Apple Mac Book Pro Performance Problems

by Ilse Marel
(Mexico)

Secure Empty Trash Option

Secure Empty Trash Option

I have an Apple MacBook that is several years old. I am a designer and use heavy design programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator and other Adobe Creative Suite packages.

I sometimes need to run 2 or 3 of these packages at the same time.

At first, my computer was pretty quick, but it slowed down considerably after the second year of usage.

I did a couple of simple things to get it running quickly again. Here they are:


  • Secure Empty Trash:- Open the Trash Bin. Select the Finder menu, then click the Secure Empty Trash... option

    • Mac computers store files deleted from the Trash in case you want to recover them. The Secure Empty trash process can take a while because it cleans all deleted files off your computer.

  • Move the things you have on your desktop into folders, e.g. downloaded music, movies, applications and documents. You could also include desktop icons if you want

    • Having many files on the desktop makes it run slower because there are more data files to load when you start your computer up.

  • Delete any files that you no longer use

    • This is a good housekeeping rule to ensure your computer is only storing the files it needs to.

  • Defragment the Hard Drive

    • This is an important step after deleting large amounts of data

  • Close down unnecessary applications and widgets

    • The less you load up, the less work your MacBook needs to do.

  • Empty the cache in Safari of temporary browsing files that build up over time

    • This is also a good housekeeping rule as thousands of temporary files can really slow your web browsing down

If the above options don't speed things up enough, you can always put more memory in.


I hope these tips are helpful to everyone!

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by: Steve

Thank you, Ilse, for your contribution.

The Secure Empty Trash options in the Mac OS X will remove the files from your hard drive.

This is especially handy when you delete personal files that you do not want others to see or get their hands on.

It is even more important if you are disposing of your MacBook or donating to a friend or charity.

However, computer experts and data recovery business could still retrieve your files even after using the Secure Trash Option.

This is because the index to the files is deleted only. The actual files still remain on your computer.

The only way to permanently delete data files is to overwrite the 'free disk space' several times. Fortunately, Apple Mac Operating Systems include tools for you to do this:

1. Open Disk Utility in the Applications/Utility folder

2. Click on your Hard Drive in the left-hand column, then click the Erase Free Space button

3. Select the 7-Pass Erase of Deleted Files option. This option will ensure your files cannot be retrieved. However, it will take several hours to complete, so make sure you don't need to use your computer during that time.


Moving desktop files into appropriate folders and even deleting files you don't need any more is also a good idea.

The more files you have, the longer it will take to load the Operating System, and the longer it will take to load your profile.


Hard disks become fragmented after large volumes of data are deleted.

Think of the defragment process like putting a 500-page novel with jumbled up pages back in numeric order. Which one would take you longer to read? It's the same scenario for a computer.


More memory will certainly improve the performance of most computers that are a couple of years old.

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