion a months ago.

After a long usage of Mac system there accumulates some unwanted files and applications which waste our resources – memory in hard drive. Its important to note that when we play some heavy application they require more memory due to lack of which an application may slow down.

So, its quite clear that we must maintain free space on drive as much as possible. This can be done through two means- manual and automatic.

As such there is no inbuilt application to clean up Mac disk. So, you need to drag and drop the unnecessary files to trash and finally empty the trash. It is a time consuming process because its not easy to identify the duplicate files, binary files, language files and delete them manually.

The task of removing unnecessary file and useless applications can be done using some third party applications like Stellar speed up Mac.

This application enlist you all the duplicate files, language files, universal binary files, unused large files and those applications which have not been used for a long time. All you have to do is just select and delete the files which you think useless.

The Stellar speed up Mac offer three options in its welcome window. 

1. SpeedUp Now – This option is meant for boot volume and works upon all types useless files mentioned above. It removes trashes, left overs, universal binaries , duplicate files etc. The list can be seen Pic1 below.

   

   Pic1
2. Clean My Mac – The user can remove unnecessary files from selected volume of his Mac
3. Uninstaller – This option is meant to remove unwanted application installed in Mac. It offers an easy drag and drop tool to delete and application.

User can schedule the task of cleaning up Mac as per his requirements. This can be done using scheduler in preferences of this speed up tool. 

A user should take care of basic requirements of OS he is switching to. The technical requirements of Mac OS X 10.7(Lion) are:

• Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
• 2GB of memory
• OS X v10.6.6 or later (v10.6.8 recommended)
• 7GB of available space

Onyx for Mac maintenance of Lion | Onyx speedup Mac Lion performance

How to use Onyx – A free performance maintenance software for Mac lion. Onyx alternatives to speed up Mac Lion performance. Features of Onyx maintenance software.

Now a days these are the terms being searched and discussed among users facing slow Mac performance. Mac users who work with media files (for what they switched to Mac) may find it difficult to run related applications at their peak speed. A slow startup and slow launch of other applications are some other problems related with it. In such situations users search for some free fixes and finds Onyx as a solution to speed up Mac.

Creation year of Onyx is 2003 and was developed by Titanium software. It was developed as a personal software of developer using Xcode but now its serving many other users with regular updates. The program uses standard Unix utilities and control them through a graphical user interface. The features include:

• Verify S.M.A.R.T. status
• To verify structure of Ma file system on boot volume
• Repair disk permissions
• Clear System caches, User caches and other useless temporary files created in Mac
• Rebuild Launch Services
• Rebuild Spotlight and Mail indexes
  

Mac Onyx alternatives

All the issues related with slow Mac are not being resolved by Onyx. There remain some areas where a user needs to search for some other alternatives of Onyx. One such Mac speed up application is Stellar speed up Mac. It is a Mac cleanup tool which can

1. Remove duplicate files
2. Delete unnecessary applications
3. Remove useless universal binary files , user cache and system junks from selected volume
4. Clean unnecessary language files
5. Manage extensions
6. Clear large files , trashes and left overs remained after deleting an application.

For more details about Stellar Speed Up Mac visit: http://www.stellarspeedupmac.com/slow-mac.php