A reformat MIGHT help...you could also reset your PRAM and SMC on your machine (many times this gets anything wonky back in order).
When you think about the way the OS works, it almost relies completely on the hard drive you are running the OS off of performing optimally...if that drive starts to have issues, you will experience these exact same instances (amongst others)...and most people, who have been used to Windows machines being overwhelmed by viruses and such, will automatically refer to that when a Mac develops similar behavior.
I can almost guarantee you that your drive is ready to fail...or that the logic board has some kind of issue (though this is a much less likely instance since you'd notice other things as well...failure to boot, weird graphical issues, etc). Sounds like your hard drive is on the out...personally, I would invest in an SSD to run your OS off of (you'll see a drastic performance enhancement afterwards), and then get a cheaper normal HDD for storage (or even an external). Just my thoughts on it though.
03-05-2014 08:49 AM