MBP extremely slow after SSD Upgrade. What's wrong with my mac?

Solved!! - I had almost exactly the same symptoms with my 2011 MacBook Pro. SSD upgrade Super fast for a month, then suddenly became slower than ever. Symptoms included unable to keep up with keystrokes (really annoying), slow application loads, slow printing.

I tried just about everything suggested on the internet; Reset PRAM, SMC, the wear levelling (TRIM). Reinstalled a clean OS (Lion, Yosemite, and El Capitan). Nothing made the slightest difference. I bought a different drive (i had a samsung EVO) I read the OWC were great...no change.

Then one day the mac failed to find my hard drive. I was pretty ticked off by now. So my research for this problem went down a different road. And I ended up buying a replacement SATA cable MacBook Pro 15" Unibody (Mid 2009-Late 2011) Hard Drive Cable Fixed it completely - Mystery solved.

So if this post helps just one person avoid six months of torture I will be delighted.

the hard drive name has nothing to do with it. You can name it whatever you want as long as you select it in the system preferences control panel as the startup disk.

How do you set it to the new SSD? It still only has the Mac HD listed.

Here is what worked for me. I did a SuperDuper clone from a 256GB Samsung EVO 840 SSD to a 1TB Samsung 860EVO. After doing this the MacBook booted up ok but I noticed that there was a click delay on every action and everything seems to have somehow slowed down. Almost like the hardware know that the SSD has been removed and was trying to verify every file that was being opened.

BlackMagic disk speeds didn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary. I tried to update the Samsung SSD firmware and it was already updated. I ran disk utility and did first aid. None of these solved my problem.

Finally, I booted the mac into recovery (cmr+r) and did an OS reinstall. This fixed my problem. You don’t loose any of your files or applications. It simply does a reinstall.

Hope this helps.

Same issue, different results. Help, never have I seen this in 15 years…

2010 MacBook Pro, 2.4ghz C2D, 8 gig ram, (320 original rotational drive) 240 ADATA SSD upgrade attempted, but failed.

The ADATA 240 or 480 SATA III is what I use on all my rebuilds, never an issue.. I just put one in a 2008 MacBook and it is lightning fast, as expected.

But, this 2010 is about to cause me to lose my last 5 hairs. I formatted it, as normal, and ready to build via my USB with High Sierra natively supported. It goes through the normal steps (language, disk utility, etc.) Then it starts the build to the SSD. It starts to calculate the time to install, 9 minutes, then 45 minutes, then 1 hour 53 minutes, come back in about a half hour it says 7 hours, 23 minutes. WHATTT? Bad comm to the drive = bad cable. But, wait, it works fast and fine on the rotational drive. I order another cable to rule it out. Same exact results, but 9 hours to build a 34 minute system drive. So, I assume I got a bad SSD (although it formats fine in my 2019 MBP). Have them replace the SSD. Now I have my new cable, new SSD, ready to go. NOPE. 9 hours 54 minutes. So, I go to bed, let it build. It’s all built. Everytime I click the mouse - color wheel. I select the SSD as the startup disk, restart. It doesn’t care, still unusable. I put the original back in, fast as normal (not fast ssd though), and sellable to a needy client.

I search, starting here, and find this thread among others. I read to line the cage where the SSD fits with nylon electrical tape to help insulate the drive cable from shorting. I do that, all the way to the connector on the logic board it is not touching any aluminum. I format the drive, and rebuild. 9 hours again. Now, after 15 years of seeing almost everything, I’m completely stumped and really tired of searching for hours and hours to no avail.

I don’t like to post, I like to read so I don’t have to post. Or, post in support if I know the answer or have been through it. I’M POSTING…LOL. This one has me stumped. The only model I’ve seen that just doesn’t fly across the table in happiness with an SSD.

Could it be the SATA II vs. SATA III issue? Where can I even find a SATA II SSD? Is it a firmware issue? As I said 10.13 was installed, and has the firmware for SSD and for APFS drive settings. Bad firmware write? Where do I find just the firmware to write? The wider drive cable needed that’s for 2012 on a 2010? I’m ready for your smart ideas. Sorry, if I should have started a new topic, but this one existed with the same description. And sorry for long post, and thanks in advance for any suggestions that you don’t see here.

Your issue might be that you need to turn on Trim through terminal then reboot