Mac Book Pro problem starting

[tt601]

I have a Mac book pro of 2012 age so I reckon I’ve done quite well. Recently had troubling where it needs several goes at re booting/ starting before it ‘ Catches’ and opens up.

The hard drive is 760gb of which c 695 is used ( c200gb music 65gb photos, and other stuff making the remainder )

Is the fact that the storage is ‘mostly’ used likely to be my issue? If I can manage to move the music to a stand-alone hard drive is that likely to make any or much of a difference?

Thanks

[eeLee]

The drive is probably failing.- it's a bucketload of screws to get it out on those things but you can replace it. Can you hear clicks when it boots?

Backup what you can to somewhere else while it works and do not turn it off.

The machine can live on and you will find an SSD to be an excellent replacement.

[mmm-five]

It may 'simply' be a failing HDD, or as you've surmised a lack of capacity (but I think the former more likely).

Take it as a warning to back everything up...and then maybe buy a 1TB internal/external SSD (Crucial MX500 or Western Digital WD Blue 1TB SSD are about £75 on Amazon), install a new copy of MacOS (whatever the latest your's supports) and migrate the stuff back over...then enjoy a much faster/snappier experience.

Here's how to replace the internal 2.5" HDD (~100MB/s) with a faster (~550MB/s) 2.5" SATA SSD...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx64zxJFM44

[tt601]

eeLee said:

The drive is probably failing.- it's a bucketload of screws to get it out on those things but you can replace it. Can you hear clicks when it boots?

Backup what you can to somewhere else while it works and do not turn it off.

The machine can live on and you will find an SSD to be an excellent replacement.

Back ups regularly taken and esp. so as it started to grind to a halt.

No, no clicks or other extraneous noise heard, just a steady whirring ss it sits in start up phase, very slowly.

[tt601]

mmm-five said:

It may 'simply' be a failing HDD, or as you've surmised a lack of capacity (but I think the former more likely).

Take it as a warning to back everything up...and then maybe buy a 1TB internal/external SSD (Crucial MX500 or Western Digital WD Blue 1TB SSD are about £75 on Amazon), install a new copy of MacOS (whatever the latest your's supports) and migrate the stuff back over...then enjoy a much faster/snappier experience.

Here's how to replace the internal 2.5" HDD (~100MB/s) with a faster (~550MB/s) 2.5" SATA SSD...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx64zxJFM44

Thanks for the info, the video makes it look so easy.....presume same applies to my 15" pro, as the 13" used in the video. Dare i.......

Forgive the probably doltish question, but how would i install a new copy of the MacOS. ?

[eeLee]

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

[mmm-five]

tt601 said:

Thanks for the info, the video makes it look so easy.....presume same applies to my 15" pro, as the 13" used in the video. Dare i.......

Yes, it's the same for both screen sizes of that year.

tt601 said:

Forgive the probably doltish question, but how would i install a new copy of the MacOS. ?

Before you do the replacement (or on another Mac) download the MacOS version you want from the Mac App Store, and create a bootable USB/SSD/HDD to install from.

How to get old(er) versions of macOS:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT211683

How to create a bootable installer for macOS:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201372

You can always just create a Time Machine backup of your current installation, and boot from that if you wish...but you'd still need a 2nd drive for that.