Macbook Pro running very very slow... Hard Drive problem?

[mmurdock95]

Hey you guys, so I just bought a macbook pro for super cheap off of craigslist (MC374LL/A) with all the original hardware. So as soon as I got it, I wiped the hard drive with a 7 pass zero filter, and re-installed osx 10.6, then upgraded to lion, and as soon as I update it to 10.7.4 or 10.7.3 or transfer any large files onto it the computer just gets incredibly slow. I'm talking 10 minutes just to open safari slow, and beach balls every 30-40 seconds and freezes up and crashes the app. Doing anything on the computer takes the longest time. I'm guessing its the hard drive because the computer does have some large dings and dents, so it's been dropped hard. But I check the smart status on the drive and it always passes. Like I use onyx and everything passes and checks off. The ram seems to be working, both sticks (4gb total) seem to be working. Do you guys have any ideas? It's really starting to make me mad because I've done a 7 pass twice now and its just getting worse. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Saintarthur]

Sometimes the HDDs behave like that when they are damaged. you'll probably have to change it out. If you do, get your hands on a PC, connect the HDD to a free Sata port and run the WD DLG tool, search for winDLG to find it. this will tell you pretty quickly if there are errors on the HDD.
Best of luck.
Oh and to open the Mac book pro you're going to need a tiny hex screwdriver (T6) a "triwing" screwdriver ( a 3 pronged bit) and a 00 philips.
Check out a video on youtube before going for it.

 

[Gary394]

There are many possible reasons out there causing a slow Mac issue. But generally 2 categories: outdated hardware & poor system maintenance. Without adding hardware parts, you can rely on a MacBook speed up software to clean the system in order to improve its performance. Regards.