[ataylor1215]

I have a 13" mid 2012 MBP that has been having issues for the last year or so. I spend more time looking at the spinning wheel than anything else. I have no idea what is slowing it down. I decided it was finally time to upgrade, but when I went to look at specs for new machines I realized my old MBP has some of the fastest components out there and it should still be running fine.
I have a 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7, 8GB memory, and I think 1TB HD (I had it upgraded by a 3rd party when my HD failed). Things that could be slowing the MBP down are the 29K photos, 2K short videos, 17K emails and 4 years of iMessages.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason for when the computer gets stuck. I have to use force quit several times a day.
Should this machine still be running like a work-horse? Or do I have too much on here?

[robertk328]

Welcome to iMore!

how much space do you have on the hard drive? Updating to an SSD from an HDD will help quite a bit but cost may be prohibitive.

[TwitchyPuppy]

Mine’s now working like a work horse since I put an SSD in it. It’s still on 8GB of RAM.

[Not Quite Right]

I think an SSD is a great idea. First things first. Your device used to run fine with a standard HDD, now it doesn't. #1 - Back-up or move everything you want to keep to an external drive, then reformat & reinstall Sierra. If things are back to normal before putting your data back, well you were nearing the drives capacity, a conflicting App, or maybe even Malware. Now if things don't improve #2 - replace the drive again. I've seen HDD's last years, month's, and just a few weeks. We've ruled out a software, OS issue with step #1 . Our next move would be to replace the drive, and what better time to replace the HDD with a SSD?. Step #3 - Still no success? Things are pointing to a trip to the Apple Store for a diagnostic of the motherboard, processor, and cabling ...

[Quis89]

A couple of quick and less intrusive ideas here...
Run a first aid from disk utility. Sometimes simply repairing faults on your hard drive can speed things up.
A cheap option would be replacing the bracket cable on your hard drive. Those can sometimes go bad which would lead to slower performance.
Performing an SMC reset could help as well.
Boot into Safe Mode. This will do a disk check and repair any errors as well as clear system and app cache.

If those ideas have failed, back up and reinstalling Sierra may help.

Finally, you can never go wrong with an SSD. You'll notice a dramatic change in performance by upgrading to an SSD.

[Rob Phillips]

A couple of quick and less intrusive ideas here...
Run a first aid from disk utility. Sometimes simply repairing faults on your hard drive can speed things up.
A cheap option would be replacing the bracket cable on your hard drive. Those can sometimes go bad which would lead to slower performance.
Performing an SMC reset could help as well.
Boot into Safe Mode. This will do a disk check and repair any errors as well as clear system and app cache.

If those ideas have failed, back up and reinstalling Sierra may help.

Finally, you can never go wrong with an SSD. You'll notice a dramatic change in performance by upgrading to an SSD.

Good stuff here. Sometimes we tend to jump right to “burn it down and get a new one”. I couldn’t agree more with your SSD comment. The performance bump over a traditional magnetic drive is huge.

[Quis89]

Good stuff here. Sometimes we tend to jump right to “burn it down and get a new one”. I couldn’t agree more with your SSD comment. The performance bump over a traditional magnetic drive is huge.

True. No point in jumping all the way to Z if options A, B or C could resolve the issue.

[Sherry_B]

Four years of iMessages? Not only will you free up a lot of space by deleting them all, but it should definitely help things run smoother.